Typically, the arguments over marriage equality for same-sex couples revolve around why certain rights and abilities are or are not deserved by families headed by same-sex couples (e.g. reasons gay couples want these rights, typical arguments against same sex marriage). Unfortunately, what often becomes lost is the fact that legal marriage is not merely a package of benefits, it is moreover a set of serious responsibilities between couples, their families, their state, and, for many same-sex couples, their children. No matter how one feels about such couples, upholding these responsibilities does benefit society on whole. Here we hope to explain how allowing same-sex marriage is beneficial to us all.
Contents:
- Resources - How and why marriage equality will benefit all our pocket books.
- Unneeded Government Assistance - Gay men receiving "single mother" tax breaks.
- Civil Loopholes - The advantage of having a safety net with no responsibility.
- Broken Familial Obligations - The public consequences of any separation.
- Health Care Costs - The health and financial benefit in promoting marital monogamy.
- Existing Cost Estimates - Actual projected savings to both federal and state governments.
- Summary.
- Families - How and why marriage equality helps families, all families.
- Maintain the Extended Family - Stop same-sex couples from breaking others' bonds.
- Encourage More Familial Bonds - Connect two families, where once that was impossible.
- Children in Daycare - Stop encouraging daycare use in same-sex headed homes.
- Cheating and Divorce - Punish infidelity, and protect from marital mistakes.
- Children in State and Foster Care - Why marriage equality is vital for many children.
- Summary.
- Intangibles - The difficult to quantify, or ignore.
- A Stake in Society - Give more people more reasons to care.
- Basic Rights - The danger of diminishing something important.
- Waste - Put our efforts to more productive aims.
- Cultural Values - Uphold the best in our culture's values.
- Summary.
- Conclusions
- References
1. Resources
I- Unneeded Government Assistance. All tax-paying citizens are paying some form of welfare to people living in great comfort, and it is made legal by the misclassification of gay couples as single individuals. In families headed by a same-sex couple, a homemaker is technically an unmarried single-parent with no income and next to no assets. As such, they can and many do receive welfare and special tax breaks. The typical gay household may be eligible for thousands of dollars in assistance in areas ranging from student loans, to "single mother" tax breaks, to food stamps and Medicare. To illustrate this point one needs only to reference the government's own site on benefit eligibility
(1); for a same-sex headed household, literally dozens of government programs are listed as available to a "poor" "unmarried" homemaker.
While isocrat.org would agree using such "assistance" is ethically dubious, many gay men and women may feel justified to force those attacking their families into putting their money where their politics are. If one wants to blame those families for behaving like something they are not, remember also who first forced them, by law, to be treated like something they are not. We cannot both push someone outside societal institutions and then expect them to pretend as though they are bound to those institution's responsibilities only when it benefits those who insist upon the segregation.
II - Civil Loopholes. There are many other advantages “single” couples may take that legally married couples cannot. This is one reason some jurisdictions will force common law marriage on couples who refuse to be wedded officially.
For example, one partner could rack up credit card debt, declare bankruptcy, and make the average consumer pay for it, all the while still living comfortably for the rest of his life in his partner's home. He could do it as many times as they’d offer credit. If the couple were legally married, they would both be responsible for the other's debts. For another example, many business deals and transactions require restrictions on and add strict checks on relationships involving persons who are legal “family”, by blood or legal marriage, for the obvious reasons. Gay couples can ignore all that and take advantage.
For one instance, consider the case of Michael Kopper
(2, 3) . Mr. Kopper was among the Enron executives who criminally ran that company into the ground, taking many innocent shareholders and employees down with it. Mr. Kopper stole over 15 million dollars and gave a good deal of it to his partner. When Mr. Kopper was brought to justice, the law was impotent to touch $9 million dollars in assets given to Mr. Kopper's partner, Mr. Dodson. All that money is now untouchable and, if they are still a couple, is accessible to both Mr. Kopper and Dodson, as this gay couple was not considered legally married and therefore, not legally responsible for each other. Marriage is, among other things, about responsibilities.
