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Business|Should Gay Couples Worry About Their Benefits Under Trump?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/business/trump-same-sex-marriage-gay-rights.html
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Readers had concerns about whether same-sex married couples and their protections would face new risks during a second Trump term.
Before same-sex marriage was legalized, Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber calculated the lifetime costs that gay couples incurred from being unable to marry. The worst-case scenario: nearly half a million dollars.
Nov. 21, 2024Updated 10:46 a.m. ET
For nearly a decade, same-sex married couples have received the same federal rights and protections that their straight counterparts enjoy. They include a long list of financial benefits, from spousal health coverage to less expensive tax preparation, not to mention the immeasurable comfort from knowing their unions must be recognized.
The Supreme Court granted those rights in two landmark cases — first in 2013, when it ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to federal benefits, and more broadly in 2015, when gay marriage was legalized across the country. Seven years later, a bipartisan coalition in Congress cemented many of those protections into law.
But even now, when The New York Times asked readers if they had money-related questions in the wake of the presidential election, several gay couples wrote with concerns about whether they and their finances may face new risks under a second Trump administration.
“I would like to think there is no reason to disrupt something that has worked so well for families, their children and society,” said Mary Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLAD Law, who argued Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized the unions, at the Supreme Court. “It allows people to organize their families and affairs, pool finances, buy property and have kids. In the end, it is popular, and it harms no one.”
Mr. Trump did not focus on same-sex marriage during his recent campaign, and it’s certainly not the divisive issue it was nearly three decades ago — the vast majority of Americans support marriage equality. There are more than 740,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, according to estimates from the 2022 American Community Survey.
But gay couples’ concerns aren’t entirely unfounded. The president-elect already reshaped the Supreme Court during his first term, appointing three conservative justices who are now part of a 6-to-3 majority.
