Gay marriage attracts out-of-state workforce

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2008/03/03/story1.html?b=1204520400%5E1598140

Massachusetts native Jeffrey Webb loved the Los Angeles lifestyle. He had
a 
great job as a law partner in the L.A. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher 
LLP, and his life partner, Mark Schuster, was equally happy with his work
as 
chief of general pediatrics and professor at UCLA. "We both had positions 
that were hard to replicate," said Webb, 43.

Even so, Webb and Schuster left the California sun****ne in December and 
moved to Brookline with their twin sons. It wasn't the promise of enduring
a 
gloomy Massachusetts winter that beckoned them -- it was the ability to
live 
in Massachusetts as a legally married couple.

"That was something that was really im****tant to us," said Webb, who
married 
Schuster in Massachusetts soon after the couple bought a vacation home in 
Truro in 2004. Webb has since joined the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery 
LLP as a partner in the trial department, and Schuster is now the chief of

general pediatrics and vice chair for health policy research at Children's

Hospital Boston.

Massachusetts has a dubious reputation for losing talented workers to less

pricey markets. But a trend that runs counter to the talent drain has 
emerged in the form of the state's controversial same-*** marriage law, a 
powerful lure for same-*** couples who want to live in a place where they 
can get married, gain legal rights and have access to spousal health 
benefits. In fact, some observers see the influx of same-*** couples as a 
boon for the state's economy.

"Since the marriage law passed, we see a lot more (gay) professionals
moving 
into the Boston area," said Henry Hoey, a board member of the Greater
Boston 
Business Council, a chamber of commerce for gay professionals. The 
organization's member****p has increased 5 percent to 1,100 members since 
last year. "The effects of this law are starting to take hold."

In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-*** 
marriage in a landmark ruling. The decision sparked an intense effort by 
same-*** marriage opponents to amend the state Constitution; but that
effort 
died in the Legislature last year. Since 2004, 10,168 same-*** couples
have 
said their "I-Do's" in Massachusetts. And while same-*** nuptials have 
tapered off since the initial rush in 2004 when 6,121 couples tied the 
knot -- last year 550 same-*** couples got married in the state -- that 
likely reflects an expected leveling off since the law was passed,
according 
to the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics. The number
of 
same-*** couples who have moved here since 2004 is not tracked by any 
organization.

Martha Livingston, founder and CEO of Inclusive Recruitment LLC, a 
Boston-based staffing firm that places gay, lesbian, bi***ual and 
transgender professionals in welcoming workplaces, has noticed an increase

in gay and lesbian couples who have moved or are planning to move to the 
state.

"There's a woman that I'm working with right now because she came to 
Massachusetts so her marriage would be recognized," said Livingston.

Massachusetts's population could use some fresh faces. From 2003 to 2005, 
the population fell to 6,429,137 from 6,438,510, according to estimates
from 
the U.S. Census Bureau. While the population crept back up to 6,449,755 in

2007, according to census estimates, the population grew a mere 1.5
percent 
from 2000 to 2006.

Not everyone agrees that same-*** marriage will ultimately prove
beneficial 
to the state's economy.

"We view same-*** marriage as a radical social experiment and to promote
it 
on behalf of the economy is akin to promoting casinos on behalf of the 
economy," said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family
Institute 
in Woburn. "There's anecdotal evidence that (there has been) an exodus of 
families from Massachusetts because of the same-*** marriage law. So
there's 
two sides to the story."

It's not only the legal rights afforded by the Massachusetts law, but also

the relatively open-minded political climate of the region that is drawing

more gay couples. Lisa Forest and her wife, Anne Marie Willer, both had
good 
jobs and owned their own home in the Dallas area. But in 2006 the couple 
left Texas for Massachusetts and rented an apartment in Quincy. Forest
works 
at Bridgewater State College, where she launched the college's GLBTA Pride

Center. Willer works as a librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. The couple married in 2006.

"It was a difficult move, but I found the political climate inhospitable,"

Forest said of her time in Texas. She and Willer lived there for five
years.

"There was a lot of psychological and physical energy that I was investing

in just living my day-to-day life, because I had to defend myself against 
anti-gay sentiment and rhetoric. (But mainly) we were taking too large of 
financial and legal risks remaining there as strangers, legally," Forest 
said.

The state's same-*** marriage law could provide local businesses with a 
unique competitive edge, according to Carissa Cunningham, director of
public 
affairs at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in Boston.

"Massachusetts has a reputation for fairness both generally and in the 
specifics that it offers gay and lesbian couples, especially those with 
children who are concerned about raising their kids in a place that
sup****ts 
their family and protects their legal rights," said Cunningham. "It makes 
the state competitive."

While federal law does not recognize same-*** marriage, the benefits for
gay 
couples who decide to marry on a state level still outweigh the drawbacks,

according to Rick Kraft, an attorney who moved from Berkeley, Calif., to 
Massachusetts with his partner and their daughter in 2004. Benefits
include 
partner health insurance, filing joint state tax returns and automatic 
inheritance if one spouse dies. One downside to marriage is that in the 
event of a split, alimony payments are not tax-deductable for same-*** 
couples, according to Kraft, who focuses his estate planning practice on
the 
legal needs of lesbian, gay, bi***ual and transgender people.

"There are hundreds of automatic rights that come to couples when they're 
married," said Kraft, 46.

Chris Ott, 37, and his partner, David Danaher, 40, decided to leave 
Wisconsin after the state passed a constitutional amendment to ban
same-*** 
marriage. Ott moved to Cambridge after he sold his home in Madison.
Danaher, 
a professor of Slavic languages at the University of Wisconsin, plans to 
remain until he finds a post in Boston.

The two haven't married in Massachusetts yet.

"The passage of that amendment meant that there were going to continue to
be 
legal and financial barriers and hard****ps which we didn't want to contend

with, especially later in life," said Ott, communications director at the 
ACLU's Boston office. "We wanted to live somewhere where these issues had 
already been settled."