A straight pragmatic atheist cynic's opinion on gay marriage

Great Debates
21

What tax breaks? Isn’t there a thing called the “marriage penalty” caused by considering the joint income of 2 people and taxing all of it at a higher rate? Hasn’t there been some debate about this? Or did all of this get solved while I wasn’t paying attention?

(Actually, now that I think about it, the last question may not be so tongue-in-cheek - I haven’t been married for a while now and kind of quit bothering about it)

I also find it interesting that you want tax breaks only for certain kinds of polygamous relationships. What about man-women relationships? :wink:

22

Look, if you’re reduced to making this call based on math–effect on taxes, whatever–and baroque equations of speculative cause and effect, then you just don’t get it.

We all benefit from living in a just society. There’s no math involved.

23

I’m in the same confused camp as grem0517 on this one. I always thought the tax breaks kicked in if only one spouse works, or after they have kids. I am not married, but I suppose because my girlfriend and I live together we could be considered common law in which case we could file together like any married couple. Thing is, when I add her to my return (just filed, got my little refund already, love the e-file option!) I get penalized. So where is the break? Granted this is in Ontario, so is neither related to the US or to any particular state, but aren’t the laws similar down there?

24

Thanks for those points - I’ve certainly learned a few things. I’m in Australia and as far as I can tell none of them apply here. Specifically:

[ul]
[li]Married couples still submit separate tax returns, no income splitting allowed.[/li][li]Health insurance is a very different animal here, and a marriage certificate provides no advantage that I can recall.[/li][li]Not sure about automatic inheritance, but that what wills are for.[/li][/ul]

There are certainly financial problems in Australia for gay couples (especially related to pensions and superannuation), but none that could reasonably affect the decision to buy a house. As you point out, this is clearly not the case in the US, where the lack of a marriage certificate could indeed affect one’s ability to afford a home. Very interesting. Even more reason to allow SSM (as if any more reasons were needed!).

25

I’m not certain about that, frankly. I’m not familiar with Australian marital law, but as I udnerstand it, being legally married automatically means you have a status that the courts must recognize in a wide variety of circumstances. Conceivably, a gay couple could draw up a extremely detailed contract of some sort that tries to cover every financial aspect they can think of, but there’s always a chance one partner will die and the survivor may end up in a protracted hairsplitting civil battle with the dead partner’s next of kin over who inherits the dead partner’s half-share of the house (i.e. “This check used to make the mortgage payment of August 1997 only has the signature of my estranged son - who became estranged from me when I found out he was gay - on it, therefore my son paid for more than 50% of the house and since I choose not to recognize his will since I accuse his boy-toy of corrupting and manipulating him, I make a claim for the entire property” or some such nonsense).

26

After long and careful consideration, I have come up with (another!) argument against gay marriage.

First of all, this agnostic sees no problem with civil unions: the state and taxpayer have an interest in encouraging mutual support contracts among couples. Those in committed relationships are less likely to become a burden on the taxpayer: AFAIK, married males in particular are less prone to destructive (and self-destructive) behavior.

Still, we can imagine what will happen if gay marriage bans continue in force, regardless of what civil union policies emerge.

Absent the option of entering the institution of marriage, couples will be led to contract in a more-or-less explicit fashion. Over time, one would expect a number of different contracts between couples to emerge, instead of the single one that we have now.

This would be very inconvenient (and worse) for gays of course, but it would have the beneficial side effect of developing alternatives to the standard marriage contract. Increasing the effective number of alternative contracts that couples can choose from will, in the long run, enhance individual freedom, at least for straights.

Of course, the end result will be the weakening of the institution of marriage, as fewer decide to enter into that particular contract. This is a good thing. In common with religious fundamentalists, I seek to undermine the institution of marriage by encouraging, nay forcing, gay couples to enter into other sorts of arrangements.

Freedom follows from restriction. Gay marriage must be stopped: it will strengthen traditional marriage too much.

27

Well, but this was the original question - what will it cost the rest of the individuals in the country? The OP was not worried about religion or any other arguments. So there is math involved. Nobody so far really tried to sum up where it WOULD hit the OPs wallet.

Let’s see
(1) Marriage tax penalty/advantage - U.S.
This is not as straight cut as the media makes it. I have a big tax advantage from being married as my wife’s income is far below mine. Any couple where both partners earn roughly the same pays MORE taxes than if they were not married.

If we assume for a second that in most gay couples, both partners work in similar jobs (I have no idea whether this is correct), then the rest of the country PROFITS from gay marriage.

