TwistedCopper said:
How are their rights not violated? Well it's not the answer I was looking for Mingez. I was hoping to see an actual rights infringement or denial of liberty to these people. I was hoping so because I do not see that it exists. As I stated, they have the same rights and liberties that you and I do. What true benefit would they have by being legally married? Like I wrote earlier, a will/ living will (which is no harder to do than getting married) can rectify their gripes.
You see, there is no real benefit for anyone to have a "legal" marraige, conventional or not. I honestly beleive that homosexuals are just trying to win a battle. Trying to get some "respect" and special priveledge, just like several other special interest groups in this country.
What have they ever earned other than special priveledge? I seriously doubt their motives.
If you insist, I did some research:
By the request of Representative Henry J Hyde (Republican), in 1996-SEP chairperson of the House Committee on the Judiciary, a list was compiled (And is available to the public). He was , and asked the General Accounting Office "to identify federal laws in which benefits, rights and privileges are contingent on marital status."
Their response, which runs 75 pages, is available online at:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi...me=og97016.txt&directory=/diskb/wais/data/gao
The list below was compiled for a couple living in the United States. However, similar provisions exist in many other countries.
On the order of
1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over
1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:
- joint parenting;
- joint adoption;
- joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents);
- status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;
- joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;
- dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;
- immigration and residency for partners from other countries;
- inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;
- joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;
- inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate);
- benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare;
- spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;
- veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;
- joint filing of customs claims when traveling;
- wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;
- bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;
- decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;
- crime victims' recovery benefits;
- loss of consortium tort benefits;
- domestic violence protection orders;
- judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;
- and more....
Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for. For example, absent a legal (or civil) marriage, there is no guaranteed joint responsibility to the partner and to third parties (including children) in such areas as child support, debts to creditors, taxes, etc. In addition, private employers and institutions often give other economic privileges and other benefits (special rates or memberships) only to married couples. And, of course, when people cannot marry, they are denied all the emotional and social benefits and responsibilities of marriage as well.
So, even I was unaware until I had some time to look into it. There ARE certain rights afforded to the married.
Believe me I am no racist, but if we want to speak of liberty then lets do so across the entire spectrum.
