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Jul. 29, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Same-sex marriage ban might be costing Nevada

By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Carolyn Rosenczweig, left, and Becca Stevens came to Las Vegas for the fun. They left "married," but not legally so, because same-sex marriage is constitutionally banned. An expert said Nevada could be losing millions in potential revenue because of the ban.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RIO

Theirs is a love story like no other ...

Not really. It's a pretty common story. They met, they fell in love, they came to Las Vegas, they caught the bug, they got married at a little chapel on the Strip.

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    • The End.

    Except it isn't that simple, of course. Nothing ever is.

    "We're just regular people. We're not activists," said Carolyn Rosenczweig, an emergency room doctor from Canada. "I mean, we're not in the closet by any stretch. But we're not going to march around in leather and rainbow flags, either."

    Yes, we're talking about lesbians here, which means their wedding a couple of weeks ago wasn't a legal one. It was a "commitment ceremony."

    Nevadans overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2002 that bans same-sex marriage, which could be coming back to bite us in the wallet, a few million times over.

    With California recently giving gay marriage the OK -- a new poll says voters want to keep it that way -- the Golden State might be in for a mini economic boom.

    A recent study by academics at the University of California, Los Angeles estimates the state could see nearly $700 million pour in over the next three years as a result of having legalized gay unions.

    So what, said Richard Ziser, former U.S. Senate candidate and supporter of the 2002 ban.

    "This is exactly what we were protecting against," he said. "Everyone said it would happen."

    Nevada's ban also forbids the state from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.

    So if you're gay and you want to get legally married, you go to California. Or Massachusetts. Or Canada.

    Which begs the question: Why did the Canadian couple choose Las Vegas?

    They didn't, really. Las Vegas sort of chose them.

    It all started a few weeks ago when Rosenczweig and her girlfriend of 21/2 years, Becca Stevens, a nurse, hit the road. Along for the ride was Stevens' daughter, Tori Artress, 14, whom the couple is raising together.

    They live in Victoria, British Columbia, northwest of Seattle. Their road trip took them through California and into Las Vegas.

    They decided to see a show at the Rio, "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding." In the show, a bouquet is thrown into the crowd.

    If I catch that bouquet, Rosenczweig asked Stevens, will you marry me tomorrow?

    Sure, said Stevens, why not? A pinky swear was performed, a deal was made.

    They've been engaged for more than a year anyway, though they hadn't set a date. Because they can actually get legally married in Canada, they're planning a big event with lots of family and a traditional ceremony.

    So anyway, the proposal.

    The bouquet came flying, Rosenczweig's arms went grasping, and after a tussle, there she was with the flowers.

    They called a few chapels the next day but were disappointed.

    "Oh," one said, according to Rosenczweig, "we don't do that kind of thing in Nevada."

    They kept calling, and they found Mon Bel Ami, a little place near the Stratosphere.

    Jennifer Pace at the chapel said they do about four same-sex commitment ceremonies a week, while they're doing somewhere near 20 traditional weddings.

    There's a demand for the same-sex ceremonies, she said, because most chapels won't perform them.

    Anyway, the ceremony went perfectly for the Canadian couple. They wore mood rings. They wore no shoes. They bought two dozen photos for $100.

    They hit the road again a short while later and were last heard from heading north through California.

    Because California's Supreme Court struck down a statewide ban on same-sex marriages there, it could see a boom in such marriages soon.

    The authors of the study, who work out of the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, estimate same-sex unions will bring in $683 million over the next three years.

    That could mean $63 million in revenue for local governments, through taxes and fees.

    "Obviously," said Brad Sears, co-author of the study and the institute's director, "the big windfall comes for the first states to do it."

    He said no one has done a similar study for Nevada, but he crunched a few numbers at our request.

    According to his U.S. Census data, there are about 6,300 gay couples in Nevada. Based on what's happened in Massachusetts since it legalized gay marriage, he estimated about half of those couples would get married here if they could.

    If each couple spent just one-quarter of what a traditional couple does on a wedding, that could mean $23.3 million spent here that otherwise wouldn't be. That would probably mean a couple of a million dollars in tax revenue too.

    And that's just locals. He said there was no way to calculate quickly how many out-of-state gay couples would come to Las Vegas to get married if they could do so legally.

    After all, more than 100,000 straight couples already are doing it every year.

    Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.

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    Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.

