With Real science to back it up, thanks to Columbia University researchers:
From the press release:
“Our results suggest that removing barriers to marriage improves the health of gay and bisexual men,” said Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, PhD, lead author of the study and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the Mailman School. It also saves money in healthcare costs.
In the 12 months following the 2003 legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, gay and bisexual men had a significant decrease in medical care visits, mental healthcare visits, and mental healthcare costs, compared with the 12 months before the law change. This amounted to a 13% reduction in healthcare visits and a 14% reduction in healthcare costs. These health effects were similar for partnered and single gay men.
Among HIV-positive men, there was no reduction in HIV-related visits, suggesting that those in need of HIV/AIDS care continued to seek needed healthcare services.
For the study, researchers surveyed 1,211 patients from a large, community-based health clinic in Massachusetts that focuses on serving sexual minorities. Examining the clinic's billing records in the wake of the approval of Massachusetts' same-sex marriage law, researchers found a reduction in hypertension, depression, and adjustment disorders—all conditions associated with stress.
“These findings suggest that marriage equality may produce broad public health benefits by reducing the occurrence of stress-related health conditions in gay and bisexual men,” Dr. Hatzenbuehler said.
And this is the distilled argument... from the actual abstract of the study:
Conclusions. Policies that confer protections to same-sex couples may be effective in reducing health care use and costs among sexual minority men.
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Take that argument to your family gatherings and use it on your relatives that are fiscally conservative and against gay marriage. It may not convince many, but it may convince a few.
They may just argue that society shouldn't be paying for anyone's health care... but the reality is the we all do pay for the uninsured, because we don't believe in letting people die in the street. But that is a whole other (related) argument.
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