My judgement: Without knowledge about the income situation of SS couples, this could go either way.

(2) Marriage advantage - some other countries
E.g., in Germany, there is a clear tax advantage to being married. Hence, rest of the country would net pay MORE taxes

My judgement: In these cases, SS marriage will definetely COST something for every taxpayer

(3) Social security - U.S. and other
I think this has not been mentioned in any thread I have seen. Most social security systems I know pay survivor benefits. Survivor benefits would therefore kick in in same-sex marriages, and that by definition means that the rest of the country has to pay MORE.

My judgement: Cost to every other Social Security payer/receiver

(4) Maintaining population level
The interest of any country is to have at least as many people in the next generation as they had in the last. We see this for instance in tax brakes for parents. If you assume that married SS couples will raise more kids (own or adopted) this should be in the interest of the society, even if it costs more money (e.g. benefit = more social security payments in the future). Maybe even more adoptions of orphaned kids, which would benefit society as well.

My judgement: More cost, but probably also more benefits
(5) the economy in the country as a whole
Oh boy, can you say “wedding industry for same sex couples”? In the U.S., flowers carry a 30% premium over normal prices just because you order them for a wedding (been there, seen the prices, had dried flowers from our yard at the reception). Wedding planers and florists say prayers every evening that SS marriage becomes legal. Same goes for divorce lawyers, I bet :smiley:

My judgement: Sad overall statement for how we value marriage, but probably good for the overall economy and unemployment rate

(6) Opportunity costs
The whole country seems to be focussed on this issue when there are more important problems to solve (starting from the educational system and ending somewhere between terrorism and AIDS). Government lawyers, officials, judges spending time on this when they should spend time on real criminals.

My judgement: Too much attention on this can cost real dollars
My overal opinion: this is too close to tell, but I bet society as a whole can benefit, even if there is a slighly higher cost in monetary terms

Feel free to add and edit where I was wrong.

Dorfl

28

If you’re looking for a just society, check another country. This one is all about blowing holes in the bill of rights for “patriotism” and “security.”

The white beurocracy will fight as hard as it can to ban gay marriage, because according to Christian mythology, sex “in the butt” is urusry. A sin against god, because we were designed to fit together male to female, not male to male.

Hell, I bet if they could have kept blacks and latinos and asians from getting married, they probably would have. I believe that gays should have the right to be married, but I also think they should just be happy being “life-partners” instead of worrying about a piece of paper from the gov’t. Be happy you’re allowed to use all of the drinking fountains and public restrooms in the nation, cuz the White house will keep the lid on gay marriage for as long as it can, because we live in a Christian Police State. If you don’t believe that, you should wake up before their army arrives at your door.

Jess

29

Have you? He/she is right, actually, homosexual sex is the number one spreader of HIV. IV drug use is a close second. The statistics I’m looking at are a few years old, so I suppose it’s possible that IV drug use has passed it. But the point being made still stands–homosexual sex is far–far–more likely to spread HIV than straight sex.

The question is whether or not that matters. I’d venture that it doesn’t.

Regards.

30

Why does it always seem that the people who are fastest to proclaim that homosexuals are not different, are the first to preface any opinion with “I’m a straight. . .”

If they aren’t different, why be compelled to distinguish yourself from them?

Regards.

31

Sodomite doesn’t actually mean one who engages in “sex in the butt,” which doesn’t specifically warrant any biblical mention. It’s a condemnation of homosexuals, each and every time. How they have sex is irrelevant. Even lesbians score a mention (Rom.1.26-28).

I thought there was a separate forum for flaming? That’s definitely all this is. Do you have an argument for gay marriage that doesn’t depend on the government being a bunch of Christian poopie-heads? You might want to start with the constitution.

Regards.

32

The constitution has been reduced to a joke. You don’t think they still even look at it anymore, do you?

Jess

BTW: A flame is a personal attack. I didn’t attack anyone. You attacked me.

33

Woe woe are we :frowning:

You say you think gays should have the right to marry. I say I don’t care what you think; rights aren’t determined by what you think–it doesn’t matter if the entire country thinks the same way, rights aren’t determined by consensus. Nor should they be.

Do you have an argument to present as to why gays have the right to marry or not?

No. A flame is a post that is deliberately inflammatory, and defended with more inflammatory comments. The word “inflammatory” would be where the term “flame” comes from. It can be contrasted with trolling, which is deliberately inflammatory without any defense being proferred. You might want to brush up on your Usenet-ese.

