After Rulings, Gay Marriage Access to Double

Nate Silver is illuminating the Supreme Court's gay marriage rulings with his usual statistical wizardry. Some 59 million Americans who lacked access to legal gay marriage last August will have it by the time this August comes around. Early last year, just 35 million Americans lived in regions where same-sex marriage was available. In other words, "the availability of same-sex marriage in the United States as a percentage of population will have more than doubled within the year," Silver writes in the New York Times.

And it's not just in the US that same-sex marriage accessibility is booming. Between recent legalization in Brazil and France and upcoming action in Uruguay and New Zealand, "by August, there will be about 585 million people living in countries or jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal. That is roughly double the 289 million people living in such places in August 2012," Silver writes. Still, that's just 8% of the world population, he notes. Click through for the full piece. (More Nate Silver stories.)