Death and taxes

In Go Forth and Multiply I looked at the reasons why marriage laws exist. I discovered that the personal qualities assessed by authorities to determine whether a couple is qualified to be married do little to ensure the integrity of the nuclear family unit, despite proponents of traditional marriage claiming that this is the purpose of these laws. The real point seems to be to ensure that the individuals entering into the marriage are actually capable of making the decision to marry and that no one is being coerced or taken advantage of through the union.

There is another important qualification that I failed to mention – that neither of the individuals is married to anyone else. This is actually a mandate from the federal government, rather than the state. From what I gather, this is the only marriage law regulated at the federal level and it originates in the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862. This made it a criminal offense to have more than one spouse at the same time. However, the logic behind this decision wasn’t based on a moral standing or designed to protect children; it was in response to the growing property portfolio and power of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a result of pluralist marriages (the law also placed a financial limit on church and non-profit ownership).

So...is the government’s interest in marriage actually more about regulating power and money than it is about imposing traditional moral objectives?

Let’s take a look at exactly what same-sex couples are actually being excluded from by examining the aspects of civil marriage.

Civil marriage is a single legal contract that instantaneously confers a number of benefits, rights and privileges between spouses. After DOMA passed, The United States Government Accountability Office identified 1,049 federal benefits, rights and privileges that are contingent on marital status. By 2004 this number had increased to 1,138. This is further compounded at the state level where, for example, Illinois has a further 648 benefits, rights and privileges that are contingent on marital status.

Feel free to read through them all in detail, especially if you are having trouble sleeping. Alternatively, you can trust me in saying that they pretty much all whittle down to death and taxes by:

·         defining how the couple is treated with regards to employment benefits and taxation (including 179 provisions at the federal level alone) while they are married;

·         establishing rights and responsibilities for dissolving the marriage, including obligations for child and spousal support; and

·         defaulting the surviving spouse as next of kin upon being widowed, which means they are entitled to receive financial benefits (e.g. pensions), transfer of property, etc.

Some of the federal laws defer to the state definition of marriage, so if the state government legally recognises same-sex marriage then the couple will receive equal legal rights and protection. However, it is important to recognise that only 5 states and the District of Columbia are currently marriage-equal. Other states that recognise ‘domestic partnerships’ or ‘civil unions’ present a complex legal landscape that still significantly limits rights and protections for same-sex couples.

Some of the provisions can be accessed through other routes. For example, most provisions relating to criminal issues (e.g. domestic violence and sexual assault) include the terminology ‘spouse or intimate partner’, recognising the reality that alternative forms of family exist. Provisions relating to employment can be supplement where employers implement their own policies to extend benefits to same-sex couples. Many private companies choose to do this even though they are not legally obligated because they recognise and value staff diversity.

In spite of all that, there are still some incredibly disparaging issues. I take particular offence to these:

·         Federal health and welfare programmes – these are primarily designed to assist disadvantaged individuals and families. Marital status is normally significant in determining whether a family qualifies for support and what level of support they receive. This excludes disadvantaged same-sex couples from receiving adequate levels of support and all same-sex couples from receiving benefits in the event of their partners’ death.

·         Child and spousal support – these laws exist to ensure children receive adequate support in the event of divorce by obliging absent parents to provide appropriate funds to the spouse with whom the child lives. A partner left to raise children after a same-sex relationship has broken up has no legal recourse to seek child support. Equally, a parent can be left without legal recourse to gain access to a child.

Obama extended federal benefits to same-sex couples last year and, with the repeal of DADT, this will likely be extend to include military personnel and veterans. However, immigration remains exclusive as a direct result of the definition of marriage in DOMA.

The reason I can’t come home with my partner comes down to how marriage is defined...by DOMA.

If you asked 100 married couples to define marriage, I guarantee you will get 200 different answers. Ask them again in 10 years and you’ll get another 200 answers, all different from the first. What makes a marriage is unique to the individuals in it; how they conduct their relationship depends on their needs and circumstances which are constantly changing.

