Bucky…

You combined Frank and my points beautifully. I really can’t add much but to agree that:
A) It’s long past time for a nationalized health insurance system. The employer based system is rapidly crumbling. Health care shouldn’t depend on employment or marital status. Thanks, BTW, for pointing out how we arrived at this system. It had never occurred to me to consider it.
2) Also time for a real national pension of some sort. As you point out, Soc. Sec. was a stopgap to keep old people out of poverty who didn’t have either a pension of their own, or descendants to care for them. Well, employer pensions are pretty much extinct, and a necessarily declining birth rate will leave more elderly with no support. Again, why should a comfortable old age depend on employment or familial status?

And, about your thoughts on the history of marriage: Somebody who was not me put it perfectly on another blog, “for much of the history of human society, ‘traditional marriage’ has been between one man and another man trading his daughter for property and/or political power.”

Hey Frank and Calvinist…

Couple of points. First, Frank, you make the most cogent argument for national healthcare anyone can make. Healthcare shouldn’t be a “benefit” extended to certain folks based on employment status or marital status (e.g., being married to someone who is emloyed). However, it started eons ago as a benefit to attact the best and brightest employees when healthcare insurance was a “luxury” equivalent to “pet insurance” today. When healthcare was first offered, most folks could pay for 99% of their medical needs out-of-pocket, whether with cash, an extra squirrel or a chicken for the doc’s stew pot.

Cavinist—you make a superb point regarding overpopulation and rewarding reproduction. Yes, it’s a lifestyle choice and no one rewards childless couples whether hetero- or homosexual, or fraternal, etc. Again, we return to the need for national healthcare AND either a full-fledged national retirement program or none at all.

To wit: Social Security was never meant to be collected by everyone. When designed, it was intended that only the poor would tap the system. But I digress…sorry. Why GLBTs can’t tap into a partner’s benefits is another discussion, albeit it important.

Frank, you bring up the possibility that benefits were offered to support the viability of the family unit. See comment above. Also, let’s also examine contemporary vs. historic marriage. In its current guise, marriage legitimizes the union of two individuals based on romance. That’s a far cry from the original intent of marriage. Originally, marriage was a straight-forward contract about property and inheritance of land, wealth and titles.

A man took a wife and was given a dowry for taking her, an unproductive bit of chattle, from her family. Marriages also served to reinforce martial—not marital—alliances, treaties and truces. Marriages further served to ensure the offspring of the marriage were able to take title to the property of their father (since the mother could own nothing).

In short, there was nothing romantic about it. Marriages were contracts between a man and a walking womb to produce offspring. One last note ... virtually any woman producing a child out of wedlock (just look at the verbiage surrounding marriage!!!) would likely be put to death, as wel as the bastard offspring since society had no means to support it.

The laws that grew up around marriage, historically, are still applied today, but are no more relevant than anti-pollution devices on horse-drawn buggies.
Thus, if we’re going to describe marriage as a romantic union, equal rights need to be extended to all romantic unions. And then we DO, indeed, step onto that slippery slope of all other relationships in which nurture and mutual support are part of the package.

This is a most interesting discussion…

Frank,
It’s not just that I resent not having my hobbies subsidized, I agree with the principle of it, and in the best of all possible worlds I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with it. But, I worry that a tax incentive for producing what is already an overabundant resource. The worlds most intractable problems are all either caused or aggravated by population growth. Rewarding people for having more children seems to counterproductive.

Calvanist, I’d agree raising children is a lifestyle choice, and one I haven’t chosen. When done responsibly it is also a service to the entire society and one that is critical for the continued viability of a nation. Us long as aging and death remain inevitable, we need to continue to create the next generation of citizens that will sustain the economy, the tax base, the military, emergency and other public services and the government.  The lifestyle choice of those who have children responsibly insures that when we all are geriatrics and are too old and frail to do societies labor and defend ourselves as a culture, there will be younger capable generations there to do so and sustain us as well as our cultural heritage. 

Therefore I as a non-parent have no problem with my employers extending benefits to child-rearers and children for the same reason I don’t mind my tax dollars going to support firefighters, police, military, and all kinds of public servants. I depend on them to sustain my own relatively free existence, and I know that ensuring a future pool of educated citizens to fill those as well as private sector jobs is of benefit to me and all of society.

Whether or not we want kids ourselves, the fact is we all need kids as a society, and somebody has to make and raise them. So let’s give em a break.

Frank…

I, for one agree, at least as far as the tax breaks go. I still think that reciprocal beneficiary agreements (a one stop power of attorney, if you will, rolling up hospital visitation, common property, etc.) are good for both the people involved and the state, and I’d like to see available to many of the other sorts of relationships you list. But, I agree that tax breaks for married couples can’t really be defended. In fact, I’ll see you and raise you. Why should childless people subsidize child rearing? That’s your lifestyle choice, why should I pay for it?

