Barbara Simkins might have been just another struggling bed-and-breakfast owner after opening the Green Rocks Inn near the New York state line in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
After her state’s Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in October 2008, Simkins, 60, was named a justice of the peace. She performed more than 75 weddings for such couples in 2010 and may more than double that number this year.
“We saw an opportunity,” she said of the inn she runs with Natacha Merav Friedman, her 41-year-old fiancee. “We’re doing very well.”
New York’s June 24 enactment of a law permitting same-sex marriages may provide a shot of much-needed economic stimulus for the country’s third most-populous state. It may also draw new residents after the population shrank almost 1 percent to about 19.4 million people in the past year.
Full story: NY’s gay marriage law may give economic boon