On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, 5-4, that every state must let gay people get married. Politics aside, how will this affect the American economy?

The Williams Institute at UCLA found that the weddings alone would produce $2.6 billion dollars in revenue. They found that this would create around $184 million in tax revenue, and it would create around 13,000 jobs. They assumed that the weddings would lure out-of-town guests into state economies.

According to the CDC national health survey, about 3.4% of people do not identify as straight, but let’s round up to 5%. The United States population is around 300 million, so that works out to around fifteen million gay people.

Because of Friday’s ruling, that means fifteen million people now may need all of the same services that married people have traditionally needed. Fifteen million more people now potentially need tax advice. Fifteen million more people need legal advice. You could probably make a living specializing solely in gay marriage related legal issues.

The law is still developing on how to differentiate a male and male couple, or female and female, with a traditional male and female couple. The law will have to determine which facets of the traditional law it will apply and which ones it won’t. This will require a lot of litigation. 

Essentially, an entire new body of law will have to be created to accommodate the new relationships. It remains to be seen whether male and male couples will be treated similarly to female and female couples.

So, lawyers will get a big piece of the pie. No surprise there, but who else will have an opportunity to get in on the action? The most obvious answer is priests or other people that are licensed to perform weddings. Of course, some priests will have a religious opposition to performing the marriage.

Those that can overcome this opposition have an excellent opportunity to make money on these weddings since the supply will be lower because of other priests’ opposition. After that, wedding planners in certain states just gained a lot more possible clients. Catering companies, cake designers, and venues that hold weddings also stand to join in on these opportunities.

Some of the more discreet benefits the economy might see relate to the taxes married gay couples will save. They will be able to spend the money in the economy instead of giving it to the government. Related to this, the economy will be benefited by the children that are adopted by gay couples—which they now have the same tax incentives to as traditional couples. Gay parents will spend money to raise the children which will positively affect our economy.

This is just a brief overview of some of the ways that our economy will be positively affected by the expansion of marriage to include gay people. Including gay people in this institution will positively affect their status in this world. In turn, we should receive a tangible, positive economic impact.