Here's just one example:
People in mixed-gender legal marriages, how much did it cost you to get married? I don't mean the ceremony, the reception, and all that stuff -- I mean the marriage license, the legal part, where you went down to city hall or the registry office or wherever and filled out paperwork and got a piece of paper (or several) back. How much did your marriage license cost? If a ceremony was a legal requirement for your marriage license to be valid -- it is in some jurisdictions -- then go ahead and add in the cost of a registry office, or justice of the peace, or similar, ceremony.
Now, how many marriage licenses, or equivalent, have you had to obtain for your current marriage? For that one marriage, for you to be married to the same person?
Most of your friends in same-gender marriages, when we've had access to legal recognition of our relationships at all -- through domestic partnerships, civil unions, civil partnerships, or even civil marriage -- have had to do this many times. Each time we move, each time the law where we live changes, we have to get re-married.
And it almost always costs money EACH TIME.
That adds up.
And we're not even talking about the costs in time, energy, and resources other than money.
We're also not even talking about other ways which being someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer costs more money than being someone who is straight does.
So, allies: something to think about. Ignorance -- "Gosh, I had no idea!"-- is not an excuse.
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For more information on having to get married over and over and on the queer surcharge, see:
- Do you have to get divorced every time you move?, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-you-have-to-get-divorced-every-time.html
- At tax time, my second-class citizenship rears up and smacks me in the face, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/at-tax-time-my-second-class-citizenship.html
- Not the National Coming Out Day conversation I expected, http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/not-national-coming-out-day.html
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