Gay marriage --The answer for states' budgets?

Gay marriage may be gaining support; not because of a shift in philosophical or moral values, but because states need the bucks. According to a recent study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, the law allowing same-sex couples to marry in Maine would have boosted the state budget approximately $8 million per year. This net impact would result from an increase in state income and sales tax revenue as well as savings in expenditures on state public benefit programs.

In calculating the net benefit to the State, the study predicted that half of Maine's 4,644 same-sex couples, or 2,316 couples, would have married in the first three years of being able to do so. The study also projected that 15,660 non-resident same-sex couples would have come to Maine to marry. Reportedly, same-sex weddings and associated tourism could have generated $60 million in spending over three years, providing a boom to Maine's economy.

Unfortunately for the state coffers, voters overturned the same sex marriage legislation last November.