It is probably not tremendously useful in such politics to first go on about what your family would get in equal treatment, which is why this section of our arguments for same-sex marriage equality is separated from our list of benefits to the general public. Furthermore, many others have adequately outlined the rights and responsibilities denied to same-sex couples, in a formal manner (1). For good reason, it can be difficult to get some to take seriously such a faceless list of bland complaints.
One on one, though, I think most people do care, and have a hard time keeping a hard heart. Elsewhere we have listed what the general public gains in marriage equality, and answered typical arguments against marriage equality. This page will contain my (Scot's) personal reasons as to why I want legal marriage equality for myself, my children, and husband of 13 years.
Contents:
- Our Home - I want to keep our home, and not under threat.
- Health Insurance - We pay far more than our fair share.
- Taxes - In life, they are a bother; in death, they could ruin my family.
- Social Security - Pay the homemaker what they deserve.
- Peace of Mind in an Emergency - It means a lot, emotionally.
- Strengthen Our Will Upon a Death - It means a lot, emotionally and practically.
- Protect Them From Everyone - Even if it is me.
- Help Our Friends. - We have it good compared to some families.
- All the Little Stuff. - It adds up.
- Rid Us of the Temptation - We don't want to be our culture's opponent.
- Improvement on a Larger Scale - Though the world to me, my family is not the big picture.
- Summary
- References
1 - Our home. We just built it, and a lot of my family's work is in it, from the electrical to the many extra earthquake straps around the kid’s bedrooms. We built it to fit our family, to get our children a bigger yard, and to keep near their grandparents.
We were almost done and ready to move in when I read a news story about a US couple not allowed to use the home they own, because they are not legally married and have more than 1 child
(2). I checked our zoning law as soon as I could get down to the county building. It turns out we are in the same position; to the law, our type of family should not live here, in our own home, zoned for “single families”. It is very worrying to think one disgruntled neighbor could complain us out of our property, our family home, because we don’t have the right anatomy and cannot get the needed marriage papers.
2 - Health Insurance. Now I pay for two health plans, one for the children and me and another for their dad. It’s very expensive, and wastes time when Rob, my spouse, has to take the kids in on an emergency, but legal marriage would put us all on one plan, and save that money. We are lucky, though, as we are both our children's legal parents. Because same-sex couples cannot adopt in our jurisdiction and many working parents cannot be their child's legal parent, those children, being only legally parented by their homemaker, cannot get on their breadwinner's health insurance. Some may say this is a private businesses issue, and it is in part. Nevertheless, it wasn’t when I worked for the government, and the private insurance companies need to be able to know when people have these sorts of relationships and have made these legal commitments before they can act.
3 - Taxes. If we could file jointly we’d save money each year (not the case for all gay couples, though). More importantly to me is to know we’ve escaped the “death tax”, a thing that is up in the air with the current legislature. Rob is a stay at home dad, and if I die, our money is not freely his money, as it is in other marriages. The way our accountant explained it, I’m not even allowed to give him more than $10K/year without him having to pay an exorbitant “gift tax”. This also severely limits what we can leave our children without a high tax. Other children have parents that can shuttle cash between them effortlessly and therefore can easily get twice the tax-free inheritance. It is near enough to make a guy use the welfare we could get being legally single (Related isocrat.org article).
Simply, if tax and marriage laws makes it so that Rob can’t keep our home and remain a stay-at-home dad for our boys until they’ve grown, if I'm killed in, say, a car crash tomorrow, that should be an undisputed injustice.
4 - Social Security. There are some tediously dry considerations here. Simply, I’d want Rob to have access to my Social Security benefits just as any stay-at-home spouse would. He works in our home and should have it if something happens to me. I know it could go to our children, but they barely know what money is.
5 - Peace of Mind in an Emergency. Unlike a lot of gay and lesbian couples, we have a huge binder giving us legal power to make many decisions. We had to spend a good deal of money on it too, but it is still not nearly what marriage gives in this area, and it is not something we can keep with us both all the time. Maybe it should, but it does not, say, go with us on trips. Legal marriage best assures family will be treated humanely, like family. It also leaves the least legal ambiguity, and with relatively little trouble. No one wants to have to run home for papers if their spouse is in an accident, or be in a court battle following the death of their spouse, even if they win, but it happens to many gay couples.
