In a speech on Saturday, Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee Chair said that legalization of gay marriage would hurt small businesses because it would be too expensive.

As my friend, Ben Finzel at Fleishman-Hillard points out on the Out Front Blog, there’s now a small business version to scapegoating marriage:

There are a lot of things to be said about the impact of equal marriage, and most of them have been said over and over again. But the idea that a presumed cost trumps equality is a new one on me. It’s also, unfortunately for Mr. Steele, not backed up by the facts.

For small businesses, it’s actually the fact that equal marriage is not an option that creates a cost problem. As the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce puts it in an online story about the cost burdens of providing same-sex partner benefits for small businesses, ‘œthis burden, of course, stems from the fact that most same-sex couples don’t have access to civil marriage, creating a parallel universe of complex paperwork for employers who offer domestic partner benefits in their effort to attract and retain workers.’

I’m no insurance (or finance) expert, but it seems to me that the opposite of what Mr. Steele said is true. If we had equal marriage laws at the federal level, it would be much easier for all concerned: insurance companies already provide coverage to married couples, so the expanded definition would also include same-sex couples. Small businesses would have a new benefit to offer employees without the burden of separate but not equal paperwork.

A presumed cost trumps equality… what will Republicans think of next?