'Gay Tax' Hurts Couples Tying the Knot

First comes love, then comes marriage, then the taxman, who penalizes same-sex couples with the “gay tax,” Nancy Goldstein writes on NPR. The media’s morality play about gay marriage has overshadowed the economic costs of inequality, argues Goldstein, who calculates her annual tax at $1,820 for coverage on her wife’s health insurance plan.

The federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act bars gay couples from receiving the 1,138 protections and benefits heterosexual mates enjoy—which no doubt explains why gay couples are more likely to be poor, writes Goldstein. Washington’s “insistence on charging same-sex married couples exorbitant fees for basic rights makes it look less like a defender of marriage than a loan shark."
(More gay marriage stories.)