6 - Strengthen Our Will Upon a Death. Rare sure, but wills can be and are contested, and sometimes invalidated by judges. We’ve known a couple who have lost court battles with family, as a gay “lover” is not a spouse in the eyes of many judges, no matter how entangled their lives were. Even if you can afford a lawyer to write a strong will, as our estate planner constantly disclaims about all his work, it is not as certain as a legal marriage. I do fear, at the very least, my will being contested because I’ve left near everything to my spouse, though he is nearly a legal stranger and I have other kin who could try to usurp my will. I’d like to have more assurance that when I leave my home in the morning things would be as tolerable as possible, if I should be killed; that my family would be treated like the family of any other citizen.
7 - Protect Them From Everyone. For those not married, this may be difficult to understand, but when I think of the man that would hurt my family, I want him punished. I want him punished, even if that man is me. If I break my vows to my Rob and our children, divorce law should be there to make me pay up, to keep Rob’s current standard of living and keep the children in their home. The law should not be on the side of the cad who, say, cheated on them and left town and left Rob with next to no good way to keep up his income. I made promises that led him to be a stay-at-home dad and not pursue a career or higher education. Even if they would deny ever worrying, I want Rob and all our family to have the peace of mind to know they had that recourse against me, if I did go completely insane.
To be honest, that’s unimaginable. Though I am sure many a man has said that just before his midlife crisis, I’m more certain than I am the sun will rise tomorrow. Nevertheless, I want them to have the ability to harm me if I don’t follow through, for psychological reasons, if nothing else.
8 - Help Our Friends. We’ve got it good compared to many in our jurisdiction. Some couples have a parent in Iraq with no chance of getting the benefits deserving of military families making such a sacrifice. Some can’t afford the legal counsel to make up the necessary documents to get the bare minimum. Some children can’t get health insurance because the marriage law only allows them to have one of their parents be a legal parent. Legal marriage may help them more than us, but they are people we love and respect, and I would consider help for them something we gain in equal rights, in a way.
9 - All the Little Stuff. I do not want to ever again go to, for example, our county's recreational facility and have my children told we cannot get a family membership because they do not have a family, or at least one that's recognized as valid. I don't want to face that when we're out to have fun at the state fair, or when I'm filling out a census form. We pay our taxes dutifully and we should be treated with respect and equity, just as any other citizen, even in such seemingly minor cases.
10 - Rid Us of the Temptation. We could take a great deal of advantage of the general public for being coupled, and yet legally single (outlined in a related isocrat.org article). Every time an anti-gay rights bill is proposed I'm tempted to do it, and I don't much like the feeling. From student grants to credit card debt, we could make the public pay and it would all be legal, and we have considered it, but I really don't want that sort of adversarial relationship with my society or to take money meant for the truly needy.
11 - Improvement on a Larger Scale. Like any parent, I'm a bit obsessed with leaving things better off than how I found them, and equal marriage rights would be a step in that direction, in same the vein of desegregation and women's suffrage. I want my children to grow up in a culture that values equal treatment under the law, regardless of traits such as sexual anatomy. I want them to keenly feel that justice is something everyone deserves and that they can wrench from the hands of anyone hopping to rationalize it away from one group or another. If one of them turns out to be gay, I want them to have an easier time than I had. I want that for the whole of the next generation of gay and lesbian youth, and marriage equality would go a good distance to making that possible.
Summary. In the end, I guess, I don't want anything that's too different from what anyone else does or would. I want to defend my home. I want to be treated fairly. I want to come to my society on equal standing, not as a second class citizen. Unfortunately that's not up to me or my family, or even the entire population of gays and lesbians, as we will always be in the minority. So here's to hope, and our friends and allies.
REFERENCES ::
1. Bedrick, B.R.. 1,049 Federal Benefits for Married Couples. United States General Accounting Office, pp. None, (1997).
2. Burkeman, O.. Not married, with children? Not in our town thanks. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/25/usa.oliverburkeman. (2006).
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isocrat > politics > marriage > why_marriage
Created: 2008-06-10; Last Edited: 2008-06-20; (ID247)