I think the core question here is why marriage benefits exist at all? What is the real purpose and benefit to society, when children are not involved?

Why should non-married couples subsidize the life of married ones?

Why should single professionals support upper-class childless married couples?

Why should some of the financial fruits of my labor go to extend benefits to the childless same-sex spouse of a coworker, if that spouse is employed themselves and has no compelling requirement (such as a child) to stay home and do something other than pay their own way?

It’s hard to justify denying benefits to same-sex married couples only if we start with the presumption that extending employer benefits to childless dual-income marriages are justified and necessary in the first place.

If childless gay couples are entitled to benefits from their spouse’s employers, why not extend benefit to siblings like brothers and sisters? Don’t they love and nurture each other? Why not extend benefits to committed but non-married same sex couples who feel no compulsion to sanctify their union with a religious or state institution? Why not plutonic relationships like a long standing “bromance”, when such friends are also roommates (cohabitation) ? All these relationships involve love and nurturing, some involve sex,  some involve cohabitation, all without marriage, so where do we draw the line to prevent a slippery slope to a point where the entire concept of employee family benefits becomes an unsustainable burden for businesses and disappears all together?

Do we want to get to a point where parents can’t afford stay home to raise children because we had to level the playing field for all these kinds of relationships?

I propose the original purpose of extending benefits to employees was to promote the viability of the family unit and make responsible and involve child rearing possible.  So why not just end state recognition of all marriage, and require some real justification for extending benefits, i.e. for taking some of my labor’s financial fruits and giving it to another person who actually may make twice salary and has no children?

Why are they entitled to it when those other types of relationships aren’t? Because they put a ring on their finger and had a wedding?  Or it is about sex? What about when the sex ends? Or cohabitation? What if they have separate bedrooms? Or love? What about loveless marriages that carry on as a matter of convenience? Or is it just political correctness? If so, where is the line of acceptability drawn 5, 10, 20 years from now?

OK, truthdiggers, dazzle me with your logic and let me have it.

Bucky…

Agreed, changing the label would make things far more complicated. I didn’t think that part through. Civil and religious marriage will have to be two distinct entities sharing a common name, and the god-cons will just have to evolve past it.

Re: Calvinist Hobbeisan

What to call it, what to call it? The proverbial rub rears its ugly head. The religious right won’t go for “marriage” as you aptly point out. Wedding also has vaguely religious connotations in my mind. Unfortunately, Civil Union doesn’t lend itself to creating a verb form as I found out trying to share the big news with friends after my partner and I legally sanctioned our relationship with a Civil Union.

Did we get civilized? Did we get unionized? Neither fits well, at least in our case. So we settled on “hitched” even though that conjures up vague visions of hillbillies and hootenannies. (Actually, that does sort of fit in our situation.)

The problem is, unless LGBT unions are legally referred to as “marriage,” all the rights that come with marriage will not be granted. One of two things will have to happen: 

1) A sentence saying something like “All refernces to marriage in all legislation and regulations shall be deemed to include Civil Unions and other similar, legally binding relationship contracts between two consenting adults…” will have to be added to the US and all State Constitutions. OR,
2) Whatever word is finally adopted will have to be added to all legislation wherever the word “marriage” or “wedded” appears.

So, sadly, while most folks don’t give a hoot, the terminology is critical. Calling LGBT unions anything other than marriage provides the legal basis to continue denying rights to a certain part of our population.

Why a civil ceremony at all? Simply file your marriage contract* at the local county courthouse and voila! You’re married in the eyes of the law and entitled to all the benefits and responsibilities thereof. If you want to have a ceremony, religious or otherwise, no one will stop you, but it’s not necessary to legitimize the contract. That’s how I would set it up, FWIW.

*We could call it a reciprocal beneficiary contract, or something of the sort, to avoid ticking off the religious minority likely to object; but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it. Marriage contract, civil union contract, I won’t get hung up on what it’s called, but I know others do.

re: By rfidler, April 17 at 5:01 pm:

It’s true that there is that extra text which technically separates the civil aspect - but the fact that a religious cleric does the office still invites confusion. Best to do away with it and have a separate civil ceremony.

Ed!

We agree on something! Only one minor clarification: When a cleric performs a religious ceremony, he also performs a separate state ceremony with the words, “Now, by the power vested in me by the state of ...” At that moment he’s acting as a justice of the peace/judge. He is actually performing two distinct ceremonies. Those words are nowhere in the religious marriage liturgy.

We should take away the power rof eligious clerics to marry people. When a priest or rabbi performs a marriage ceremony, the couple should remain unmarried in the eyes of the law.

