Health: Gay Marriage Improves Men’s Health

Winning the right to marry has certainly made a lot of gay men happy, but a new study says that the legalization of same-sex marriage has actually improved the health of gay and bisexual men.

The study from Vanderbilt University discovered that since the legalization of same-sex marriage, there have been “significant increases” in gay and bisexual men’s access to care and health insurance coverage. The study utilized data collected by the Centers for Disease control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System from 2000 to 2016.

Researchers noticed that since Obergefell v. Hodges — the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage — there has been improved health for gay and bisexual men in same-sex households.

According to the data, since the legalization of same-sex marriage, a man in a same-sex household is 4.2 percent more likely to have health insurance and 7.3 percent more likely to have received an annual checkup.

This is especially heartening to hear as the study points out that men and women in same-sex households are “significantly less likely to report excellent or very good health, more likely to report fair or poor health, and more likely to report 14 or more bad health days than men and women in different sex households.”

The findings are also something to consider as Trump looks to swing the United States Supreme Court further to the right. The nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is expected to be against Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, the rulings that legalized abortion and same-sex marriage, respectively.

The paper acknowledges this, saying in its conclusion that “recent efforts to dismantle legal access to same-sex marriage may negatively affect family and health outcomes, particularly among men in same-sex households”.