One Iowa in the News: Iowa couples spent $12 million on same-sex marriages in 1st year

from Quad-City Times.

DES MOINES — Spending associated with weddings by couples of the same gender during the first year that same-sex marriages were legal in Iowa totaled at least $12 million and likely was more, according to a study issued by a California research institute that was undertaken at the request of a state senator in Iowa.

Researchers at the Los Angeles-based Williams Institute reported that total spending on wedding arrangements and tourism by same-sex couples and their guests generated an economic boost of $12 million to $13 million to the state and local economies between April 2009 and April 2010. That spending likely also generated $850,000 to $930,000 in tax revenue to state and local coffers.

Researchers noted that 1,015 couples who applied for Iowa marriage licenses during that 12-month period did not specify a gender on their applications, so the overall economic benefit could have been as high as $20 million and the tax revenue impact up to $1.5 million if all those marriages involved partners of the same gender.

...Troy Price, executive director of One Iowa, the state’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization, said the report demonstrates that “marriage equality had had, and continues to have, only a positive impact on our state.”

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