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Supreme Court will tackle same-sex marriage

Interesting but highly speculative on the part of the CBO. (The actual report: CBO | The Potential Budgetary Impact of Recognizing Same-Sex Marriages ) I do not anticipate that the marriage penalty will last long when it returns next year which is where a lot of the revenue seems to have been assumed to come from. I am equally skeptical that the other revenue numbers will materialize anytime soon as the report assumes that SSM marriage will include SS adoption of kids who receive medicaid etc and they will leave their estates to the kids instead of to charity and therefore create estate tax revenue. People who may be okay with SSM may not be so okay with two gay men adopting boys. That is going to be a tougher row to hoe IMHO.

They already adopt, whether people are okay with it or not. Only 1 state won't allow any sort of adoption for homosexuals, and that will change if same sex marriage is made completely legal across the US by the SCOTUS or even just fully equivalent to opposite sex marriage in that state.

And I believe way too many people have the wrong impression about SS to begin with. Only about 4% of spouses now actually receive spousal SS. I honestly believe that will go down further now that more and more dual working spouses come to retirement age because spousal SS only applies if the spouse didn't work at all or is only earned <1/2 of their spouse's SS entitlement. Chances are good that most same sex couples both worked.

Also, this didn't take into account, I'm pretty sure, all of the court battles that are being fought and will be fought over this issue up til the point where same sex marriage is completely legal throughout the US. This isn't just going to drop even if the SCOTUS rules that the laws are good, and it is likely we will get a much less solid ruling if it doesn't just strike down the laws altogether. You will have battles over whether couples who became same sex couples after they were married are entitled to still be recognized by the federal government. There are the battles over recognition issues in individual states. There are court battles over custody of children of same sex couples now that take much more time and effort due to them not having legal marriage recognition and in many cases adoption options. Most of these would go away or at least be greatly reduced when same sex marriage is legal.

Of course the marriage penalty is low now considering what it has been in the past. But it will likely always exist only because the government does offer two options for married couples to file taxes, and it will always have people who pick the one they believe will be best for them or that they have always picked without knowing the other one would be better as long as both options are available, at least to a point.

Personally I think they figured a low amount because it didn't take into consideration all the advantages that the government sees when people marry. But even if this estimate was high, there is no way it is so high that it would cost the government a lot of money to allow same sex couples to marry. There just aren't that many same sex couples out there to do this.
 
People don't mind entrusting kids to lesbians. They have been doing it for generations in the school system without incident. They are not going to be inclined to let little boys be adopted into homes of gay men given the history of some gay men abusing positions of trust over children--church, Scouts, etc. If you look at a lot of websites for foreign adoption agencies, some will not let any SS couple adopt, but others will only let single women/lesbian couples and not single men/gay couples. It is a powerful stigma that would have to be overcome and I think a much bigger hurdle than the marriage one.

This did not involve gay men, no matter what those people may believe. Those were pedophiles. Only idiots would believe that someone like Sandusky was gay. He in fact adopted children completely legally with his opposite sex wife. So much for protecting the children from the gay men. Maybe they should worry more about protecting the children from the pedophiles instead of stereotyping since the children are in much more danger from a man who is hiding his pedophilia simply by having a legal wife. This stigma against gay men actually puts more children in danger than it helps since it allows true pedophiles a means to redirect attention to another group while they molest the children they are allowed to adopt because they don't fit into the group being accused.

But once same sex marriage is legal, or even before if need be, the laws on adoption that wouldn't allow male same sex couples to adopt could be challenged too, particularly if they are allowing females, single or in relationships to adopt because they are discriminatory for no other reason but irrational fear.
 
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Also, this didn't take into account, I'm pretty sure, all of the court battles that are being fought and will be fought over this issue up til the point where same sex marriage is completely legal throughout the US. This isn't just going to drop even if the SCOTUS rules that the laws are good, and it is likely we will get a much less solid ruling if it doesn't just strike down the laws altogether. You will have battles over whether couples who became same sex couples after they were married are entitled to still be recognized by the federal government. There are the battles over recognition issues in individual states. There are court battles over custody of children of same sex couples now that take much more time and effort due to them not having legal marriage recognition and in many cases adoption options. Most of these would go away or at least be greatly reduced when same sex marriage is legal.

