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January 04, 2007
Marriage, death and taxes
Posted by: Chris
An interesting post from North Dallas Thirty in response to my criticism of Jim Kolbe, the openly gay Arizona congressman retiring this month. I took Kolbe, a Republican, to task for faulting the Human Rights Campaign for not doing more about extending Social Security survivor benefits to gay couples.
My point was that to accomplish that goal, Congress would first need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which Kolbe supported, a vote he took until this month to recant. I should point out that North Dallas Thirty, a gay Republican who works in the human resources field, easily eclipses my knowledge of Social Security and pension regulations. He points out in response that extending the Social Security survivor benefit to gay couples can be accomplished in ways other than repealing DOMA and recognizing marriage licenses issued to gay couples.
In the alternative, he suggests a broader pension reform that allows Americans to elect a Social Security beneficiary, much as they do on their 401(k)-type plans, without regard to whether the beneficiary is a spouse, partner, friend, or what have you. The beneficiary would still only become eligible upon reaching retirement age, though Social Security could be reformed so that the beneficiary doesn't have to choose between his own benefits or those he receives as a beneficiary.
I will plead ignorant about the budgetary consequences of that sort of Social Security reform, but it does appeal to me by leveling the playing field among not just gay and straight couples, but those in long-term relationships and those who are single — we all pay taxes into the system after all.
Conversely, NDT's reform gives me pause for the same reason. Simply because we've been at the receiving end of discrimination, the idea of moving government out of the marrying business can sound attractive. But there are good reasons why government subsidizes marriages, as a way to promote stable lives, protect children and the interests of spouses whose household contribution can't be measured simply in financial terms.
These same interests aren't necessarily at play if people can simply elect a beneficiary based upon whatever criteria they want. While that sort of freedom makes sense for their own private retirement accounts, requiring our tax dollars to subsidize these other relationships is another story.
For the same reasons, I'm troubled by how domestic partner laws are being used to help senior citizens evade Social Security regulations, keeping their survivor benefits even though they have merged households with someone already receiving benefits. I'm not questioning their need, but in a system that is already facing monetary crisis, I do question the subsidy justification — even as I welcome their support, in places like Arizona, for preserving domestic partnerships for gay couples who cannot marry.
For the same reason, extending Social Security benefits to unmarried "domestic partners" is, to me, an intermediate measure that should be offered only to those couples who cannot marry (i.e., same sex couples). Otherwise, we risk following the path of European countries that have offered so many attractive "marriage-lite" alternatives that far fewer couples are marrying and the birthrate has dramatically declined.
We should be careful about promoting well-intentioned social policies that can have unintended and disruptive impact down the road.
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Comments
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I’m not sure if North Dallas Thirty is on to something or helping lay the groundwork for the religious right’s newest push to avoid us getting marriage equality.
Let me explain. I was in Virginia Beach for Christmas visiting my sister and brother-in-law. He works for Pat Robertson and both he and my sister are very much anti-same sex marriage.
My sister shocked me with a comment that basically went like, “Instead of allowing gays to marry, maybe the government can allow any two people to become partners and have all the benefits as if they were married.” Then she went on to site a whole variety of people we know who would benefit under such arrangements. These ranged from a mother daughter team living together where the daughter is sick and can’t get any of the mother’s benefits to two sister’s living together with a similar story. And then my sister mentioned how my partner and I would benefit under this plan.
Is this the grand compromise? Is it a plot by Robertson et al to derail our marriage movement? Is it a plot to devalue our relationships and dilute some of our arguments?
Is it something we should consider?
I know that I would jump in an instant for federal civil unions (i.e. all the benefits of marriage for same sex couples, but not the name). I know that this intermediate step would eventually be called marriage after a period of time because separate but equal would not fly for too long in the US.
But Robertson’s idea along the lines of what North Dallas Thirty proposes for Social Security……. I don’t think so. I think we need to hold firm that our relationships are just as special as straight married couples…… and not generic cookie cutter relationships that they want to make between any two people.
The comments to this entry are closed.
Alan on Jan 4, 2007 1:01:54 PM:
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This subsidizing is working so well that over 50% of first marriages end in divorce (it's higher for subsequent re-marriages) and the percentage of babies being born out of wedlock is nearing the same number. Let's not forget the rising incidence of child physical/sexual abuse and the growing numbers of teen runaways and suicides (both with outlandish GLBT percentages). Obviously the government's concern for protection is nothing more than lip service and/or political rhetoric.
The government, in fact, subsidizes remaining unmarried - if you do it long enough - in the form of recognizing common law marriage. We won't even dwell on the government's inability/unwillingness to actively go after child support deadbeats which causes many families to live in poverty.
What the same-sex marriage issue has done first and foremost is to create a semantic battle over the word marriage. The decision in NJ makes that very clear.
If marriage is a sanctified union, then it is a violation of church and state separation for the government to support it. Yet the government works both sides of the street by allowing civil marriage at City Hall, Las Vegas wedding chapels and any Justice Of The Peace's office.
Maybe that's the ultimate semantic answer. Instead of marriage or civil union call it civil marriage and leave the religious part to houses of worship and gay caterers.
As for Social Security benefits, let's not forget that they are not a gift given to the recipient. Every working person pays into Social Security every working hour of their lives - a compulsory 401K as it were with the government collecting the matching fee from the employer.
Social Security benefits are an asset like any other and should be assignable to whoever the person whose paycheck they came from wants. There is no law requiring a married people to leave their assets in their will to their family, which has legal recourse if that happens. This is how Anna Nicole Smith wound up in the Supreme Court.
The same can be arranged with Social Secuirty benefits as well. It's government paternalism, which I thought was abhorrent to conservatives, to assume that a person doesn't know best who their assets should go to upon their death.