Prop 8?

What's your point? The children exist no matter who is raising them. The state has equal interest in the child raised by either a heterosexual couple or a homosexual one.

Should children being raised by gays have less? If so, why? If not, then why try and legislate measures such as prop8?

Measures such as Prop8 hurt those children who are being raised by a gay couple. The government has an equal interest in their success.

You keep it up with this moniker that straight people are owed something because they can have kids. That because they produce offspring, they are more deserving of assistance etc.

What you continue to omit is that those privileges relating to children come to a parent independent of marital status. E.g. - You only get a child tax credit if you have a child.

Your attempt to muddy the waters by inserting rhetoric about raising children is irrelevant to a discussion on the issue of gays marrying. The privileges established by marriage are granted to couples with no children. Do you deny this fact?

Here's the link to the IRS site:

http://www.irs.gov/

Please show me the law or regulation that allows you to claim your girlfriend and her children as dependents.

You did look at the links I gave did you not?

Silly lady........................

You can not seem to understand that the society have an interest in promoting stable hetrosexual pair bondings to have as many of the children as possible being raised in two parents households that does not exist when we talking about homosexual relationships as they do not produce children within thier relationships.

Yes you do not need to be married to produce children however there does need to be sex between a man and a woman for the most part to have children. Yes there are sperm banks that get around that to some degree for .0000002 percent or so of children born in this country.

When the sperm banks and such technology account for any real number of children being born then we can revisit the issue of gay marriage but not before.

Yes we surely do pay for it when single people have children for the most part that why the society have an interest in promoting married between heterosexual couples!!!!!!!!!

Debra Debra here is a third link on the subject beyond this you can believe anything you care to.

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/4F006D32-9FB4-47FD-AB172E0C9B0F14AF/catID/3C3AF4CE-DB9E-48C4-8DFCFE2E47C91747/118/304/145/ART/


Claiming an Unmarried Partner as a Dependent on Your Tax Return
To claim tax benefits for your dependent partner, there are five tests your partner must pass.

If you financially support your partner (heterosexual or same-sex), you may be able to file a tax return as a single person and claim your partner as a dependent. To be able to do this legally, you must meet the following five tests.

Support. The supporting partner must provide at least 50% of the other partner's total support for the year. Support includes food, shelter, clothing, medical and dental care, education, entertainment, and just about any expense you can think of.

Citizen or resident. The supported person must be a U.S. citizen, resident alien, or citizen of Canada or Mexico.

Income. The supported person's taxable income cannot exceed $2,900. Nontaxable money, such as gifts, welfare benefits, and nontaxable Social Security benefits, don't count toward gross income.

Relationship. Under IRS regulations, a person who lived in your home for the entire year can be considered a dependent as long as the relationship does not violate local law. Our advice: If you meet the other four tests but may be violating the law in a state where fornication, cohabitation, or sodomy is still against the law, go ahead and claim your partner as a dependent anyway. Recent court decisions have made those laws questionable at best, and the worst that can happen is that the IRS won't allow your deduction and your tax bill will be recomputed without the deduction.

Unmarried person. If the supported person is married and files a joint tax return with a legal spouse, the supporting partner in this relationship cannot claim the supported person as a dependent. There's one exception: If the married couple did not earn enough to have to file a tax return and did so only to get a refund, the supporting partner can claim the dependent.

To learn more about laws affecting unmarried couples, get Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, by Ralph Warner, Toni Ihara, and Frederick Hertz (Nolo).



Buy it now!
Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples by Attorney Ralph Warner, Toni Ihara, J.D. & Attorney Frederick Hertz.



Property Rights of Unmarried Couples FAQ

Living Together Contracts

Health Care Directives and Financial Powers of Attorney for Your Partner

Parenting for Unmarried Couples FAQ

Claiming an Unmarried Partner as a Dependent on Your Tax Return

Common Law Marriage FAQ






Wills & Estate Planning


Marriage







Lawyer Directory


Website: Alternatives to Marriage Project


Nolo Podcasts

What does taking a tax deduction as a dependent for another person in your household who qualifies under those rules have to do with gay marriage? Answer: nothing.

