In Holland gay men are allowed to donate blood, but only if they never had sex with a man.
Government already controls the institution of marriage. Churches are simply a surrogate for one (minor) function - solemnizing the marriage. You can go have a justice of the peace or judge or clerk do it instead; letting a clergyman sign the contract just reduces the strain on government resources.
Just to clarify, your position is that being deprived of a right is not actual punishment – is that correct? For instance, if my state (Wisconsin) declared a policy that no gays would be hired for state jobs, is that punishment?
According to this wiki page, gay couples in Utah, Louisiana and Arkansas cannot adopt. This was also true in Florida until a court threw out the law in late 2010. Is this punishment?
Also keep in mind that marriage confers additional rights than just being married. As others have noted, there are other benefits to married couples, including inheritance laws, the right to make decisions for a disabled partner, and even tax benefits. I’m not don’t think any of these can be considered “punishment” by a very narrow definition of the term. No one is being sent to prison or levied with fines to pay.
But what this all adds up to is a denial of equality, and a denial of opportunity to gain from the benefits that anyone else may gain. To me, that constitutes punishment.
Yes clearly because the government doesn’t maintain specific punishments to gays for being gay, gays aren’t being discriminated against. You win we’ll put down our rainbow flags and cancel our gay pride parades. There is no equality left to fight for because a gay man can legally do almost anything a straight man can legally do.
Equal rights advocates need to stop fighting these battles and pick up the banner for the straight white men out there. They aren’t provided any special rights and if you look at the non-existent evidence, you’ll see how they are at a clear disadvantage in our society.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who found this slightly insulting/offensive.
I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you’re replying to. If I can attempt to restate, you’re saying three things:
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Lawrence v. Texas did strike down all the anti-sodomy laws that pertained to consenting adults in private, but sometime public sex laws are enforced more strongly against gay men than others. I suspect that this is true, and it’s a good point: even if the law is equal here, enforcement may not be due to prejudice.
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Condo associations may have covenants against non-married, non-related adults living together. This was sort of my point - they may, but are they enforceable anywhere in the United States?
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Government housing may limit benefits to married partners. Yeah, that’s probably true. I think this goes in the bucket of things which are denied to homosexual couples because they cannot marry in the eyes of the United States.
For some reason I thought you were a real estate professional, but I guess not. A quit-claim deed is a conveyance; it is what is generally used when a person who bought a house before hooking up puts his/her partner on the deed. I think there are other ways to do it–it’s been so long since I was in real estate that I’ve forgotten, and things change. But that was the most usual way and, I believe, still is.
This is the story I was thinking of. So two unmarried adults could live there, so long as they don’t have more than one child.
Straight men have no trouble buying cakes. Sometimes gay men do.
Why does this thread title play in my head as sung by Ethel Merman?
Anything you can do I can do better.
I can do anything better then you.
I can get married better then you.
um uh yes you can.
I was under the impression that anything that can be recognized as owned jointly is not restricted to being owned by people in a specified relationship in a strict legal context. So you could own a car jointly with your niece or have a joint bank account with grandma’s childhood BFF’s first cousin’s former roommate’s probation officer. Whether or not such an arrangement is practically helpful is another matter.
I know you didn’t intend this as a gay marriage debate, but since being gay is about sexual* relationships *as well as simply who you’re sexually attracted to, it’s a bit odd to discount one of the biggest legal differences when it comes to sexual relationships. Most of the legal differences come into play when marriage, benefits and kids are involved and they are not tangential to having all of those someone of the same sex.
Also remember that some changes in law are very recent indeed, like the Texas sodomy laws.
It generally costs a lot more to do these things than just being married, especially if you’re not wealthy so there’s a greater economy cost to just adding another person to an insurance policy (etc) whereas for married couples it’s either free or doesn’t cost much. IOW, if you’re wealthy or doing OK financially and also very organised then you might be OK financially, but rights should not only be for those people.
An example: if you were a low-earning legally-married spouse of a higher-earning opposite-sex partner then your partner could get a mortgage and own the house in which you lived, while you paid what you could and took more time out to raise the kids - like many women used to do and to some extent still do - but you wouldn’t be named on the mortgage. Then if your partner died and you inherited the house, you wouldn’t have to pay inheritance tax. Because you’re married. Not so if you’re not married.