    Zechariah Aloysisus Hillyard wrote on September 14, 2008 11:52 PM: PS for Fred. Most AIDS(it's an acronym, not word--you might need to look up both in the dictionary) cases are, world-wide, heterosexual. That means people in your sexual class are creating more of a problem, from your frame of view. Are you defective, perhaps we should alter your gene structure?

    Grow some tolerance, it will help you see reason.


    Zechariah Aloysius Hillyard wrote on September 14, 2008 11:48 PM: I may be forced to live here for the time being, but I can't wait to move back to my home state of Massachusetts. Is the term "Sin city" ever the misnomer. This place is more repressive than New England ever was.

    I will never, ever spend more money here than I need to. If I want to have fun, I go out of state to California, Canada, New York, Massachusetts, etc. Get the picture?

    There are ways of getting around the DOMA law, one of the first steps to challenging it. One is to have everyone you know write every they know, ect., and write every major casino, government, and business entity and inform them they won't come to Nevada until the ban is lifted.

    The second is to get the state to recognize your marriage in subtle ways with your same sex marriage certificate from California. That's what I did, the story is here:

    DMV Policy on Gay Married Names
    Zechariah Hillyard
    Kevin Malone, Public Information Officer, NV DMV
    ... on a recent newlywed's three failed attempts at the DMV to change the last name on his driver's license to his new married name. The agency at first would not recognize his marriage certificate from California, basing their decision on Nevada's Defense of Marriage Act.

    http://www.knpr.org/audio2008/mp3/080827_dmv-regs.mp3

    Send this to as many people as you can who were married in California. I've had many public institutions, even on the federal level, recognize this certificate. It's a start.


    akki wrote on August 21, 2008 05:51 PM: Las vegas has the 2nd busiest airport...that is a lot of tourists. Las Vegas is the wedding capital of the US. If same-sex marriage is legalized in Nevada..gay people not only from the US but in the world will come to Nevada to marry. It's between the two persons involved..why deprive them the right to be happy and to belong to each other legally.


    citybythebay wrote on August 17, 2008 03:27 PM: TK writes: "Marriage is what I work hard for, day-in and day-out, to maintain between my wife, my children, and myself. To call a “union” between two of the same sex “marriage” devalues all of the work and effort that I put in." // How on earth does the fact two guys can get married have any impact on the value of your marriage. Isn't the value the recognition of your relationship with your wife, apart from whoever else marries?


    citybythebay wrote on August 17, 2008 03:22 PM: I grew up in Nevada but do not live there anymore. I always believed that when enough states (Calfiornia, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, etc.) have same-sex marriage and recognize each other's marriages that Nevada will change its ban. At the end of the day, Nevadans are both too libertarian to really care and too entrepreneurial to pass potentially enormous revenue.


    John Bisceglia wrote on August 04, 2008 10:08 AM: The National Gay Tax Protest is growing; the LGBT community will NOT wait for the country to decide upon our rights.

    THREE WORDS - GAY TAX PROTEST

    http://gaytaxprotest.blogspot.com/

    Not ONE PENNY until FULL EQUALITY.


    Gabarus wrote on July 31, 2008 06:03 AM: Theres that word immoral again.... Still havent gotten a solid answer on what specifically is immoral about being gay... Guess nobody knows... Hmmm..


    William wrote on July 31, 2008 12:57 AM: As my partner (now my husband) and I went to California on July 9th to get legally married we spent over $500 adding to California revenues and taxes. We would have spent much more had we done it in Nevada the state in which we live in. Sorry Nevada you lost our money.


    Sad Summerlin wrote on July 30, 2008 05:03 PM: Wow, Fred... let's remove the gene that causes homosexuality and that will cure AIDS? So what about the fact that 50% of all people that have HIV are black, Fred? Shall we remove the gene that makes people black too?

    How about this Fred, then we can move to the gene that causes people to be addicts? Then we can eliminate the gene that causes people to have red hair...

    Where does it stop, Fred?

    What happened to free will, Fred?


    Fred wrote on July 30, 2008 03:33 PM: I think if we found a cure for the disease (defect, gene problem, whatever) that caused people to become abnormal or what we call "gay or lesbian" it might go a long way toward curing Aids. I've found people with this problem are usually law abiding and can't understand why they would want to make an immoral act legal. It is another example of the political disease that infects the California politicians and their appointees (read judges). Why not make prostitution legal in Clark County too? Its not immoral. Its just business.


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