From the same site:
Legal guide for gay and lesbian relationships:

Summary

Protect your rights -- protect your relationship!

Now more than ever, it's important that you take the proper legal steps to define and protect your relationship in the eyes of the law. If you don't, you run the risk of being shut out of each other's lives -- and the lives of children you co-parent -- in times of medical, financial or personal crisis.

This practical, plain-English guide shows lesbian and gay couples how to:

* make practical decisions about living together
* obtain domestic partner benefits
* make medical decisions for each other when needed
* take care of each other's finances when one partner is incapacitated
* leave property to each other
* have and raise children through adoption, donor insemination, surrogacy or foster parenting

The 14th edition is updated to provide the latest information on same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in the U.S., Canada and around the world. It also includes a CD-ROM that helps you create essential legal documents.


Press Reviews
"A good primer for couples wanting basic legal advice on domestic partnerships, parenting, making financial and medical decisions, buying a home together, and estate planning."
Curve

"A guide that lovers will do well to embrace. Buy this book."
Bay Area Reporter

"The edge of the law… will be much less fearful for those who have this book."

Los Angeles Times
"Most legal guidebooks -- including those written for lawyers -- ignore lesbian and gay couples. For almost 20 years, this has been the outstanding exception, and it remains the standard for lesbians and gay men who want solid, basic answers."
Matt Coles, Director,
Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, ACLU

"This first-rate guide demystifies the legal process and provides an invaluable resource for gay and lesbian people engaged in the process of family creation."
Attorney Urvashi Vaid,
Director of the Policy Institute of the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

"Informative for any unmarried couple."
San Francisco Chronicle

"This book provides a legal roadmap for anyone looking for guidance towards protecting his or her family. I commend its authors for making available this important information."
Elizabeth Birch,
Executive Director,
Human Rights Campaign
"Excellent, comprehensive reference."

End of excerpt

* have and raise children through adoption, donor insemination, surrogacy or foster parenting This same section is in any of the legal book advice for heterosexual couples.

You're hanging precariously on one thread that in all the objections of legislatures, you cannot find one instance except, perhaps, on a religious basis. It's not in any consideration before the California Supreme Court in regards to Prop 8. Marriage licenses are not issued by churches and churches by their tax exempt status do not have the right to influence legislatures or any political process. If they were to do that, they are in danger of loosing their tax exempt status.

You're grasping at a non sequitur straw from the disintegrated straw man.

I've never said that it's not in the state's interest to promote heterosexual couples. What I'm saying is that it's not in the state's interest to exclusively support heterosexual couples.

Also, having as many children as possible does not equate to contributing more. It is not the production of children but the raising of them that is the contribution. Further, if you have like 16 kids (like Ms. Octomom), you absorb way more public funding that could be spread out over more families. Think of how crowded our classrooms are already.

Now, I'm not saying that she doesn't have the right to have as many babies as she desires, but I reject that her contribution to society will, or should be, measured in any way by the number of offspring she has.

Tell me why a straight couple that can't/won't have kids should be able to marry but not a gay couple? What interest does the state have in "promoting" the straight couple that it doesn't have for the gay couple?

If (1) you don't have to be married to have a child, and (2) you don't have to be able to have a child to be married, what's the point of your argument? You can't seem to build the bridge you need.

I guess until that point, we can't let infertile couples marry either then. After all, the majority of those using this technology currently are heterosexuals is it not?

I'd love to see you explain to a heterosexual couple that the state doesn't have any interest in them getting married because they can't have children without the assistance of technology. I'd absolutely pay money to see you make a fool of yourself.

The bottom line here is that you just don't WANT gays to be married, and you're attempting to rationalize your view as being anything but your own personal bigotry. You certainly skate around answering the questions about the holes in your logic, it's not as if you are stepping up to the plate to meet them head on.