Of course the marriage penalty is low now considering what it has been in the past. But it will likely always exist only because the government does offer two options for married couples to file taxes, and it will always have people who pick the one they believe will be best for them or that they have always picked without knowing the other one would be better as long as both options are available, at least to a point.

Personally I think they figured a low amount because it didn't take into consideration all the advantages that the government sees when people marry. But even if this estimate was high, there is no way it is so high that it would cost the government a lot of money to allow same sex couples to marry. There just aren't that many same sex couples out there to do this.

The legal issues interest me more than the money, though the CBO report didn't really address spousal benefits to SS military couples which might be the bigger expense. Frankly, if one state says you are legally married there, then other states and feds should be forced to recognize it through full faith and credit clause. I have always thought that was the better argument than equal protection on the issue.
 
But once same sex marriage is legal, or even before if need be, the laws on adoption that wouldn't allow male same sex couples to adopt could be challenged too, particularly if they are allowing females, single or in relationships to adopt because they are discriminatory for no other reason but irrational fear.

We shall see, but I cannot think of a circumstance where discrimination wasn't/isn't rooted in the irrational category.....
 
We shall see, but I cannot think of a circumstance where discrimination wasn't/isn't rooted in the irrational category.....

But that is why we challenge laws believed to be based in discrimination, to get them to a place where they can be decided on their merits or struck down because they are all about discrimination and nothing more.
 
The legal issues interest me more than the money, though the CBO report didn't really address spousal benefits to SS military couples which might be the bigger expense. Frankly, if one state says you are legally married there, then other states and feds should be forced to recognize it through full faith and credit clause. I have always thought that was the better argument than equal protection on the issue.

With or without marriage being legal, the military now is looking to try to offer same sex couples equal benefits. The military recognizes that there are major problems with accepting one set of couples, while not recognizing a different set, especially now that DADT is gone. And the military considers family important to the morale and wellbeing of the troops. Same sex spouses are family.

They are restricted legally by DOMA, but DOMA will not last. It can't. Whether it goes down by the Court this year or goes down by federal legislation, the tide has already turned that a majority wants at the very least equal federal benefits for same sex couples. Within the next 5 years, I predict we will see DOMA gone, if not sooner. The state laws may last longer, depending on how the SCOTUS rules on Prop 8, but I see them gone within a decade or two.
 
No one is against gay rights, that is what you on the left forget............We just don't want the definition of marriage changed............call it anyhting you want............give them every right a straight has..........just don't defile straight marriage............is that to hard?

Oh puh-lease NP. If you could, you would personally prevent every gay person from having ANY rights. You were completely against civil unions until the reality of gay marriage was staring you in the face....now all of a sudden you are ok with Civil Unions. Well....you know what.....marriage equality is coming in 2013, so you'd better get used to it. Answer this question NP, what defiles "marriage" more.....gays marrying the person that they love or people committing adultry? I would suspect that straights have done more to defile the institution of marriage more than gays ever will.
 
No one is against gay rights, that is what you on the left forget............We just don't want the definition of marriage changed............call it anyhting you want............give them every right a straight has..........just don't defile straight marriage............is that to hard?

Seriously? A definition. Real people are suffering and someone, ANYONE, cares more about a definition. This is just a buzzword, a euphemism to disguise the bigotry. Who could possibly care more about a definition, an arbitrary mental classification, than the actual problems that people face? It's insane. It's nonsense. It's a lie. There is no way to live past twelve and be that completely lacking in basic human empathy. The only kind of person who could care about definitions more than real people's problems is a sociopath.

So please, can we lay this nonsense to rest? No one actually buys this argument, on either side. It's proven to be factually false, since there is no "definition of marriage" the way it's presented here, nor is any notion of marriage universal among cultures, timeframes, or even within our culture. It's a false argument, and it's an insane one. Can we please stop trotting out this swill?
 
Are you kidding me? Just let one more Conservative Justice get on the court and you will see.

Thank GOD for Obama.....that is never going to happen in your lifetime or even mine. Obama's re-election saved the Supreme Court from falling into the hands of right-wing activists that seek to undermine our Constitution.
Obama will get at least one more appointment, probably 2, quite possibly 3 and an outside chance of even 4. The Supreme Court is saved for the next generation.
 
It sounds like Scalia has already made up his mind.
 
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