To be married legally, they should be required to go to a justice of the peace and get a civil, totally secular ceremony, and that should be available equally to same-sex couples.

hippie4ever:

“Separate but equal” is not what I’m proposing at all. I think you read in haste. “Separate but equal” would be calling it ‘marriage’ for heterosexual couples, and calling it ‘civil union’ for same-sex couples. That’s not what I’m saying at all.

I’m talking about requiring civil marriage for all couples who want to be legally married. Any couple (same-sex or opposite-sex)  would have to get a civil ceremony in order to be legally married. If they want to have a religious ceremony in addition, fine - but it will have no legal validity whatsoever.

“Separate but equal” never worked for African-Americans and it won’t work with civil unions either. France is a special case because (1) it has an educated citizenry; (2) it has a history of fighting the oppression of the Church; (3) secularism is the norm; (4) the loss of nomenclature for women is regarded as feudal and akin to slavery; and (5) egalite, liberte et fraternite.

Here in Freedomland it is a totally different matter but civil unions don’t translate into human rights in other states. This strategy of the Right, making lgbt rights a matter for each state, is exactly the policy taken regarding the Native Americans. The Federal government, especially under Andrew Jackson, let the states decide the fate of these people, knowing full well that genocide would be the result.

That’s the moral authority and legitimacy of the Christian Right in Amerika today.

The problem, in a sense, is at the level of semantics. We use the same word - “marriage” - to refer both to the religious sacrament and to the civil institution.

This conflation is encouraged by the fact that we allow one and the same person - a religious cleric - to perform a single ceremony that counts as a “marriage” in both senses.

I have read (but can’t remember where) that in France, religious and civil marriage are kept distinct by means of requiring that people who want to get married in the civil sense undergo a separate, civil ceremony, regardless of whether or not they have a religious ceremony. The religious ceremony does not count for legal purposes. I think this is a good idea.

The religious ceremony should not count as a marriage in the eyes of the state and should confer none of privileges of a legal marriage. Only a civil ceremony should count - and that should be available to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples.

rfidler, messing with the tax code do differentiate between just married, married with children, married and had children, married and retired, married and don’t want children, married and can’t have children, etc., would open another can of worms. I think that keeping marriage status general and providing a broad spectrum of basic benefits, while keeping tax break incentives for itemization is the best way to go. It’s already complicated enough. As it stands right now, there are over 400 tax breaks that married couples can get that unmarried couples do not get. That’s a major reason to want to get married by itself.

Oh and is this where I’m supposed to say you’re a moron for asking questions? I am not used to having forum discussions where sensible questions and points are brought up.

Ed:

I’m not pretending to know nearly as much as you about all things progressive. Notice that I ask a lot more questions than most posters, though. But usually, the answers involve the word “moron” or some such thing. And usually they aren’t answers at all in the usual sense, just a lecture on my impertinence for asking.

re: By rfidler, April 16 at 10:01 pm:

Well, zero substance from you as usual.

Ed:

Oh, please. Enough of your hyperventilation. There aren’t any Jew-lovers or anti-Palestinians in this thread.

This is like being legally a free person in four states and a slave in the other 46.

Alan,

I agree. My first answer was too simplistic. I believe, like you, that the whole point of recognizing “marriage” is to encourage child-rearing. It’s only been recently that the traditional definition of “marriage” has been challenged. The tax code has to catch up.

I’m on my third marriage. Both my kids and my wife’s are out in the world. Why should the government care about my marriage? Why should we get separate tax treatment?

People can file jointly without being married. People would use it as another loophole in the tax system. The benefits given to married couples are there to support the union, give incentive to start or continue a union, and financially assist child rearing (NOT child bearing specifically). You would either have to provide those same benefits for everyone and not require proof of marriage, or you would have to take them away, which will make a lot of people very upset. Extending them to civil unions or domestic partnerships might be beneficial and doable depending on what happens with DOMA.

Alan:

Agreed: DOMA is flawed and a perfect example of government meddling.

As for your tax abuse comment. How can a tax status(marriage) that is removed from the code be abused? What’s to abuse?

rfidler, making marital status irrelevant would open another can of worms, because then people would abuse the system and the approximately 400 federal tax codes and benefits. here is the full text of DOMA:

“Powers reserved to the states:

No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.

Definition of ‘marriage’ and ‘spouse’:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

I believe that the second section is the part that should be deemed unconstitutional as Chris stated. There is no way currently that all of DOMA will be removed. Also, the 2 sections are almost contradictory. The first says it is a state’s decision, but the second makes it a federal decision.

Maybe we should just change the tax code so that marital status is irrelevant.

Thomas Mc: VERY helpful comment!

Wake up America: you are one of the most bigoted, backward nations on earth!