Researchers have discovered the first link between legalized gay marriage and the improvement of health care for gay men in the US. Following the Supreme Court’s 2o15 decision that legally recognized marriages between gay couples across the county, an uptick in access to healthcare and insurance coverage for gay men followed. The research, which was conducted out of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine has been hailed as one of the first efforts to prove the broader impacts of same-sex marriage on individual health. “Marriage is protective for health for heterosexual individuals,” said the paper’s lead researcher, Christopher Carpenter. “Our paper is the first to show that marriage policy has meaningful effects on health care access for sexual-minority men.”

The same access, however, wasn’t replicated in research on lesbian couples.  “We were surprised to not see a similar effect for lesbian adults, but they plan on future research to better examine the cause for that difference,” Carpenter said of the difference.

The study, which analyzed data from 2000 – 2016, produced an interesting point that suggests same-sex marriage in the US hasn’t been a complete salve. Despite the increased access to healthcare, mental health has not improved nor have “negative health behaviors” like smoking or drinking gone down for those in same-sex marriages. “This might mean that it’s too soon to see some of these changes, since legalized, same-sex marriage is a fairly recent phenomenon in the United States,” said a co-author of the paper, Gilbert Gonzales Jr. Or maybe, it’s just a sign that there are some of us out there truly feeling themselves under the bliss of holy matrimony.