So, is it your contention that same-sex marriage is, in and of itself, a negative behavior that society should use tax laws to discourage? If so, please explain what’s so negative about it. If not, please answer the original question.
Let me reiterate: you’ve acquiesced that in certain situations a gay individual or gay couple is similarly situated as a straight individual or straight couple and should be treated the same, for example, in parenting. Say a gay couple is cohabitating and entering into a long term financial situation together in much the same as a married straight couple does. However, they realize that one never knows what the future holds and would like some degree of certainty and protection should they choose to dissolve their union. How should the law treat them and their property?
Re-read above; I said it was not the only relevance.
You’re correct. The so-called ‘marriage penalty’, as well as the AMT and the general increases in taxes of all kinds, have made the issue more difficult. These, however, are subject to change. When I’ve mentioned benefits, I’m referring to societal benefits. Healthy, productive families are more likely to produce healthy, productive children who will sustain the society. This is a recognized ‘good’.
Again, see my previous post. Gay relationships need never encounter children. They are not a by-product of gay relationships. When they do, whatever tax benefits accrue the parents of any children should be received by them as well. Again, smaller homosexual population means a smaller pool of potential mates and, unless I’m just not paying attention, a statistically quite small number of children. So, you’re using the exception of an exception to justify gay marriage?
Well because it takes a tool that was created to serve a particular function and renders it merely symbolic.
I am just fine with the idea of gay marriage BTW.
Well you’re making an argument that because people subverted the original intent of the law to different purposes that it justifies further subversion. Gay couples do not have the potential to breed. Marriage at root is not about sex it is about procreation, that there is some leeway there for those who cannot or choose not to breed is beside the point. Making gay marriage available makes marriage about sex, not about procreation. Homosexuals can live together, they can fuck, they can share expenses, but they cannot breed. The law was intended to make it easier on couples to procreate.
You’re saying that if same-sex couples are prevented from getting married, they will break up and seek out hetero marriages instead? Do you think preventing same-sex marriage turns gay people straight?
If that’s not what you’re saying , then who ARE you saying would be discouraged from “marriage and child rearing?” Who is discouraged from getting married and having babies if same-sex marriage is legal?
Now, yes.
Because you find my statement impossible and my arguments flimsy I am prepared to reconsider my stance on same-sex marriage.
And here I thought the OP was curious as to “what is the rationale for opposition to same-sex marriage.”
Nope, I’ve argued neither point. I’ll let someone who has, rebut if willing.
I’d prefer to argue one issue at a time, thanks. Start another thread if you think this issue has merit.
Yet that statement applies just as well to same-sex couples. Could you please explain why the fact that a same-sex couple’s children require one of adoption/a sperm donor/a surrogate mom/a previous hetero marriage makes that relationship unworthy of being a marriage?
We were kind of hoping to ferret out a rational rationale, rather than “Wow! That cultural shift just SNUCK UP on me!”
Not to mention that you’ve REALLY not been paying attention if you only just recently got blindsided by gay marriage. This debate has been going on since 1993.
You’re the one who said the former potential to have children was legit grounds for marriage. If you didn’t think it had merit, perhaps you shouldn’t have raised the argument in the first place.
Have you, Diogenes? I’m telling you that marriage has a definition, accepted by society through its laws. Now, each society can and does maintain its own language, which includes any changing definition over time. I’m also saying, though you’re clearly too deep to see it, that the essence of marriage has not changed. What’s changed is the willingness of some to pretend that a chair and a desk are one and the same. Not equal in value, equal in essence. I agree with the former, not the latter.
Cool, cause I just know how much you reject any moral authority. Besides your own, of course.
I said society uses tax laws to encourage and discourage behavior. These might occur in completely different contexts. For example, deductions for dependent children: encourage. Taxes on alcohol: discourage. I also made what ought to be an obvious point that offering tax incentives in order to encourage behavior is likely to be seen to be discouraging the opposite behavior. As I said, someone else is paying that tax.
I wasn’t arguing about trangendered people, though, was I? You extended the argument in an inapt manner.
WTF? There are a myriad of legal rights and responsibilities that marriage entails. They’re not “merely symbolic”.
On what basis did you conclude that?
Cite for the original intent of the law that you assert? :dubious:
That is often part of what it is about, but not all, and hardly always.
Not per the concept that the state’s interest in marriage is to support childrearing. As we keep seeing.
And that is different from straight marriage, how?
Again, cite?
No, good golly, learn to read. I said that tax laws encouraging marriage and childbearing, would, by virtue of those who choose not to do so, end up discouraging those who wouldn’t receive the tax benefits. If I marry and have children, (but you do neither) and pay fewer taxes, you’ve likely just sucked up some of my obligations. All in a manner of speaking, of course, as there are no clearcut hard and fast tax rules, but, geez, the idea is that you’re the one who ends up paying more in taxes. I’m sure I’ve seen this complaint a dozen times by childless and/or single people who resent property taxes to pay for education and the like. So, society subsidizes children. Those without, seems, reasonable to say, though not specifically and directly being penalized, are, in fact, penalized. If you choose to look at it that way.
Recognizing that tax laws do not actually work in such a benign, much less benevolent manner these days, I’d say as the married parent I’m likely paying more taxes than those who choose to remain single and child-free. Still, I can dream that this will change.
Your inability to consider the ramifications of your arguments is hardly my fault. I extended it in a perfectly logical manner. If the argument that a couple in which the woman is now post-menopausal* was once able to have children is a legit reason to let them stay married, then should a same-sex couple that used to be a two-sex couple also be allowed to stay married since they also used to be able to have children?
*Also applies to ones in which the males go impotent, since you’ve whined about my picking on the poor old women.
Society would not die if “that were the sole purpose and end use of marriage.” Marriage is not a prerequisite for baby making.
First, (assuming at least one member of the gay couple is not infertile), they can still raise a child that is at least biologically related to one-half of the couple.
Second, why does this have to be conditioned on whether or not there’s a benefit to the state? It seems that you’ve agreed that there would be no detriment to society by letting same-sex couples marry, your issue is with the fact that there would be no benefit to society (from your perspective) of letting same-sex couples marry. Why not let them marry for the sake of decency - granting them the same rights as heterosexual couples.
Finally, I’m also going to add my voice to the chorus calling for you to come down one way or another on the importance of birthing babies to marriage. In one post you claim it’s not important (and this is apparently why we let post-menopausal women marry, even though they certainly won’t be birthing their own children), but then in another post you claim that gays should not marry because they can’t produce their own children. You can’t have it both ways.
It’s not so much that we can’t read. It’s that your arguments are so opaque, incoherent and poorly stated that they make no sense. I cannot get my head around your arguments…they have no substance to them that I can grasp with my mind. They shift, and shimmer, and change as the winds of our questioning erode them as quickly as they’re built.
The parts that we actually CAN grasp are opaque as well. I don’t understand them. They don’t seem terribly relevant to me. It’s all boiling down, again, in my mind, to “We’ve always done it this way!” All the other stuff, the children and the benefit to society and all the rest, I’m not seeing how they don’t apply to same-sex couples, too.