idiggory wrote:
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Oh. And for the record. I'm still waiting for someone to present an alternative reason to mine as to why we created those marriage benefits. Any time now....
Really? Because I've seen like 6 different people give you a ton of them.
No. They haven't. Not a single one.
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And, to note, some of those benefits are by default incompatible with your theory. For example, unrestricted access to your loved one in the hospital (assuming, of course, there's no risk of contact spreading a disease).
Sigh. That's not a benefit you get from the state though. It's a power granted to you as part of the civil contract you enter into when you get married and it's something every single gay couple can gain.
I'm talking about things like different tax columns (which are not always a benefit), better interest rates from some government loan programs, inheritance of social security funds, pension funds, and military survivor funds, and tax free inclusion on your spouses health insurance.
Those are the benefits you get from the government (plus some other minor ones each state may provide). That's it. That is the only thing you get by qualifying for a marriage license. Everything else is provided by the civil contract and is not in any way denied to anyone.
All of the legislation and legal challenges revolve around changing the criteria for those state benefits, so that is the *only* thing we should be considering. Why do those benefits exist, and does it make sense to provide them to gay couples.
It's funny that I start out explaining this, argue for awhile, then someone argues into a circle and forgets that. Then I remind them, argue it for awhile, responding to point after point, until once again someone tries to bring up non-state issued benefits. Repeat over and over...
Stick to the state benefits. That's all I'm talking about.
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And it is one of the primary reasons gays want marriage. So that, God forbid, when the person they love gets into a horrible car accident and has minutes to live, they aren't on the phone with a lawyer trying to get their civil union agreement faxed to the hospital to prove the dying party gave their lover that right.
Yes. It's one of the huge bait and switch aspects of this entire issue. Gay couples have been convinced that the only way they can get this (which you correctly name as the most important thing they want) is by joining the fight to change the laws to include same sex couples on marriage license requirements. But that is not true. It's a freaking lie!
Any two people can obtain joint medial power of attorney over each other. Regardless of sexual orientation. How many gay couples have suffered this, not because it wasn't available to them, but because they believed their own "side" when they were told they must fight to change the marriage laws to get it? Who's victimizing them? Who's using them for a political agenda?
Yeah. But I'm the one who's anti-homosexual. I've proposed on several occasions over the years that if the gay rights movement had simply hired a few contract attorneys and paid a small pittance (about 10k as it turns out) to write up an iron clad civil contract containing all the things currently in marriage contracts as defined by statute, they could have made boilerplate copies of that contract and distributed them to anyone who wanted one. They could have done this at any point in time.
They chose not to. So if gay couples are unable to do this, it's not because of me or the people on "my side". It's because of their own leadership steering them down the wrong path.
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But the choice that was made to make it a legal statute also means it has to be equal.
Absolutely false. Every single government benefit program in existence right now includes some sort of qualifying criteria. None of them are "equal". The fact that you choose to make that argument only with this issue, but not with say handicapped placards, or housing assistance, or welfare funds, or school grants, or every single other government program is telling. It's telling me that you're not taking this position because you actually believe that any benefit granted by the government must be granted equally to all people, but that you've picked a "side" and just blindly accept and believe whatever they tell you.
Your position makes no sense. You cannot say that government benefits programs are applied equally. They quite obviously are not. Why then insist that it must be for this case
and only this case? Has it occurred to you that you might be the victim of a bit of misinformation?
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It isn't. And there is NO argument of cost vs. benefit that applies, for the simple reason that it is covered in the constitution.
Huh? Could you explain to me where in the constitution marriage benefits are mentioned? I must have missed that page...
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Either you change the constitution, or you change marriage. Those are the only options for things to be equal.
Tell you what. I'll agree to eliminate the benefits granted to married couples on the basis that it's not applied equally to everyone if you agree to eliminate every other benefit granted for any other reason which is not equal. Let's see where that leaves us...
Think it through. We do this all the time. If it's unconstitutional to do it when it's marriage benefits, then it's unconstitutional all the other times as well. I'm ok with that if that's the direction you want to go, but I doubt you are...