One of the noteworthy features of the current debate over same-sex marriage is the lack of
emphasis on the material benefits of marriage. Instead, many of the arguments focus on less
tangible factors – social status, equality, and symbolism. This is reflected in the fact that many
Americans support domestic partnership for same-sex couples, where these partnerships could
include all of the legal benefits of marriage, but oppose calling such partnerships "marriage." Much
of the debate, then, is over the use of the word "marriage."
This paper draws a parallel between the regulation of market language, including official
definitions of "organic," "ice cream," "diamond," and the like, and the regulation of the social label
"marriage." The economic literature on the regulation of language shows that official definitions of
terms in the marketplace can, by controlling how language is mapped to goods, affect the efficient
transmission of information from seller to buyer. By the same token, extending or restricting what
we call "marriage" has an impact on the information this label conveys. Using analytical tools
drawn from the market regulation of language illuminates the policy choices available in the same-
sex marriage debate, and the costs and benefits of each.
The paper is organized as follows. We first review the issues involved in the same-sex
marriage debate, focusing on the philosophical literature and highlighting the prominence of issues
related to language, symbolism, and meaning. We then discuss the role of language in an economic
market – the costs and benefits of expanding or contracting the extension of terms, the incentives to
differentiate (or not) products from one another, and the reasons the state regulates in this area by
imposing a definition. In the third section, we apply the market model to the same-sex marriage
debate, arguing that there are indeed important costs and benefits to extending the (availability of
the) label "marriage" to same-sex couples. As pointed out by opponents of same-sex marriage,
there is indeed a sense in which extending marriage changes its meaning. Like actors in the market
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Convention