Same-Sex Couples Want Their Rights
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Same-Sex Couples Want Their Rights
By Linda Siegle
Copyright by The Journal
My friends have been together for 37 years. They finally got married a few years ago at the United Church of Christ in Santa Fe, but it wasn't a legal marriage because my friends are gay.
Longtime fixtures in Santa Fe, Joe and Bob have given much to our community. Joe, with a doctorate in social work, was employed by the state for decades and when he retired became a volunteer lobbyist extraordinaire for children and their families. Joe worked with the Legislature and the courts to end the dysfunctional foster care system that kept kids in limbo for years without returning them to their families or allowing them to be adopted. Bob retired from the New Mexico Municipal League after 20 years. His advice to cities throughout the state kept many from a legal misstep. Many of us have seen Bob acting in various productions at the Santa Fe Playhouse. Joe and Bob created the Fiesta Melodrama in 1961 and Bob told me he has missed only three productions.
These men are your friends, colleagues and neighbors— people who love this community and who have given much to it. Yet they are second-class citizens. Their long term and powerful loving commitment to each other is not recognized by the state. Their ability to provide for each other, protect each other, make health care decisions for each other and inherit from each other is controlled by costly and complicated legal documents that they must initiate.
Any heterosexual couple can go to a county clerk’s office for a $25 marriage license which automatically makes them eligible for more than 400 state benefits and 1,000 federal benefits. Such benefits— unavailable to Joe and Bob— include pension and insurance benefits for a surviving spouse, inheritance (without taxes), bereavement leave, burial decisions, crimes victims benefits, right to file joint tax returns, avoidance of estate tax on partner's benefits, survivor Social Security benefits, health care decision-making and wrongful death benefits, just to name a few.
The social conservatives of the right wing say we must forever prevent "gay marriage." After all if Joe and Bob could get married the very foundation and structure of all civilization would crumble By allowing gay people to get married we could do what the Soviet Union tried to do for years— topple the American empire. This issue is so important that the Senate of the United States of America spent three entire days last week debating a constitutional amendment to define marriage as that between one man and one woman.
That debate began even though everyone in the Senate knew that they did not have the 67 votes to pass it. (The measure was effectively killed in a Senate vote last Wednesday.) That debate began even though the war in Iraq is going quite badly, the Iranians are working to develop nuclear weapons, the national debt is now more than $8 trillion, existing immigration laws are not enforced, the North Koreans do have nuclear weapons, federal spending is out of control and on and on.
That debate began because campaign money and votes can be raised and counted on the back of people who are gay Nothing invigorates the social conservatives more than the specter of homosexuals actual loving each other, supporting each other and caring for our families.
The right wing says because of gay marriage and abortion we have lost our values. I agree we have lost our values. We are a country which has lost our moral course, where our ship of state has sadly gone adrift. But it is not because of gay marriage. Perhaps it is because we do not care about the less fortunate among us anymore. We cannot be bothered to adequately fund hunger programs and safe housing for our citizens. Our education programs leave us behind almost every industrialized nation in math and science. Forty-eight million of our citizens do not have health insurance. We are still 16th in infant mortality compared to the rest of the world. And yet our Senate debates on whether people of the same sex should be able to protect their families and support each other.
All partisan efforts in the past to write discriminatory social policy into our Constitution have fortunately failed. Our sacred Constitution is safe until the next time the politics of division are needed to motivate someone's political base.
Joe died the day after Thanksgiving last year. My partner of 16 years and I spread his ashes near his favorite canyon in Arizona. The pendulum will swing in 15 or 20 years in favor of same-sex marriage because the majority of younger people don't see a problem.
But it is too late for Joe and Bob.
Siegle lives in Santa Fe and has represented Equality New Mexico as a legislative lobbyist.
Same-Sex Couples Want Their Rights
By Linda Siegle
Copyright by The Journal
My friends have been together for 37 years. They finally got married a few years ago at the United Church of Christ in Santa Fe, but it wasn't a legal marriage because my friends are gay.
Longtime fixtures in Santa Fe, Joe and Bob have given much to our community. Joe, with a doctorate in social work, was employed by the state for decades and when he retired became a volunteer lobbyist extraordinaire for children and their families. Joe worked with the Legislature and the courts to end the dysfunctional foster care system that kept kids in limbo for years without returning them to their families or allowing them to be adopted. Bob retired from the New Mexico Municipal League after 20 years. His advice to cities throughout the state kept many from a legal misstep. Many of us have seen Bob acting in various productions at the Santa Fe Playhouse. Joe and Bob created the Fiesta Melodrama in 1961 and Bob told me he has missed only three productions.
These men are your friends, colleagues and neighbors— people who love this community and who have given much to it. Yet they are second-class citizens. Their long term and powerful loving commitment to each other is not recognized by the state. Their ability to provide for each other, protect each other, make health care decisions for each other and inherit from each other is controlled by costly and complicated legal documents that they must initiate.
Any heterosexual couple can go to a county clerk’s office for a $25 marriage license which automatically makes them eligible for more than 400 state benefits and 1,000 federal benefits. Such benefits— unavailable to Joe and Bob— include pension and insurance benefits for a surviving spouse, inheritance (without taxes), bereavement leave, burial decisions, crimes victims benefits, right to file joint tax returns, avoidance of estate tax on partner's benefits, survivor Social Security benefits, health care decision-making and wrongful death benefits, just to name a few.
The social conservatives of the right wing say we must forever prevent "gay marriage." After all if Joe and Bob could get married the very foundation and structure of all civilization would crumble By allowing gay people to get married we could do what the Soviet Union tried to do for years— topple the American empire. This issue is so important that the Senate of the United States of America spent three entire days last week debating a constitutional amendment to define marriage as that between one man and one woman.
That debate began even though everyone in the Senate knew that they did not have the 67 votes to pass it. (The measure was effectively killed in a Senate vote last Wednesday.) That debate began even though the war in Iraq is going quite badly, the Iranians are working to develop nuclear weapons, the national debt is now more than $8 trillion, existing immigration laws are not enforced, the North Koreans do have nuclear weapons, federal spending is out of control and on and on.
That debate began because campaign money and votes can be raised and counted on the back of people who are gay Nothing invigorates the social conservatives more than the specter of homosexuals actual loving each other, supporting each other and caring for our families.
The right wing says because of gay marriage and abortion we have lost our values. I agree we have lost our values. We are a country which has lost our moral course, where our ship of state has sadly gone adrift. But it is not because of gay marriage. Perhaps it is because we do not care about the less fortunate among us anymore. We cannot be bothered to adequately fund hunger programs and safe housing for our citizens. Our education programs leave us behind almost every industrialized nation in math and science. Forty-eight million of our citizens do not have health insurance. We are still 16th in infant mortality compared to the rest of the world. And yet our Senate debates on whether people of the same sex should be able to protect their families and support each other.
All partisan efforts in the past to write discriminatory social policy into our Constitution have fortunately failed. Our sacred Constitution is safe until the next time the politics of division are needed to motivate someone's political base.
Joe died the day after Thanksgiving last year. My partner of 16 years and I spread his ashes near his favorite canyon in Arizona. The pendulum will swing in 15 or 20 years in favor of same-sex marriage because the majority of younger people don't see a problem.
But it is too late for Joe and Bob.
Siegle lives in Santa Fe and has represented Equality New Mexico as a legislative lobbyist.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 5:58 AM
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