'Estimate: Riverside County has Fourth-highest Number of Gay Marriages in State
The Press-Enterprise
By David Olson
October 6, 2008

Riverside County had the fourth-highest number of same-sex marriages in California during the first three months of legally recognized same-gender matrimony in the state, according to a new UCLA study.

An estimated 1,247 gay and lesbian couples married in Riverside County from June 17 to Sept. 17, according to the report by the Williams Institute, a UCLA research center on sexual-orientation law and policy. More than 11,000 same-sex marriages took place statewide, the study estimates. Riverside County has the state's fourth-highest population.

There is no official state or county data on the number of same-sex marriages. The institute calculated same-sex marriages by subtracting the number of marriages in 2007 from the number in 2008. California had a 17 percent increase in marriage licenses.

The number of marriages in San Bernardino County declined between 2007 and 2008. For research purposes, the report says there were no same-sex marriages in the county, although it's clear that there were actually some, said Gary Gates, senior research fellow at the institute and co-author of the study.

Riverside County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder Larry Ward said much of the county's increase in weddings came from the Indio office, which serves the Palm Springs area.

Some of those couples were from out of state, said Michael Green, president of the Palm Springs Hospitality Association. Hotel owners have seen "a steady stream of people coming to town to get married."

A 2006 U.S. census estimate said there were nearly 109,000 same-sex couples statewide, meaning about 10 percent got married in the three-month period. Gates said that may indicate that many same-sex couples treat marriage seriously and did not want to have a quick wedding, and that some are worried about Prop. 8, a Nov. 4 ballot measure that would ban same-sex matrimony. Legal scholars differ over whether Prop. 8 would void same-sex marriages that occurred before Nov. 4.

Sonja Eddings Brown, a spokeswoman for ProtectMarriage.com, which backs Prop. 8, said the relatively low percentage of same-sex marriages may point to a "disconnect" between gay and lesbian activists supporting Prop. 8 and gay couples.

"One could draw the conclusion that not many gay couples want to get married," she said.

A separate Williams Institute report analyzed the California Health Interview Survey -- a collaboration between the state and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research that asks participants their sexual orientation -- to estimate that there are about 861,000 gay, lesbian and bisexual people statewide, although Gates cautioned that any study in which people self-identify their sexual orientation has underreporting.

In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, about 2 ½ percent of the population was estimated to be gay, lesbian or bisexual.