III - Broken Familial Obligations. In every family, things can go very wrong. Some homemakers can simply be jettisoned from their home with nothing, and often, for families headed by same-sex couples, that abandoned parent is their children's only legal parent. While their partner, their co-parent in every way to their children but biology, had made promises and in rare cases even signed contracts, they may easily be found unenforceable without marriage law. Aside from the heartbroken children that we see in heterosexual divorce, the public ends up paying much more for the newly created welfare mom or dad.
For legally married couples, the costs, direct and indirect, of divorce are estimated to be around $33 billion per year in the United States
(4). When divorce law is not there to assure a fair split, to make the former breadwinner take care of the former homemaker, we end up picking up an even greater price. Right now gay men and women are not held financially responsible for their familial promises, but marriage equality can significantly change that and put the financial burden where it belongs.
IV - Health Care Costs. Keeping same-sex relationships hidden and shameful significantly contributes to anonymous sex and short-term relationships. It leads to stress, compulsiveness, and attempts to self medicate; it leads to what most call the “gay lifestyle” in the pejorative sense. This anxiety often leads to unprotected sex in the gay community, and in men who have sex with men but do not identify as gay (5, 6, 7). Not only that, but when gay men who keep their orientation and relationships hidden become infected with an STD, their decline into sickness and lost productivity is
accelerated
(8, 9). Finally, once out of the closet, there are precious few role models and social structures to guide young people, like official marriage. If anything, many conservative cultures expect promiscuity of their gay sons and daughters and get in the way of stable monogamy. Research has shown that strong rejection of homosexuality by family greatly increases a gay teen's chance of contracting a STD, having unprotected sex, experiencing depression, using drugs, and attempting suicide, when compared to gay children who have an accepting family
(10). In all, gay youth end up with the unacceptably high and real danger of contracting a life-threatening and very costly illness, very early on in life
(11, 12).
Eventually, we all pay a price when people become infected by an STD, try to kill themselves or suffer from clinical depression, in the loss of their productivity and in increased health care costs, and the costs are great
(13). We do, though, know marriage is associated with much safer sexual practices
(14), and an inclusive culture is a more healthy culture for gay teens and adults
(10). Research shows gay children who are harassed less have less incidence of adult depression and HIV infections
(15) . If we want a healthier society, we should hold marital monogamy up in acclaim for same-sex couples too; encourage them to consider all the friends, relatives, and in-laws they’d hurt if they were unfaithful. Encourage them to take on the legal consequences if they cheat. If relationships are secret, objects of ridicule, and outside the view of proper culture, it’s a simpler matter to consider little but yourself and let others pay the price.
V - Existing Cost Estimates. There are, of course, costs associated with allowing legal same-sex marriage. For example, many gay couples will save more in taxes per year by being able to file jointly with rights equal to their neighbor's family. In terms of cold numbers, though, when all the costs and benefits of legalizing marriage equality are tallied, there is a clear bonus to public coffers in same-sex marriage, even when ignoring the difficult to quantify costs of items such as health care savings in added monogamy. The United States Congressional Budget Office has estimated that (emphasis added) (16):
In some cases, recognizing same-sex marriages would increase outlays and revenues; in other cases, it would have the opposite effect. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that on net, those impacts would improve the budget's bottom line to a small extent: by less than $1 billion in each of the next 10 years (CBO's usual estimating period). That result assumes that same-sex marriages are legalized in all 50 states and recognized by the federal government.
Numerous other studies have found similar results within state jurisdictions. For example, California (17):
In conclusion, the positive impacts of AB 205 (a bill extending marriage rights to same-sex couples) on means-tested benefit programs and tax revenues from tourism will outweigh a loss in income tax revenues and insignificant costs associated with the State's court system, State employee benefits, and administrative costs. The net impact of AB 205 on California's budget will be a positive impact of $8.1 to $10.6 million each year.
