Interesting article via a Facebook friend on the economic consequences of marriage inequality :

The cost of love isn’t an abstract concept in my household: It’s precisely $1,820 per year. That’s the “gay tax” we shell out for me to be on my wife’s health insurance plan, because her company must treat that benefit as additional taxable income.
. . .
Consider the cost to Randy Lewis-Kendall, who lost his husband, Rob, to colon cancer in 2007, their 30th year together. He is about to be denied the $1,161 per month he would have collected in Social Security survivor benefits had his marriage been federally recognized. He could use it, too. The two men owned a small gift shop in Harwich on Cape Cod together, and Randy has been struggling to pay the bills since Rob’s death and the economic downturn.

That price my wife and I pay for the depraved thrill of being two middle-aged women with a joint checking account? It’s a drop in the bucket compared with what love is costing Melba Abreu and Beatrice Hernandez. They’ve been together for 32 years and have paid nearly $20,000 more in taxes since their 2004 marriage than if they had been able to file a joint federal return.

DOMA doesn’t just hurt our pride: It undermines our ability to take care of one another. Neither Joan nor I have the right to take family medical leave from our jobs in the event that one of us becomes seriously ill. In couples where one spouse is a U.S. citizen and the other is not, the citizen cannot obtain a visa for the noncitizen or sponsor him or her for citizenship. And forget about inheritance. If you’re in a same-sex marriage and your spouse leaves her estate to you — for example, the house you shared — you’ll be forced to pony up as much as 50 percent of her estate’s value in taxes. Price tag for federally recognized married couples? Zero.

Something to mention the next time one of your family members talks about “protecting” marriage.