And I didn’t attack you at all. I attacked your position. Explicitly, noting that it’s fault was that it required the reader to villify the government, and ascribe the evilest of intentions to them, without presenting any evidence except attacks against that same government. That’s not a personal attack by any stretch of even the most active imagination, and wouldn’t be out of place in any more academic forum.

Regards.

34

Well, he does have a point about the constitution not being heeded anymore, as the treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay for example is clearly in violation of the constitution.

That’s your definition, but not the one that is commonly used when referring to flames. See: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flame&f=1

While there doesn’t seem a consensus there either, the most votes were given to “To insult someone electronically, or otherwise. Sometimes to be a group insult.” And that is the way I heard the phrase “flaming” being used. What you are thinking of is merely a hot topic.

35

Whether that’s in violation of the constitution is outside the scope of this thread, so I’m not going to expand on it much, except to observe that you’re probably correct.

But to go from an event that is clearly in violation of the constitution to a “Christian police state” and “The constitution has been reduced to a joke. You don’t think they still even look at it anymore, do you?” is a nonsensical progression, that can only come about from the slipperiest of slopes.

[QUOTE]
That’s your definition, but not the one that is commonly used when referring to flames. See: Urban Dictionary: flame

See the Usenet glossary http://www.google.com/googlegroups/glossary.html

I can guarantee you, after nearly a decade on Usenet, that that’s what the term means. Other usages of it are the product of convenience.

Since when does consensus make a conclusion correct? It all goes back to what your mother told you about your friends jumping off a bridge.

No. It’s a little tougher to give a clear-cut example on this forum (though one did just appear), because it encompasses such a wide array of topics, so I’ll provide one from a hypothetical forum instead:

Let’s pretend we’re on a forum intended to appeal to Fundamentalist Christians.

Were I to join this forum and say “The trinity is not supported biblically,” I would be presenting a “hot topic.”

Were I to join this forum and say “The Bible is a joke,” and then follow it up by posting numerous weak contradictions from the Skeptics Annotated Bible, I would be flaming.

Were I to join and say “The Bible is a joke” and perhaps offer an additional post or two along the same lines, before sitting back to watch the fun, I would be trolling.

Regards.

36

Oops! Screwed up my formatting. That should have carried a link to the Usent Glossary http://www.google.com/googlegroups/glossary

Apologies, should have previewed it first.

Regards.

37

It seems I have not made my point clearly enough, and for that I apologise. Let me try once more.

Initially I could not see why the lack of a marriage certificate could affect the decision of a gay couple to buy a house. You raised some good points showing that I was mistaken if the couple lived in the US. Some issues, such as inheritance, I consider to be less of a problem because a decently worded will should take care of that. (Similarly a legal contract should be drawn up at time of purchase to address a relationship break-up.) Others, such as income splitting and health insurance indeed seem to be utterly insurmountable. The purpose of my follow-up post was to point out that I believe the insurmountable problems would not be the case in Australia.

Yes, marriage gives many rights automatically. A gay couple, like a straight de facto couple, has less protection when it comes to property rights (and other rights for that matter). It is an inconvenience to have to make explicit all of the provisions which are implicit in a state recognised marriage, and of course one which SSM will remove. Even a marriage certificate though will not necessarily prevent the type of post mortem family legal battles you outlined above, no matter whether the couple is gay or straight.

38

Agreed.

I agree about your statement that consensus does not make a conclusion correct. However, even your Usenet link also confirms that flaming is about insulting another person (see #3 in particular), so I don’t quite see what’s to argue?

39

When using a dictionary or glossary, the most accurate and commonly applied definition is the first one given. The others are, as I said, the product of convenience.

But the question at the moment isn’t whether insulting is flaming–an insult certainly is a flame (all insults are flames, not all flames are insults). The question is whether or not a post clearly designed to inflame without presenting any argument of substance is a flame. Or, perhaps more specifically, whether one has to attack another to be flaming. They don’t. A post–such as my example with the hypothetical Fundamentalist Christian board–does not need to insult anyone to be considered flaming.

“The Bible is a joke because the Skeptics Annotated Bible says so” isn’t much different than “We live in a Christian police state because I don’t like current policies.” Both are clearly flaming.

Regards.

40

I’m afraid I have nothing to add to the definition of “flaming”, but here’s a bit I posted on another board about gay marriage. (I know this has little to do with the monetary aspects of the issue, but surely there are other considerations than finance.) It’s cast as an answer to homophobes:
= = =
So one commentator is worried that two women will enter into a “marriage of convenience”, only to dump one another when some guy comes along wth a better offer. The Governator vaguely predicts blood running in the streets. This is a good indication of the feeble level of argument against gay marriage… Let me search my memory for some of the ugly invective that’s been thrown my way in a long life of not hiding particularly much.