And New Jersey (18):
The only significant fiscal effects of the DPA (a bill extending marriage rights to same-sex couples) will be on 1) expenditures for state public benefits programs, 2) expenditures for state employee benefits and 3) revenues from the transfer inheritance tax. We find that the savings from means-tested benefit programs will far outweigh any increased expenditures for state employee benefits and any loss in inheritance tax revenues. We estimate, conservatively, that the net impact of the DPA on New Jersey's budget will be over $61 million in savings each year.
VI - Summary. It simply has to be kept in mind that forcing other couples to be legally single, and pay more taxes and health insurance than others does not automatically mean the others are coming out on top. We all pay more in dollars for the inefficiency. There are welfare programs, and divorces without divorce law, and debts, and emergency room visits without insurance, and other societal effects that must be considered. Many gay couples could get back in welfare near what they spend extra on taxes each year for not having a legal marriage, but someone would still have to pay for the government bureaucrat shuffling the money around, when it could simply, efficiently stay in the citizenry's pockets.
Simply, allowing one person the legal tools to take care of and be responsible for another, is not only humane and a promotion of the best in humanity; it saves us all the cost.
2. Families
(Related Article: The statistical data on families where same-sex marriage rights have been given.)
I - Maintain the Extended Family. Regardless of how anyone feels about same-sex couples marrying or raising children, it remains important to remember this is an issue involving the lives of many real people who are not gay or involved in gay politics. A group that often gets overlooked in this debate are the in-laws and extended family. They all have a stake in the unions in their family, even for same-sex couples not raising children.
It does great harm to grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles when a loved one, or child is unilaterally removed from their family upon a split. For gay couples, one set of family is in the same boat as one of the parents, just out of luck, unless there’s a legal adoption (and that hinges on marriage, in some US jurisdiction). Even the most conservative, religiously orthodox, anti-gay rights grandparent would be damaged by the law making it so simple to lose their grandchildren, never to be seen again.
II - Encourage More Familial Bonds. Traditionally, most gay men have not had, nor were encouraged to have clear long term relationships, and therefore they were basically an end on the branch of their family tree. They did not often form familial bonds through their couplings, and their family did not benefit by those bonds. But these connections are very important and encouraged by marriage.
Same-sex couples are undeniably instrumental in helping extended family through their unions, and in joining many great families together.
Society should encourage and simplify these bonds for gay couples with equal rights in marriage. These connections save the public money, by helping and encouraging people to take care of each other instead of relying on the state, but they also make families on both sides stronger for their interdependence.
III - Children in Daycare. Perhaps the research is still controversial, but if it’s possible it seems it is best for children, particularly infants, to be taken care of by the people who love them most and are intimately responsible for them
(19, 20). The present marriage law actively discourages gay couples from doing this. As most US law now stands, with same-sex couples unable to get on their breadwinner’s health insurance or have claim to their income if something goes wrong, most all are extraordinarily encouraged to use day care for their children and work outside of the home.
IV - Cheating and Divorce. The punishments of divorce and public promises of marriage influence all couples, gay or straight, to keep from betraying their vows and damaging many people in their family and out by mitigating all the associated costs
(14, 4).
There is an added issue to consider for gay and lesbian citizens. For example, in a 2007 study by Pathela et al., it was found that 9% of all self-identified straight men admitted to having sex with at least one man within the last year
(6). Of those men, 70% were married to women. Similar research findings are not rare
(21, 22) . It is tragically common for gay men to leave women and children after trying to make a marriage without attraction work. They should not be pressured in the first place, for their sake and for the sake of many others. These unions often put the resulting families and extended families at elevated risk of emotional harm, on top of the health concerns for the spouses, and financial concerns for the household. No one should want their loved ones to experience such a scenario, but it is something encouraged when people teach young gay men and women that their ideal is found in marrying someone to whom they do not feel a purposeful, deep, and robust attraction.
Fortunately research and common sense shows us the solution to this problem. With fewer barriers to gay unions, gay men come out to themselves and others earlier
than in times past
(23), decreasing the chance of them choosing a path they're leave later. Nevertheless, much more needs to be accomplished in this area.