Marriage laws and the legal provisions extended to married couples have nothing to do with how marriage is defined to individuals and everything to do with legally defining the couple as a financially interdependent unit. The evidence required to prove the validity of a marriage for immigration purposes underlines this, by requiring couples to submit documentation showing joint ownership or property and/or documentation showing the co-mingling of financial resources.

Watch this.

I absolutely love the point Cynthia Nixon makes here, so I’m going to say it again:

Marriage equality will not re-define marriage any more than allowing women the right to vote in 1920 re-defined ‘voting’ or integrating diners in the 1960s re-defined ‘eating out.’ It will simply mean everyone has a right to sit at the same table.

The more I watch the debates on same-sex marriage and speak with people about this issue, the more I realise how little most Americans know about how and why the government regulates marriage. This realisation is what compelled me to write this blog in the first place and the comments I have received here and through private communications have confirmed this message needs to get out...

It'll be fine

In July 2007, I completed my coursework in Planning and got a job as a consultant on a temporary contract while I finished my final dissertation. After receiving my MSc, I applied for a Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland Scheme visa to stay in the UK for two years as a new graduate. My job was transferred to a permanent contract and I started life as a professional woman. This meant I had to buy a lot of shirts that constantly need ironing.

The transition wasn’t easy. C and I spent almost every night together but it was getting harder to find the space to spend quality time together with my new 9 to 5, Monday to Friday schedule. C had her flat in East Lothian and I was living in a shared flat in Edinburgh, 25 miles apart. We would mostly stay at mine through the week as bus links from her small village to Edinburgh in the morning were pretty unreliable and I didn’t have a car (or a UK driver’s license). Living in a shared flat was fine when I was a student, but it was near impossible to get the privacy we wanted or sleep we needed in a flat full of students. There were many weeknights when we would give up in desperation and drive back to East Lothian at midnight just to get some respite.

I had every weekend off, but C worked at least two weekends a month. When we had time off together we would mostly spend it at hers. She had a gorgeous top floor flat in an 18^th century mansion house in a small, idyllic village. It overlooked a square with a fountain and was only minutes from a beautiful riverside walk, complete with a waterfall. I couldn’t have invented a more beautiful place to stay. The time we spent there was always peaceful and allowed us glimpses of what our life would be like if we lived together. Unfortunately we decided it wasn’t feasible for us to move into hers – mostly because of my work demands in Edinburgh. Instead, we focussed our efforts on preparing C’s flat for sale with a view to renting somewhere in the city together.

In February 2008, C’s mother was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. These things are never expected, but she hadn’t been unwell in any way leading up to the diagnosis. C was devastated and devoted all of her spare time and energy ensuring her mum was getting the care she needed, attending hospital appointments, etc. I had never been in a situation like that with anyone before. I was scared and I didn’t know how to support C. I would love to be the kind of person who can find the right words or make the right gesture to offer comfort. Instead, I become hesitant, vacant and completely lacking in any emotional intelligence or thought. The Scots actually have the perfect word to describe this: glaikit.

I had booked at trip back to visit my family over Easter weekend. It was already going to be a short trip but it would mean I could celebrate my birthday while I was there. Unfortunately my flight over from London was delayed by 27 hours so the trip was cut even shorter. I still had my birthday in Illinois, the first in many years, but the journey was exhausting and the whole ordeal left me quite uncharacteristically emotional.

It was such a stressful summer. I was at my wits end with shared living and had moved into a tiny and drafty 1-bedroom flat that I could just afford. C put her flat on the market just as the recession hit. Her mum started chemo. It was hard to see any silver linings amongst all the gray clouds. We kept repeating the mantra “It’ll be fine.” Life had guided us toward each other for a reason and it would guide us through all of this the same way. We just needed to keep strong and, in time, it would all be fine...somehow.

I remember sitting with C in front of two glasses of cool white wine at the shore in Leith after work one afternoon. We were tense, fed up and I don’t think we were even looking at each other. Somehow, through the course of the conversation we both finally expelled all of the fears we had been holding back. Ironically, sharing our fears with each other was the only way we could be strong together. In that moment I learned what it means to be a partner. I had never shared my fears about anything with anyone before, but never once did I feel vulnerable or alone. C was there for me and I was there for her at this impossibly difficult time. Our support for each other is unwavering.

