Throughout this
project, we tried to find out how gay marriage affected the population growths
and declines in both Alabama and California. Since California is such a liberal
state normally when elections are held, we thought that the population would
change drastically because they were well on their way to legalizing gay
marriage. This was somewhat of the case, but not completely. As for Alabama, it
is basically always conservative when voting. While there are gay and lesbian
couples in Alabama they do not out-weigh the couples of opposite sexes. Our
group has focused and started the process of finding information to construct
data sets and embed ideas into our maps. We looked to see how jobs, laws and
rights with marriage, and population changes would be affected by gay marriage.
Throughout the project,
we focused mainly on using different censuses, along with fact finder and
Google. We found out through our maps that there were not really very many
drastic changes within the populations. California is already so densely
populated in certain areas that they did not have an increase larger than six
percent per one county. It was evident through this information that there
would not be such a huge change in population as we had originally thought. The
population increased in both California and Alabama, but it does not seem that
these laws were the reason why. Different people from each state changed their
minds of different aspects of the state’s views, and they went to other states
where they were more pleased with how things were going. Not only were they
different in laws, but in taxes and jobs as well.
For many years as we all know, the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy about your sexual preference was in place in the army. It is almost like the same policy was implemented in the workforce and other places throughout the country. Until recently, there have been very few polls and ratios of what other’s sexual orientations were and it was hard to obtain. It has become more common since the last census was taken for people to say what their sexual preference is. We began to look into major cities in each state, such as Montgomery, AL and Los Angeles, CA, as well as counties in each state. We did a county population, men to women ratios, and took a look into the struggles and benefits of the workforce. It was evident in some places that there was fifty-fifty trade off of both men and women being equal. Almost all of the counties increased in both states, but in Alabama some of the poorer places decreased, because they were forced to move elsewhere because of the inability to find a stable job.
For many years as we all know, the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy about your sexual preference was in place in the army. It is almost like the same policy was implemented in the workforce and other places throughout the country. Until recently, there have been very few polls and ratios of what other’s sexual orientations were and it was hard to obtain. It has become more common since the last census was taken for people to say what their sexual preference is. We began to look into major cities in each state, such as Montgomery, AL and Los Angeles, CA, as well as counties in each state. We did a county population, men to women ratios, and took a look into the struggles and benefits of the workforce. It was evident in some places that there was fifty-fifty trade off of both men and women being equal. Almost all of the counties increased in both states, but in Alabama some of the poorer places decreased, because they were forced to move elsewhere because of the inability to find a stable job.
We wanted to track the
differences between laws and jobs and how they have changed over the past ten
years, but it was impossible to find information on just jobs and laws in a
numbers format. As most people know, over the last ten years we have
experienced a depression, one of which is the second worse ever of our country,
along with a recession. Throughout the recession men were laid off from their
jobs in big corporate companies and forced to either take minimalist jobs, or
not work at all. This made it easier for women to get the men’s jobs because
they were so down and out about losing their jobs in the first place. Some
women did not have jobs due to being a stay at home mom, and were forced to get
them when the economy crashed. Everything we have read about during 2007 and
2008 was basically about how much everybody was struggling and not able to take
care of their families, or even themselves.
As we mentioned before,
we were searching for answers about laws with gay marriage. Although we were
unable to find anything statistically, we did find some interesting things that
people wrote about it. The newest and biggest argument is that same sex couples
should be allowed to have tax benefits and health insurance together, just like
heterosexual couples. They do the same things that heterosexual couples do when
it comes to having families, paying bills, and sending children to school, but
when they are ready to file taxes they cannot claim each other. By not being
able to claim one another, it discourages them in not only funds for them, but
also in reality. “Many benefits are only available to married couples, such as
hospital visitation during an illness, taxation and inheritance rights, access
to family health coverage, and protection in the event of the relationship
ending. An October 2, 2009 analysis by the New York Times estimates that a same sex
couple denied marriage benefits will incur an additional $41,196 to $467,562 in
expenses over their lifetime compared to a married heterosexual couple”
(gaymarriage.procon.org).
Although we were unable
to find out more information statistically, we have found out that more and
more laws are going before Congress each day. While this is a developing
conflict, it seems that it will probably be resolved in the next ten or less
years. The fights for gay rights are getting more and more intense globally,
and we could talk for days about the different articles we have read on the
internet about conflicts in Russia and other countries, but if anything is
going to be resolved it seems that the United States of America will be the
first. If we had to guess, we would say that gay marriage would be nationally
recognized by no later than 2025. While many people do not agree with it still,
it will probably happen because the fight has gotten so intense. If we were to
be doing this project five years from now, the statistics would be completely
different from what we have found completing it now. The statistics we did find
showed that in the next few years everything will more than likely be
completely different due to political changes in offices not only locally, but
at state and national levels as well.