Certainly it should be said some number of gay men and lesbians can make a marriage work with a person of the opposite sex, depending upon their nature, and their existing families should be supported. When so many can’t do it, though, and are cheating on their spouses, or when straight spouses find they do not want to be married to a person who is not attracted to them in that purposeful way that orientation allows, that is a significant social problem that should not be ignored. Taking away the legal and financial incentives for gay men and lesbians to pursue heterosexual relationships, and giving them the legal option of a marriage according to their nature should remove one more coercive force that may lead to marriages made for the wrong reasons, reasons of fear, finances, expediency, or social acceptance, instead of love and long-term compatibility. If gays and lesbians want to commit to a straight marriage, they should choose it with as little outside coercion as possible, so it is undoubtedly their marriage, made for the right reason. Otherwise, those who oppose marriage equality are encouraging unions for their gay and lesbian children they would not want their straight children to enter.
V - Children in State and Foster Care. From the United States government’s statistics
(24) , in 2006, 510,000 children were in foster care, and 129,000 of them ended the year waiting for adoption. That year, 303,000 entered foster care and 289,000 exited. Of those exiting, 51,000 children were adopted; the rest either became emancipated as adults (many with a difficult history of being passed around foster homes), went back to their original family, or died. This situation is including the children now adopted into gay and lesbian homes.
There are simply not enough homes for the children in the US needing them; that’s over 100,000 children waiting for a home and family of their own each year and only 50,000 adopted. GLBT politics aside, that is a tragedy, one gay people are helping to remedy and could be put to better use if they had legal responsibilities to each other.
In most every US jurisdiction, gay people can’t be stopped from adopting or becoming foster parents as if they were single. Adopting as a couple is a problem in some jurisdictions for unmarried couples though, even though infertile couples are the most likely to adopt, and gay couples, as opposed to a single gay person, have more time to devote to their children. Like it or not, the qualified gay couple who adopts, particularly older, disabled, or HIV infected children is doing the public a service, saving the people's money, all in addition to giving the invaluable to a child
(25) . It is good policy to support that home, and bind it with enforceable responsibilities in legal marriage.
It is also good policy to make sure both people raising a child are legally responsible for that child, currently impossible for most children in families headed by unmarried couples in the states most against gay rights. In these states only one of the people raising their child may be legally tied to that that child. Such law is not stopping same-sex couples from raising children--in fact, the most conservative states have the highest percentage of gay couples who are also raising children
(26) --but it is stopping children from receiving health insurance, and many other benefits, particularly when their stay-at-home parent is their legal parent. Such law is also keeping parents legally able to abandon their children without consequence. If things go wrong and the remaining legal parent can’t manage, the taxpayer picks up the slack in more ways than economically.
VI - Summary. Simply, “pro-family” should mean pro-family. Encourage strong loving family bonds, give parentless children loving homes, promote familial responsibility, and give families the tools to take care of each other, in place of relying on the state. When all that is held back from citizens by our government for the shape of one person’s anatomy, it is clear the government’s priorities are not what they should be, and the PC words of politicians touting “family values” are empty diversions.
3. Intangibles
I - A Stake in Society. Coupling up and making a home is important to most all humans, but, for gays and lesbians, the natural path to that joy is made complicated by law and culture, unworkably so for many. Those who have committed marriages and families often put their children and their caretaker above every other want, above even their self-preservation. They go to work and work hard for their family, even to jobs they cannot stand. Making this basic human need and motivation more difficult for people damages them, and decreases their productivity. Simply, the more difficult it is made for a person to gain a stake in society, the more damage done to society.
II - Basic Rights. Often anti-marriage equality activists will insist marriage is not a basic human right. It is difficult to imagine a married person thinking this way, as, once married and especially once a person becomes a parent, their marriage and home should become more important to them than practically any other recognized right. Most people gladly surrender some of the most cherished freedoms for family life, and yet it is not a basic human right?
