California Expects Big Bucks From Homosexual Weddings
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Is this a jobs and revenue program the voters do not want?
More than half of CALIFORNIA’s estimated 100,000 same-sex couples are expected to apply for marriage licenses when the new Homosexual marriage law goes into effect this week says a UCLA study.
The study also estimates that as many as 68,000 out-of-state couples could travel to CALIFORNIA to take advantage of the new law. All of which, the UCLA study says, could generate as much as $684 million for the CALIFORNIA economy over the next three years, creating 2,200 jobs along the way.
More than $70 million of that amount would go directly to state and local government coffers, with $64 million in additional tax revenue for the state and another $9 million in marriage-license fees for counties. The bulk of the spending is expected to be on the usual wedding accoutrements, including cakes, decorations, clothing, jewelry, etc, but the benefits could also spread out to other industries as well.
For instance, some Southern California wedding planners say that in the weeks right after the court decision, same-sex customers who were planning civil union ceremonies immediately switched to wedding plans instead.
The impact’s going to be in the millions, “easily.” Marketing experts also cite the gay community’s comparatively high earning power. PlanetOut, a media and entertainment company that conducts surveys about gay and lesbian consumers, says gay consumers earn 20 percent more than their straight counterparts, on average, and spend about 10 percent more on civil union and other commitment ceremonies.
Others question this disparity citing biases in Media and entertainment that have large homosexual populations. In Los Angeles it is referred to as the Lavendar Mafia, and companies such as Disney are often cited as being run by a homosexual majority.
A Constitutional amendment is headed for the November 2008 ballot that would ban marriages between homosexual couples. The State’s voter passed a similar ban but the State Supreme Court action overrode the majority of the voters.