If you were so confident in your views, you wouldn't be trying to dodge these questions, you'd be welcoming them.

T
K
O

Promoting marriage doesn't result in more marriages. The trend in the US has been the opposite, because of several reasons. One is the simple fact that a marriage attaches a tax penalty. More people stay single based on myriad of reasons including unemployment (more college graduates now live with their parents), and the cost of weddings. Many young workers have devoted so much to their jobs, their social life suffered.

It's not just the "Octo Mom," there are low income or no income women who are married (with or without the husband still in the home) and unmarried who are spitting out babies like a harvesting machine. The US does need them to kill off and maim in their unprovoked foreign war. Of all the ills of the world, why do right wing politicos want to focus attention on gay marriage? Could it be all the evil damage they are doing elsewhere?

Debra there was a lady by the name of Johnson on this group who kept insisting that Obama was not born in Hawaii and therefore was not a citizen and could not be President.

Somehow I am thinking that you have a lot in common with that lady and if every living person who had held the position of Secretary of the Treasury and the ghost of Hamilton thrown in would come to your front door to inform you that you can indeed take a partner as a dependent on your tax returns assuming he would meet the other conditions you would not believe them.

Hell if every current Supreme Court Judge and the ghost of Marshall would then follow the Secretaries of the Treasury and informed you that you happen to be wrong that the Equal Protection Clause does not force the society to allow gay marriages, you would then tell them that they are also wrong.

In a way I almost envy your being that disconnected with the real universe.

You're slowly but surely moving out of the Universe:

Where is Gay Marriage Legal?
Gay Marriage Around the World

By Ramon Johnson
Updated: November 5, 2008

Read this comprehensive guide to gay marriage laws around the world:

Nations that recognize gay marriage:

Canada
In June of 2005, the Canadian Parliament enacted a law allowing legal marriage for same-sex couples.

Belgium
The second nation to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003.

Netherlands
The first country to grant gay marriage in 2001.

Norway
Became the sixth country to legalize same-sex marriage on May 11, 2008. (read more)

South Africa
South Africa became the fifth nation to recognize gay marriage in 2005.

Spain
Spain became the fourth nation to allow gay marriage on June 29, 2005.

US states that recognize gay marriage:

California
In May of 2008, California's Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage in the state was discriminatory (read more). However, Proposition 8, a voter initiative was passed, effectively striking down the court ruling. Marriage in California is now defined as between one man and one woman. More on Prop 8.

Connecticut
In a 4 to 3 decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage, making it the third state to allow legal gay marriage.

New Jersey*
New Jersey is the third U.S. state to offer same-sex civil unions behind Vermont and Connecticut. The new same-sex civil unions law, which goes into affect on February 19, 2007, grants gay and lesbian couples the same rights as marriage. *(Although same-sex unions in New Jersey are classified as civil unions, couples are granted the same rights as married heterosexual couples.) read more

New York
Note: By a May 29, 2008 directive, New York only recognizes gay marriages from couples legally married outside of the state. read more

Massachusetts
On May 17, 2004 Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage. The State of Massachusetts also issues licenses to gay couples from New Mexico and Rhode Island since neither state explicitly prohibits same-sex marriage.

Nations that allow same-sex partnerships or unions:


Brazil*
*Only the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul allows same-sex civil unions (June 2006).

Croatia
Civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been granted since 2003.

Denmark
Legal civil partnerships have been allowed since 1989.

Finland
Has offered registered partnership benefits since September 2001.

France
Pacte Civil de Solidarité” (PACS), or “Civil Solidarity Pacts,” were instituted in France on November 9, 1999.

Germany
Gay couples can register as "Life Partnerships," granting lesser financial and pension benefits than marriage.

Hungary
Gay couples have been protected under common-law marriages since 1995; however they are not eligible for legal marriage.

Iceland
Since 1996, gay Icelanders have been protected under registered partnerships.

Luxembourg
Civil partnership legislation modeled after France's PACS were introduced in Luxembourg in 2004.