In fact, the need to freely choose a partner, couple up, and build a home is just as potent in gays and lesbians as it is in heterosexuals; attempting to hinder them from a goal you enjoy, particularly for reasons such as anatomy, is simple injustice, the sort that eats at the core of the perpetrator. You simply cannot take a disproportionate slice of your neighbor's tax dollars by force; you cannot force them to give you what you'd not give in return; you cannot treat them and their children as second class members of your shared society. You cannot do that and come out psychologically unharmed yourself. We all pay some price when a basic human right, particularly one as core to being human as marriage, is demeaned.
III - Waste. Consider all the “pride” events, all those speeches and platitudes on both sides, all the campaign dollars spent. This struggle is undeniably costly in dollars and emotions for all sides. Nevertheless, as long as gay people are free to speak, the conflict has to find a conclusion, particularly as the gay baby boom makes it way through the schools. The choice will be to make it a non-issue or a huge issue, as everyone has to deal with their friends or family members who are either gay or with same-sex couples as parents in their genealogy.
This ball began rolling decades ago and people simply will not stop fighting for equal treatment under the law for their families; no human group would. We are talking about a person's family, after all. The waste will simply continue until either draconian measures are put in place and there are no more families headed by same-sex couples, or equal rights are given. The non-issue simply costs less in time, money, and ethics.
IV - Cultural Values. Most importantly, this is an issue of what's right. Wasted money and even one man's fight for his family is small in comparison to nudging that arc of history further up to justice. It’s very odd that one side of this fight will go on about morals as though they have their feet planted firmly in tradition and the other side is floating in relativism. In actuality, the Judeo-Christian values many in the west were raised on and treasure are fueling both sides of this fight; same-sex couples would otherwise be nowhere. In fact, if the Massachusetts Constitution did not have equal rights, regardless of a citizen’s sex, spelled out right in it, put there by the people, there would be no legal same-sex marriage in the US at all, and no one hoping to demote that American value for another.
The GLBT community is where it is because the broader culture has some enduring, admirable values. We values equality under the law, and fairness regardless of any physical aspect of a person's body. We value a family's self reliance, our neighbor's rights, even when we disagree, and we hope to judge them by their character, instead of appearance. It is true that anti-gay sentiment, and judging our families by the biological sexes involved is a long running notion in our culture also, steeped in some recalcitrant ideas about the supernatural. Nevertheless, just as our more noble values eroded official racism and buoyed women's suffrage, all in the face of similar traditional beliefs, these values are working on the side of marriage equality today. It’s the anti-same-sex relationships rule verses the Golden Rule and they will fall into a stable priority, as other moral quandaries in our history have. Our cultural values, though, are best served and best able to survive if the Golden Rule wins the day.
V - Summary. If there is one thing both sides of this debate can agree upon, it is that this struggle is about more than money and a person's family; there are many intangibles. The way this issue is resolved will ripple into how future generations decide to treat their neighbors and into their measure of what is truly noble in a society, a family, and in a marriage: biology or dedication; sex or sacrifice; judgmental suspicion or equity; uniformity or love. To extend equal treatment to families headed by same-sex couples, though, holds the greater promise of our shared values.
4. Conclusions
This fight will find its end in what the public most wants; not necessarily what is right or what is best for us. No court or politician or activist can stop it, only perhaps slow it. If any jurisdiction wants to demote the ideal of equal protections for another (and, in eventual turn, for themselves) they can and will by vote--many already have--and there is nothing same-sex headed families can do to stop them when the bulk of the citizenry are behind the move. Gays and lesbians are at the feet of the masses in their status as perpetual minorities.
Nevertheless, there are many reasons for the friends, neighbors, and even strangers to the GLBT community to take marriage equality on as their cause too; there is much reason to hope. The public is beginning to look beyond the slogans of those claiming to be pro-marriage and pro-family while advocating just the opposite. The polls are beginning to tilt towards equality, as more and more people are seeing that respect and equity for their neighbor's family does not mean disrespect and harm for their own. In fact, as we hope we have shown here, there is something in equality to benefit everyone.
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isocrat > politics > marriage > pro_marriage
Created: 2005-01-01; Last Edited: 2008-06-01; (ID215)