Do you think legalizing same sex marriage nationwide would help the housing market?

[Crazy Dave]

I'm being totally serious as silly as the question may sound but if you think about it, how many same sex couples have put off buying a home or never considered it due to the legal issues of co-ownership and estate problems with those who have intolerant and vindictive next of kin.

Please post your thoughts if you choose and for those whose privacy I totally respect, please weigh in anonymously in the poll

[yardwork]

1. Increasing people's human rights always has lots of beneficial effects.

Allowing gay people to marry would benefit more than just the housing market. Think of all the two-person gay households in the U.S. that don't benefit from the tax breaks and other 1,000 benefits accorded to married people. Imagine what people could do with that extra money!

Getting married is a lot cheaper than hiring an attorney to draw up all kinds of paperwork attempting to protect one's family's rights. Think of what gay couples could do with that money - why, they might even throw a big wedding bash and spend the money on catering and flowers and honeymoons.

[Skink]

2. Massachusetts could see a migration of talented people to Vermont.

Thus effecting their housing market.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. No, the numbers involved aren't large enough.

Multiply together the fraction of the populace as a whole who are gay, the fraction of the gay populace who would get married if they could and the fraction of those people to whom getting married would make a difference between buying a house and not doing so and you end up with a very small number indeed.

[Crazy Dave]

4. Even a little help is better than no help

So maybe only 10,000 new homes are purchased in a year by same sex couples after marriage is legalized. That's a better number than 10,000 more foreclosures. But I do understand your point.

[JonQ]

5. I gotta agree with Donald

the numbers just aren't there to make a huge impact.

[Marrah_G]

6. No- it hasmade no difference in Mass

[Crazy Dave]

7. Thanks

I don't know why but I really should have thought about that and I probably would have done the poll a little different. What examples there are already, etc. Oh well, these thoughts were just what I had going on in my mind at the moment I posted the poll.

[JonQ]

8. It's not a bad idea really

it just doesn't seem to have worked out that way.