I’m single. You’re petty. And a fool, if you spend your time on earth worrying about this rather than finding yourself a sweet pretty tax deduction.
So you are conceding there is no objective justification for your argument and you go straight to ad hominem attacks on people that disagree with you. How many billions of dollars do we have to talk about before you will concede that it isn’t ‘petty’.
I’m not making an argument about the fairness of the tax code, I’m simply pointing out that it’s a petty reason to oppose SSM. Sorry, but I simply can’t wrap my mind around wanting to deny people their civil rights because you’re obsessed with the idea that it might allow them to pay slightly less in taxes than you do, especially when it’s not as though you can’t just, I dunno, get married if it bothers you that much.
Wait, I’m pretty sure you’re the one who started the ad hominem attacks. She just threw your wording back at you. Could you possibly whine any more?
Not only have you totally hijacked this thread, but you can’t even keep track of what is being said. Everyone following along would be very happy for you to go away, at this point.
Go back to post 35. She opened with calling me crazy. She then proceeded to call me a petty fool. I’m staying on topic. It is just that my objections aren’t religious or moral.
You seem to have a peculiar idea about what is a civil right. It you want to love, honor and cherish someone for the rest of you life, you can go ahead and do it. You don’t need permission from the government. Once you separate the financial aspects of marriage as determined by the government, then there is very little that can’t be handled contractually without changing any laws.
You should stop thinking of marriage as a magic spell and come up with a operational definition of marriage and exactly what rights you think are being violated.
I have been upfront that my objections to SSM are to giving Same Sex couples special privileges, not rights when I don’t see any corresponding public benefit. I also said my objection also extends to childless marriages.
No, they seem worse. And I say that as an atheist. At least religious folks think they are following God’s wishes and savings us all from hell. You’re just a tight wad. Ugh.
Listen, you object the tax benefits for married couples, we get it ( if that was my objection, I wouldn’t give benefits to families either, but then I’m like the Child Catcher). So why don’t you make a stand on that as a separate issue, rather than using it to enforce an inequality for gay couples?
There are good reasons for the government to support marriage.
[ul]
[li]Married men tend to get paid more than single men.[/li][li]Couples are more likely to invest in real estate: as of November 2011, the National Association of Realtors reported that 64 percent of all home buyers were married couples and 18 percent were single women. Only 10 percent were single men.[/li][li]Also, married people tend to get into fewer shenanigans than single ones: only 1/5 of inmates are married, and more than half have never married. Marriage lowers the desire to engage in risky behavior. It also reduces one’s free time, so that costly accidents occur less frequently (car accidents from drag racing, drinking binges, property damage, tying tin cans to stray dogs’ tails, etc).[/li][li]Marriage lowers the risk of STDs from random hookups.[/li][li]Also, married couples remaining voluntarily childless is a fairly recent development. Historically, the vast majority of married couples were planning to have kids within a couple years of the honeymoon, if not sooner.[/li][/ul]
For these reasons, and probably others I’m not considering, the government has chosen to financially support marriage–*regardless *of whether a couple has children. Given all these factors, it makes sense for government to financially support marriage. *You *don’t have to get married, by any means. And hey, perhaps you’re a rich, conscientious, single homeowner who doesn’t engage in risky behavior like random hookups or drunken debauchery on a regular basis. Good for you. But statistics aren’t meaningful on an individual level, so you shouldn’t feel so personally wronged by this policy. There are some very good reasons for the government to financially support marriage, in the aggregate. Can’t you *see *that?
There are many benefits that are automatic when people become married that would have to be individually filed for, and the associated costs for them are astronomical. Some counts are as high as 1,138.
http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/an-overview-of-federal-rights-and-protections-granted-to-married-couples
Bullshit. Pure bullshit.
She said “that’s crazy”, not “you’re crazy”. Then you called her a fool. Stop lying.
And you’re not on topic, because you haven’t fucking answered the OP, which never asked why you are against gay marriage.
You obviously don’t understand my position. I don’t object to subsidies for people raising children. The United States dropped below ZPG 40 years ago.
I object to providing a tax subsidy to people who aren’t raising children. All I have done is state my position and defend if from people who disagree. If you don’t want to discuss this, then all you have to do is shut up.
I’m sorry, but you are actually making my point for me. There are a lot of tax breaks and subsidies that accrue to married couples that single people can’t get. That is a good deal for the married people, but you seem to have skipped the part where single people end up picking up the slack.
If you are talking about marriage benefits that don’t involve the government, then it could get expensive if you had a lawyer draw up the contract individually, but I suspect standard boiler plate contracts already exist. Frankly flexibility in how a marriage contract is drafted seems like a feature instead of a bug.
Well, the major damage to marriage has already been done when no-fault divorce became the norm. SSM will just be a kick in the belly to something already on the ground.
I’ve never felt the need to quote myself before now… perhaps because my last post got stuck at the bottom of page 1, you didn’t see it? Read on, my man:
You seem to have your causation reversed. The government subsidies for marriage actually predate most of the things you mentioned. The statistics you cite, actually seem to prove that women prefer to marry rich non-felons and don’t actually demonstrate that childless single couples are desirable.
The differential tax rates for married couple were is the Tax code from the beginning, so most of the things that you say was an intentional act of government is just wrong. Back then, most married couples were single income families with children.
http://rdftaxpro.tripod.com/taxhelp/id10.html
DINKS are a relatively recent development and it wasn’t the intention of the government to subsidize them.
I support marriage between any two consenting adults.
But I want to scream and pull my hair out with all the inane and ridiculous justifications being put forth by both sides. Who the hell cares. How about treating the adults like adults and let them decide? Nobody should have to justify their marriage. Sheila and Frank shouldn’t have to, and neither should Bob and John.
SSM is not tax deductible. In certain cases, a SSM family may pay less tax than if they were single, but NOT ALWAYS. In my case, I file singly for Federal and Married for Massachusetts State. In order to file my taxes, I must prepare a never-to-be-seen-by-the-IRS 1040 as a Married couple. This married 1040 is to fill out my State Taxes (or at least that is what TurboTax tells me). It’s a pain in the ass having to do Federal taxes three times, but I do get to see the difference between "single"x2 and “Married.” Right now we pay less tax because the IRS won’t let us file as married. If and when the US government recognizes our marriage, our tax bill will go UP not down.
My speculation is that overall gays will pay about the same in taxes with SSM. Some will pay more and some will pay less, but overall, the change will be insignificant.
A bunch of the people arguing against SSM don’t seem to me to be really against it; what they’re hot under the collar about is homosexuality in general, and they think that if they make being gay as unpleasant as possible, people will stop being gay and everything will be fine.
To them, legalization will be one more thing that enables and validates people who do things they are opposed to, whether it’s gays in the military, boy scouts, grade schools or the Olympics: it’s not that they’re allowed to participate, it’s that they’re allowed to be gay.
What I really wonder is, what is their NEXT hot-button topic going to be? Gay parenting? Good luck with that…
The advantage will be when couples have have a big difference in income, especially when only one person works. I know people that have put off marriage for years because of that. Of course if they would eliminate the Married category from the IRS code, like I suggested, then the problem goes away. Gays have to come out ahead. If the taxes are too adverse, then gays simply won’t get married.
You seem to think that tax rate is the main motivating factor. This assumption is wrong. There are plenty of reasons to get married beyond being able to claim your spouse on your tax return.
Like I said, our taxes will go up when the US recognizes our marriage. That didn’t and wouldn’t stop us from marrying.