(no subject)

[bzarcher]

Why should gays be left out of the tax breaks?

I refer to my earlier statements that you don't need a law to get married unless you care about the secular benefits. If you want to get married, all you need is your partner and a willing priest. Bam, 20 minutes later you're married. This issue is not about marraige. It's about insurance and tax benefits. Important? Sure, to many. And I agree it's a 'right' they probably should have if straight marraiges have it. But let's be honest, mmkay? If (like the major example), you lived 50 years with the same man or woman, you didn't need a piece of paper to tell you that you're married.

In other news, out of bed, and the music finished loading. Whee. I hate having to work on federal holidays.

Comments

[muttnik.livejournal.com]

There are also issues of power of attorney.. being allowed in your loved one's room in the ER.. having a legal connection to children adopted by your partner.. and finally, if society is going to recognize people for making a lifelong commitment to one another, it'd be nice if they'd recognize you too.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

But on the other hand, if you're choosing to live a lifestyle that you know society doesn't accept, why do you care about societal recognition?

Re:

[muttnik.livejournal.com]

Choosing?

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[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

You did not choose to be gay, but you chose to come out, in that situation. Welcome to the hard world of being honest about who you are.

Re: :

[muttnik.livejournal.com]

Ah. I would say that just because society doesn't accept something yet does not mean you should stop caring about it. Society didn't think blacks or women should have the right to vote. Just as gay marriages were viewed as "not real marriages," blacks and women were not considered full citizens, and the denial of the right to vote reflected that. Now, by your logic, if these people really believed they were full citizens, they wouldn't need the right to vote to prove that to them.

Society may not accept it now, but we have a long history of being close minded, and denying different groups the rights we pride ourselves on granting everyone.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I think the right to vote stands different from a lot of the issues inherent in this. For a lot of the issues (power of attorney, child guardianship, living wills, etx), there are legal workarounds. Do they take time? Yes. Are they expensive? Yes. But it can be done. Is it wrong? Probably.

But if the point is if a marraige is 'real' or not, that's not something any government, court, or church is ever going to determine. Real marraige is created between the two partners (regardless of gender) and the relationship they have. A loving home does not come from a piece of paper. It comes from the human element, and no paperwork in the world will change that.

Re: :

[dasubergeek.livejournal.com]

Let me put it to you this way. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that left-handed people could not get married. (I wrote a long allegory about it here.)

Not only could left-handed people not get married, but only right-handed people could sign hospital visitation logs, powers of attorney, adoption papers. There is a societal more against them and they have formed their own groups and expropriated the former epithet "southpaw" as their own.

Now, imagine that you are left-handed. You certainly would never CHOOSE to be left-handed in this world I'm describing... you were born that way and can't do anything about it.

Now imagine life trying to pretend you're right-handed so you can 'fit in'. Ever seen a lefty try to write with his right hand, or a righty try with his left? It doesn't work. To the lefty, it feels wrong, and to a righty it looks like he's "trying too hard".

That's the choice many gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgendered people have. Either fake it -- which ignores the responsibility each person has to provide for himself and to make his life the way he wants -- or come out and be denied rights given to others.

On a primal level, you are correct -- we have only the right to eventual death -- but the point is that our government have said that we are created equal. Equal means that when you give a right to one group of people, you give that right to EVERY group of people. All else is hypocrisy.