Contrary to the minority held belief, same-sex married couples do exist! Right up there with aliens, unicorns and other assorted myths, the United States government wasn’t officially allowed to acknowledge the existence of same-sex married couples. Despite the very real existence of legally married couples, DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) prohibited them from doing so on account that giving same-sex married couples the same rights and benefits as opposite sex couples would destroy the sanctity of marriage but this all change last year when the law was repealed.

The move to do this is so huge because now it finally gives us a clear, statistically supported picture on how same-sex marriage rulings are having an impact on the community and how many people are taking advantage of the legality. In a broader sense of what this means, the growing numbers of same-sex married couples could potentially alter future legislation and future marketing and monetary decisions.

For example, if lawmakers know that the laws that they make are having an effect on a large amount of plugged-in, politically conscious same-sex married couples, they will, to put it bluntly, pander to them. It’s a harsh way to put it but that is often how these things go and we are already seeing that even the most conservative, former same-sex marriage opponents are having a change of heart in an effort to appeal to more voters and new statistics to support this are only going see this type of behaviour increase.

Pew Research notes that existing data on same-sex married couples is incorrect as many opposite sex couples may have accidentally ticked the wrong box and described themselves as a same sex couple. So undoubtedly then, this will help correct the stats and we’ll be able to track them over time as more and more big same sex marriage decisions are ruled throughout the United States.