And then the pieces gradually started to fall into place. Despite the housing market crash, C sold her flat (and made a tidy profit) in early July. Her reward was to watch all her belongings driven off to storage and move into my tiny flat with me. She arrived with nothing more than two suitcases and a couple of potted plants. It was certainly very cosy, but we were finally together in our own space. C’s mum successfully made it through her treatment and began the long road to recovery. As a means of exhaling, we did what we do best – we went on holiday!

The two weeks we spent in Florida and Georgia were nothing short of perfection. We cruised around in a sexy Ford Mustang called Sally, taking in downtowns, uptowns and backwaters with complete abandon. It was what all holidays should be – exactly the opposite of our real life. We were in gluttonous America; we did whatever we wanted and faced no obstacles.

At the end of the trip, C flew home to Scotland and I flew home to my Mom’s for a week. It was hard to leave her and I would have loved to bring her back to continue our adventure, especially as it was Homecoming week at IWU. Unfortunately it was still not the right time for her to join me but I had an incredible visit. I was able to spend a lot of time with many of my friends from college and I got to be a part of the ongoing planning programme for my little brother’s upcoming wedding. Amazing.

At the same time, C arrived back to a typical October in Scotland and spent the first night shivering under 5 blankets. She understandably took the decision that we deserved somewhere bigger and warmer...immediately. Cold is a great motivator and in a few short days she had found just the place, which she showed to me two days after I got back. We moved into what is now our home in late October 2008. It suits us perfectly: a modern and airy 2-bed flat, quietly tucked away but still in walking distance to the city centre.

A few months later we decided we could share it with 2 perfectly behaved goldfish named ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Spike’. I feel compelled to say the names were chosen by our nephews.

We regularly reflect on the hurdles we had to overcome to secure our home together and we will never take for granted the opportunities that this place affords us, in particular: space to spend quality time together, without forward-planning; respite from the normal stresses of work and city-living; and a venue for hosting friends and family (we’re slowly getting better at this).

On the 31^st December 2008 we rang in the New Year by listening to Edinburgh’s famous fireworks from the warmth of our living room. It had been one hell of an exhausting year and we were eager to see it end. Yet, from where we were sitting it was clear that, somehow, everything was going to be fine. We had gotten through it together and had grown stronger in the process. It was also clear that living together was merely the first step in us pledging our commitment to one another. 2009 was going to be a busy year, with two weddings in the diary...

Go Forth and Multiply

It is a rather compelling experience to learn about something only to conclude that the new information confuses things further. This is how I feel after every ‘session’ I spend reading about same-sex marriage debates in the USA. The only comparison I can make is to a rubix cube: every time I manage to get one face in order, I end up having to destroy it to complete the next face. I realised from the outset that this topic is a rather big beast, but I am surprised to still be discovering new ‘faces’ with every session. While I know this is a topic I will re-visit here often, I am really struggling to find the right place to begin my interrogation.

It seems to me that the point of most contention is the particularly messy business of trying to discern between the traditional and civil aspects of marriage. In short:

Traditional marriage covers the religious/moral aspects of the union.

Civil marriage is essentially the legal contract by which the federal and state governments extend certain rights and responsibilities to consenting adults.

These two concepts are not mutually exclusive; any form of governance is inevitably influenced by values-based agendas that change (sometimes drastically) over time. Everyone would agree that there is a limit to what the government should spend its time (and money) regulating when it comes to marriage. Unfortunately, people disagree on exactly where that threshold should be.

Not Republicans, though. Apparently this issue unites 80% of Republicans. Candidates for the Chair of the Republican National Conference (RNC) recently cited the importance of Traditional Marriage in preserving the integrity of the nuclear family unit, providing healthy environments for children and defining who we are as Americans (link below). In their opinion, it is the government’s primary objective to ensure that marriage remains a union of one man and one woman (under God), primarily for the purpose of procreating.

Is this really what the current marriage laws do?

With very few exceptions, the requirements for people to enter into a marriage are established by state governments. The criteria have changed over time according to what is socially acceptable. The Civil Rights movement sparked the most recent major overhaul of these laws, and it was as recent as 2000 that Alabama became the last state to repeal its constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage.