The problem with the joint ownership issue is that, until recently, gay relationships have always been more casual than straight ones. Two guys discover that they’re compatible, one of them moves in with the other, and since there’s no “next step” of marriage available, the arrangement just continues as is, with no thought to what happens if the actual “owner” should suddenly die . . . often complicated by possibly antagonistic families. Even with AIDS, there’s usually plenty of time following diagnosis to get the legalities straightened out. But in the early years of the epidemic, people were dropping like flies, and there were countless nightmare scenarios of people losing everything they owned, even their own personal belongings from prior to the relationship. Many people were caught off-guard, not accustomed to considering the legalities of their relationship. But over the last few decades we’ve learned not to always be so casual, and that’s why marriage, with all its rights and benefits, has become more desirable than previously.
Straight couples, no matter how casual, at least have the ***possibility *** of marriage on their minds, and often there are kids involved. So they’re used to looking at things more long-term.
Again, not true. You can leave your house to anyone in a will, and you can buy a house together without being married. (There’s no reason to bring in named on the mortgage as it means nothing in this context). In any case, the exclusion is $2MM so, there’s no Federal Estate tax for the 99%.
Now true, there is a extra exclusion, on top of that $2MM, for a primary residence will to a spouse.
Estate tax is just not a problem for 99% of the people. Gay or straight.
I think you (OP) misunderstand discrimination. It is rarely institutionalized the way it was against Blacks last century. It is more commonly akin to bullying: the culture at large doesn’t like you, so they’re going to make life unpleasant in oh so many little ways (the death of a thousand cuts) until you either become like the mainstream or move on. The most common way of “moving on” is moving to a more liberal, urban area, but suicide is also a big one.
F’r instance, try being a single yet openly gay elementary school teacher in most of America. Is it illegal? No. Could you be fired for merely identifying as gay? Depends on the state. Would being a single yet openly gay elementary school teacher cause you difficulty? Why yes, yes it would, because in many places, especially where children are concerned, the fear-to-cluefulness ratio is quite high.
Ask a woman how often she gets unwanted attention from straight men asking her out. I think you’d be surprised at the response. Now imagine you’re a single gay man. You really like Tom, a burly construction worker. Ask him out: the worst he can do is say no, right? I mean, it’s not LEGAL for him and his friends to beat the shit out of you, so you’re good, right?
Or maybe Tom was actually kinda into you. You go down to the beach for a picnic. Hold hands watching the sunset, or give him a kiss: romantic moment, just like the guy-and-girl couple six beachtowels down. Perfectly legal, so naturally there’s no repercussions, right?
So yeah, on paper, pretty equal except for the marriage thing. And they’re not Civil Rights violations, just one class of people held to a different standard than another. Of course, I suspect that’s only because gays are an invisible minority.
That’s not the point. Adding your partner to the deed creates a present ownership interest in the property. Your partner gains half an ownership interest in the property. It does not create a right of survivorship - the right for your partner to inherit your interest in the property. Hence, if you die, your partner gets half the house, but won’t necessarily get your half (and won’t get it automatically, which is the important thing). He might also have to pay estate taxes on your half.
If somebody else inherits- say, your mother who hates that you’re gay and blames your partner for turning you from the path of Christ, or whatever- they can force a sale (among other things).
ETA: DrDeth, the threshold for state estate taxes can be much lower than $2 million.
Sorry, but the QC is a new deed. I bought a house before I was married, and some years later realized it would be a good idea to have my husband on the deed, so I did a QC. The form I used had two items–joint tenancy with right of survivorship and tenancy in common. It was a cheap do-it-yourself form, and you crossed out that one that didn’t apply. No need for lawyers, unless you needed someone to explain what JTROS meant as opposed to tenancy in common. It was not some magical condition of being married that did it. There are a few states–not Colorado, but a few–that are community property states and things may be different there, although I think not. I think even in one of those states if I bought the place before I was married I would have to take steps to share the ownership with my spouse, or anyone else.
Texas is a community property state. A home bought before the marriage would still automatically go to the spouse but there may be an extra legal hurdle to clear to make sure the title was clear and that the spouse was actually the spouse and so on. It’s actually a lot more trouble to arrange things so property doesn’t automatically go to the spouse.
Hmmm. Seems you’re right, which is the opposite of what we were taught (that fictional property transfers are void).