1.) If you let fags get married, everybody will become a fag.

This is usually an argument promulgated by straight men, who are afraid of having to fool around with their appearance like the women in their lives do, and are equally afraid that the women in their lives will leave them when they get a taste of real romance–woman-to-woman sex. You can point out to them that this is balderdash, but experience has taught us over the generations that some fears are far too stubborn to dislodge.

…

2.) It’s against the Bible.

Why, so it is. So is not sacrificing two turtledoves at the temple when your period’s over. It’s in the same book, in fact. I don’t see any of you bozos rushin’ down to the synagogue once a month with a birdcage.

3.) Those people molest children!

So do your people. More, proportionally speaking.

4.) Marriage is for the procreation of children.

That’s a backhanded slap to the infertile, who are already suffering far more than you are willing to admit.

5.) God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Some desert-dwelling power-crazed priest without access to microscopes, chemical analysis, calculus, materials science, internal combustion, peer-reviewed scientific inquiry, radio telescopes, spectrographic analysis, and advanced astronomy picks out of a motley group the creation myth that just happens to best support his position as leader of the tribe, and he just happens to have chosen the one that really describes the origin of the human race?

Pull the other one.

6.) Marriage is for the protection of women and children.

I hear the argument “This is really for your own protection” a lot–usually, when I’m being asked to sign some piece of paper to set aside one of my legal rights so I can’t sue a corporation. Given the sorry track record of domestic violence, adultery, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and general ruckus in married households, I must say that it’s a lovely theory, but that’s all it is–theory.

7.) Children need to grow up in a household with a man and a woman.

Explain the logic underlying this one. Half of all American kids face the breakup of their parents’ marriages, so they spend at least some time living with only one parent anyway. A significant proportion of the rest are in situations euphemistically described as “We’re staying together for the sake of the children.” Ask someone who grew up that way what that was like–bet you’ll get an explosive answer, the gist of which is, “Yeah, and we wish they hadn’t done us such a huge favor.”

Saying that kids have to have a matched set of opposite-sex parents absolves the parents of the responsibility to learn what they’re doing, molding-a-young-mind-wise. You don’t have to be educated, willing to permit your kids to learn and grow and meet new people and get into new situations, prepared to anticipate difficult questions and challenging issues, or competent in life skills so your offspring will learn from your example to face life with a minimum of fear and a maximum of emotional stability: all you need is a.) a penis, or b.) breasts. Hey! You’re in the clear!

8.) Children who grow up in gay households turn out gay.

Ah, this is the real fear, isn’t it? It’s probably prompted by the well-known phenomenon of people who are abused (sexually, emotionally, verbally, physically) growing up to be abusive themselves. Fortunately, you’re off the hook with this one: sexual orientation doesn’t appear to be modeled, but something determined by a completely different mechanism. (See point 1 above.)

= = =

I have two additional points and would ask your indulgence, if you’ve gotten this far.

A.) Transmission patterns of HIV vary from spot to spot on the globe. In the U.S. and Western Europe, it’s very definitely a major threat to the gay male population. However, in Africa and India, HIV infection is overwhelmingly hetero. As the sheer number of HIV infections in Africa and India is so large, and growing at much faster rates than among populations of American gay men or IV drug users, we’ll have to say that, right now, HIV is a disease that doesn’t keep to a single transmission pattern, and most of the patients are straight. Stands to reason: most humans are, too. I don’t mean to get all up in this, but if you’re looking to identify the factors of a global phenomenon, it’s not really gonna do you a lot of good to zoom in on one group. HIV is spread by behavior (specifically, the exchange of infected body fluids during sex or medical/quasi-medical procedures), so it would stand to reason that sexual activity in which bodily fluids are plentiful and exchanged would offer greater opportunities for infection than those in which bodily fluids are scarcer or not exchanged. Thus, gay male sex tends to be more risky than lesbian sex, and using a condom is usually less risky than not using one.

B.) After years in the workplace, my wife and I finally qualified for domestic partner benefits. I put her on my insurance, which was a good thing: she was unemployed and had none, and her health is continually compromised. The month she went on my insurance, the company laid me off and tossed me into COBRA, which, being a federal program, does not recognize domestic partnership. Everybody involved was just… so… terribly… sorry.

You bet being able to get married would make a whole lot of difference to my wallet.