At the moment, most states will consider three things:

 A couples’ genetic proximity – this is to prevent close blood relatives from marrying. Around half of states require you to go beyond your first cousin. These laws came about after sociological studies published in the mid-1840s indicated cousin marriages resulted in unfit offspring. Interestingly, further study has concluded there is no significant correlation and the USA remains one of the only countries with legal prohibition of cousin marriages.

Both individual’s ability to consent to the marriage, usually by requiring they are of a minimum age and mental capacity. I can see an argument that these traits will ensure the couple can sufficiently care for any offspring, but suspect they also go some way towards protecting the individuals entering the marriage, as vulnerable members of society, from being abused.

Both individual’s gender – the topic we are currently grappling with. Obviously two individuals of the same sex cannot procreate without some form of third-party intervention.

I suppose these requirements do go some way toward ensuring a viable breeding pair, but surely this is not a comprehensive framework for preserving the integrity of the nuclear family unit. For starters: there is no assessment of a heterosexual couples’ fertility; children are not a required outcome of marriage; nor is there a government mandate to require couples who have had children out of wedlock to get married. There is also no assessment of a couple’s long-term compatibility to consider whether, if they do have kids, they have the tenacity to stay together. Can you imagine the public response if these reforms were suggested?

Under this logic, same-sex couples have the same procreation potential as infertile heterosexual couples – yet infertile heterosexual couples are not prohibited from marrying. Nor is a marriage license required for same-sex couples or infertile heterosexual couples to have children – either through surrogacy, artificial insemination or adoption. At this point, proponents of Traditional Marriage will usually question whether or not same-sex couples can adequately parent a child and scientists all over the world are rushing to provide evidence to support one side or the other.

Has the true motivation behind preserving Traditional Marriage revealed itself yet?

How confusing is this: A 2009 poll in Iowa found that 92% of those surveyed said gay marriage in the state had led to ‘no real change’ in their lives. Yet, a 2010 poll found that only 44% of Iowans supported same-sex marriage. I know statistics aren’t to be trusted, but this does demonstrate something important: the Traditional Marriage movement is not about preserving the sanctity of marriage – it exists, quite simply, to exclude same-sex couples from equally accessing the benefits, rights and privileges associated with marriage. The arguments used are offensive and the entire debate does more to contribute to the destruction of young peoples’ mental and physical wellbeing than it does to protect children because it perpetuates the culture of hate and discrimination.

Consider how this makes me feel:

The government considers it unsuitable for me to marry my close relatives, anyone under the age of 18, anyone who is mentally incapable of making decisions or any woman. This tells me that, in the eyes of the government, homosexuality is on par with incest, paedophilia and abusing people with learning disabilities – all of which are criminal offenses.

As a young person I felt ashamed of who I was and the feelings I had; as a result, I hid myself away from friends and family until I could escape to a context where I felt safe enough to be ‘out’. I don’t ever remember anyone saying that being gay was wrong, but I concluded from the (American) world around me that it was not acceptable.

In a way I was fortunate. Not everyone can leave their situation or create a space where they can fit in, particularly when they are young. I never suffered bullying in school as a result of my sexuality but the evidence of bullying across the USA is overwhelming. It is driving bright young people to kill themselves. Where is their protection?

More importantly, where do you think these bullies draw their justification from?

Children aren’t raised solely by their parents. They mimic the behaviour of the adults around them and draw so much of their worldly understanding and self-worth from their interactions with teachers, church elders, peers and, perhaps most influential, the media. Adults are fuelling the fire of homophobia in our country. Rather than working to protect children, state and federal legislators who oppose marriage equality are complicit in perpetuating this hatred to the detriment of everyone. Rather than helping to keep families together, they are tearing families apart.

It was essentially the subtle hatred of gays in the USA that drove me to leave, so that I could be who I was without fear of discrimination. Now, with DOMA in place and the Traditional Marriage movement seemingly gaining momentum, it is the institutionalised discrimination that directly excludes me, like so many others, from returning with my foreign partner. 

Reference:

RNC Candidates debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmuJ-wtnPEI&feature=player_embedded

Public Opinion of Gay Marriage in Iowa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Iowa