Re: And so? - Edit 2
Before modification by Burr at 21/10/2012 04:11:30 PM
Just don't deny my equal opportunity to jointly adopt, assume inheritance rights, hospital visits, federal spousal benefits, marriage taxes, etc., with the person that I call my spouse.
Those are special privileges. Why is a married couple afforded them, but I, a single person, denied them? Marriage is a privilege and is recognized as specific to partners of different genders. It is equally extended to all people. I have the exact same rights as a homosexual man, and either of us can obtain the privileges so afforded by choosing to marry a woman. The fact that neither of us has done so does not change the fact of our equal ability to do so before the law. And aside from marriage taxes (to which I am opposed anyway), you can do all that stuff regardless of your gender or orientation. Sure, neither one of us is allowed to marry a man, while women are allowed to marry a man. That's still discrimination. The difference between us is that you have no reason to be unhappy with it, while I have every reason to be unhappy with it. A single straight male still has the option of happily and honestly attracting a female spouse. It doesn't change that it is discrimination; it does change that, while you aren't a potential plaintiff because there's no possibility of real damages in your case, in my case I am and there are.
Unmarried people can adopt children. If an agency chooses to give preference to married people, that is their prerogative, and if they are bound and determined to avoid giving kids to homosexual couples, pretending they are married to one another will not surmount that obstacle.
First, unmarried people cannot jointly adopt. And so when I die, the children get taken away from my spouse and given to a more distant relative or put into foster care. Second, it shouldn't be the agency's prerogative to make such decisions just because you want to have your cake and eat it to. You can't have marriage both as an objective term that applies the same when I adopt as when a straight couple adopt and claim that it is a personal religious term in which you shouldn't have to bend to my own opinion. If it is objectively defined, then I do have as much right as you to influence how we determine what that definition is. If it is personal, related to your religious views, then you should keep it to your personal religion and butt out of the argument when it affects me but not you, e.g., in the case of adoption.
Spousal benefits are strictly the business of employer and employee. If an employer will not extend benefits to a couple he does not recognize as married, that is his business, and the employee has the perfect right to work for an employer who will cover his freeloading same-sex roommate. The whole idea of spousal benefits is based on the heterosexual assumption anyway, because the division of child-rearing and income-earning responsibilities was all but mandated along gender lines by biological necessity. There is no biological criteria mandating that Adam take care of the kids and Steve go out and earn a living, so why should I, as an employer, subsidize Steve's choice to support a man who is presumably equally capable of working himself? The two Wrongs of labor laws and same-sex marriage do not add up to a Right.
When the employer is the federal government, it is the business of everyone who is s citizen.
And you can't truly claim there is a biological necessity that the woman stay home and the man work: if it were, it would be impossible to find a counterexample to that, but it obviously isn't impossible. If it is a necessity at all that one of them stay home, then it is no moreso a necessity than that either Adam or Steve stay home.
Inheritance is the absolute stupidest of the reasons you people dredge up. Are we supposed to completely change the definition of a fundamental societal institution because a bunch of idiots who are too lazy or selfish to make out a proper will or make power of attorney arrangements for medical emergencies, can get special privileges, because there is an alternate route involving a make-believe wedding? Do they really need to be tempted into responsible planning for the future by a fancy-dress party? I had always preferred to believe they were just like everyone else, and not the repellant, shallow, self-absorbed twits they are generally portrayed as in entertainment media, but if a wedding is the only way you'll get their signatures on a legally binding document, maybe Cage aux Folles should be considered a documentary. If the supposed love of your life could not be bothered to make legal arrangements for you to inherit his property or make medical decisions on his behalf, then just maybe his parents are the ones who should be making that call, since you clearly are not as important to him as you think you are.
Surely you would agree it shouldn't take a special arrangement for your spouse not to lose everything when you die or be forced to pay death taxes on all of it, and that your spouse should be assumed to have power of attorney? Especially since special arrangements can be contested? Even if you don't, and that you are right in that people who fail to craft a will for their spouse are stupid, it is yet unfair that heterosexual stupid people are given this special privelege over homosexual stupid people.
But all those things mean nothing compared to forcing you to change your personal usage of the word "marriage"? That is the crux of the debate?
Correct. My rights to my own beliefs, to dispose of my property as I choose and act as I choose.As for your link, Donna Johnson did not have a wife. She cannot, anymore than I can have a husband, because she is a woman and I am a man. The degree of love or sincere commitment to one another does not matter, as many heterosexual couples sharing those same qualities would be in exactly the same situation if they did not marry. As for the supposed inequities exhibited in that inflated bullet point list, those are internal policies specific to the US Army, in which soldiers forfeit many of the civil rights and privileges civilians enjoy anyway. If Army policy is to deny those privileges (even if Washington and his men DID freeze at Valley Forge so that everyone could attend on-base picnics, DAMNIT! ), that is the right of the Army to do so based on what factors will make the Army a more effective unit. If discrimination serves that end, fine. Don't like it? Don't volunteer for the Army. It's not like we haven't been waging an immoral and unjustified war for 11 years, that might lull someone into thinking this is an appealing lifestyle!
Once again, you are trying to say that marriage is both an objectively defined term and one which only you get to personally define through your religion. If it is objective, you don't get any say in it any more than I do; so you can't say I'm attacking your religion when I say you are wrong about what that definition is. If you are wrong, you are objectively wrong, and your religion gives you no special authority for saying whether you are or not. If, on the other hand, "marriage" is a religious term, defined by your religious culture, then you have no place telling me that things just are how they are. That is an objective statement. You don't get to have both.