All My Children Features First Lesbian Wedding on Daytime TV

All My Children's Reese and Bianca

Marriage equality will be introduced into approx. two million households on Valentine’s week, when All My Children features the first same-sex marriage on daytime TV.

From OUT.com:
On February 13 and 16, All My Children’s gay super couple, Reese and Bianca will tie the lesbian knot. It’s a historic milestone for daytime TV as no other gay soap couple has ever walked down the aisle — until now. The story is already getting major coverage and snagged the coveted cover of Soap Opera Digest. SOD’s editorial director Lynn Leahey tells Out.com, “When we learned about the upcoming wedding, of course we wanted to feature it on our cover. It’s a big moment for All My Children and a milestone for daytime.”

h/t Box Turtle Bulletin

Massachusetts is the Wedding Capital of Rhode Island

by Susan MacNeil, MERI Director of Development & Communications

Granted, I’m a newcomer to the state and Marriage Equality Rhode Island, having left behind 34 years in New Hampshire last August. The fact that Rhode Island has the highest unemployment rate in the country, digs up buried mobsters in back yards and slathers hot peppers over perfectly good calamari is new information that takes some getting used to. But coming from the Live Free or Die state – where we capitalize on the vices of others with the saying, “Buy your butts and booze in NH, then go home” – there’s just one thing I don’t get. Maybe marriage equality isn’t your cup of tea, or maybe you simply don’t like “those homos and their lifestyle” as someone recently stated to me. You’re certainly entitled to your narrow, discriminatory opinion. However, given that the state is so dangerously in debt I simply don’t understand how the economists in Rhode Island could overlook the buying power of same sex weddings as a matter of salvation.

Do we really want Massachusetts to be the wedding capital of Rhode Island?

Recently I did some research as to how many Rhode Island couples were married in Massachusetts. The data supplied by the MA Department of Public Health is solid from 2004 through 2007, and incomplete for 2008.

The aggregate numbers follow:
2004: 57 couples
2005: 20 couples
2006: 35 couples
2007: 133 couples
*2008: 8 couples

Now my left brain has a tough time with math, but it’s a simple equation, right? The average wedding costs $25,000. This only represents the wedding event expenses – clothing, location, transportation, meals, the usual. So if we add up all the Rhode Island couples who married between 2004-2008, which equals 253 (keeping in mind this number is low due to incomplete info) and multiply that number by $25,000… you get the staggering result of $6,325,000 that Rhode Island has graciously donated to Massachusetts.
That’s right. I couldn’t believe it either, so I did the math again and again… and again. But it’s true. And this number is actually underrepresented because the $25,000 does not include what wedding party guests spend.

So just to make it more interesting, let’s say the average couple invites 50 people, which is probably very low. Let’s say that 20 of these people represent 10 couples who require lodging for 2 nights. Let’s say that they spoil themselves as part of the celebration and stay at a beautiful hotel where an average room costs $200/night. Here we go again with the math… 10 couples x 2 nights each = 20 nights lodging @ $200 = $4000. And they have to eat as well, so add another $100/day for food per couple, or an additional $1000.

These guests come with a wedding gift in tow, but what about their own weekend purchases? After all, shopping is an irresistible urge and it is a celebration, right? If only 25 of the 50 guests – stay with me now – make purchases of $50 each, that’s another $1250. So we add $4000 + $1000 + $1250 and we get $6250 per wedding, which is a seriously low presumption. Now we multiply $6250 x 253 weddings to get another $1,581,250 in lost revenue.

The final ballpark tally, vastly underestimated, brings us to $7,906,250.Eight Million Dollars that the State of Rhode Island has handed over to Massachusetts. Sarah Jessica Parker! Miss Kitty Litter! I may be a transplanted hick from New Hampshire, but even I understand the economic loss of forcing same-sex couples to travel to another state in order to exercise their civil right to full marriage.

Now that Connecticut has achieved marriage equality, I guess Rhode Island will be sending them an engraved invitation to our wedding industry as well. Heck, maybe Rhode Island will even adopt a motto similar to NH… “You gays enjoy your civil rights in Massachusetts and Connecticut, then come home to live in the Island of Inequality.”

$8,000,000. If the State of Rhode Island insists upon standing in the way of granting full civil marriage rights to its gay citizens, whose contributions equal those of their heterosexual counterparts, just because of – you know – then gosh darn it, if you can’t do it for the right reason, do it for the money.

JUST DO IT.

This article has appeared in Divine Providence and as an OpEd piece in Bay Windows
*2008: data based on first few months of 2008 and are not exhaustive or final for the year

There Go The Brides!

Check out the Newport Mercury Jan. 14th issue. MERI’s very own Board member, Tiffany Rauch-Dickson, discusses her wedding and how Rhode Island is losing millions without marriage equality. The Newport Mercury highlights some very interesting statistics about how Rhode Island is handing over millions in wedding dollars to Massachusetts, and now Connecticut.

Newport Mercury Articles (by Jamie Merolla)
There Go the Bride’s (PDF)
Gay Marriage Proponents Look Two Years Ahead (PDF)
Newport On the Street: Marriage Equality