Mexico
Same sex civil unions were legalized in Mexico City in November 2006 and in the state of Coahuila on January of 2007, essentially making civil unions legal in all of Mexico (by law, each Mexican state must recognize the laws granted to individuals of the other states). (More on Gay Mexico)

New Zealand
In December, 2004, New Zealand enacted legislation recognizing same-sex civil unions.

Norway
Since 1996, gay Norwegians have been protected under registered partnerships.

Portugal
Same-sex partners have the same rights as opposite-sex partners in common law marriage.

Sweden
Swedish same-sex couples have been able to register under domestic partnership laws since 1995.

Switzerland
Same-sex couples are given limited legal benefits with civil recognition.

United Kingdom
Domestic partners can register under the Civil Partnership Act. This legislation took affect in December 5, 2005 giving registered same-sex couples all of the rights, privileges and responsibilities of married heterosexual couples. The Civil Partnership Act applies across all of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

US States that allow same-sex partnerships or unions:

Connecticut
Although Connecticut defines marriage as between a man and woman, it became the second U.S. state to grant same-sex civil unions in April, 2005.

New Hampshire
New Hampshire, home of the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, became the 4th state behind Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut to offer civil unions. Same-sex partners were allowed to register for civil unions in January 2008. More on New Hampshire Civil Unions

Oregon
Under Oregon's new domestic partnership law gay and lesbian couples are eligible for all the state-wide rights and benefits of marriage. Oregon also outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation. (more)

Vermont
The first U.S. state to offer same-sex civil unions in 2000. Learn about Vermont civil unions.

Washington
On April 21, 2007, Washington's domestic partnership bill was signed into law giving gay and lesbian couples many of the benefits of marriage. (more)

Nations that ban same-sex unions:

Honduras
On March 29, 2005, the constitution of Honduras was amended banning same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.

Latvia
December 21, 2005 marked the day Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga signed into law a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Uganda
On September 29, 2005, legislation banning same-sex unions was signed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Penalties for gay marriage will be set in 2006. Under current law, homosexual acts are punishable by imprisonment from five years to life.

It does not produce a tax penalty unless both partners are in fairly high paying upper middle class careers and if only one have a high income then it work out to be a large plus for them.

Thank for bringing that up as it is far more likely that both partners in a gay relationship will be full time carreer people IE no children.

Given that I just can hear the great wall of whining about the so call married penalty if gays get to married!

Yeah, isn't heterosexual marriages wonderful? Hypocrites can't see their own weaknesses. I find it amusing when they argue points that are based on nothing but their religious belief and nothing more. They see the real world through rose colored glasses when they look at themselves, but fail to see the contradictions of their own positions.

Your "unless" doesn't negate that fact.

From Questia:

All, I repeat all of the gay couples I know for the last 50 some odd years, are extremely high in wealth. One of my friends, for example, in Palm Springs was with his partner for over 20 years and owned several businesses in PS including a hotel. He was also retired from serving as a bank executive, including the president. Because both partners are male and in the 50's through now, males got higher pay, most all of those couples were self-made wealthy. The richest gay person in Orange County is gay.

And what state of the US voted to allow gay married by the majority of the voters of that state?

Every time a state court had rule to allow it in fact a large movement of citizens move to block it or reverse the courts.

Please see your example of good old California.

Last I hear in at least half the states voters had gone to the trouble to change their states constitutaions to forbid their state courts from allowing gay marriages. ahead of any such rulings.

This is a cowardly way to avoid questions Billy.
K
O

That a majority of "voters" wish to deny equal rights to some of our citizens doesn't make them right.

How many votes would it take to make 1+1=0? All of them?

Billy is enjoying the cheap fair ride of populism right now, since he can't defend his argument.

The will of the people is only measured if they were to understand what they were truly asked. I think what is ultimately sad about the fate of Prop8 is that those who voted to put the ban up didn't think they had anything to lose but this kind of thing bruises all American's individual freedoms.

T
K
O