Re: Federal judge strikes down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage
Ask yourself this question honestly. You don't even have to answer here, this is a sort of self-reflection question for you and for everyone else who says the government shouldn't be involved in marriage:
Before it became obvious that same-sex marriage was going to happen, did you ever once express this belief? Or, as I suspect, did you only decide the government should get out of marriage when they started granting the right to people you disapprove of?
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but here are my comments:
I am totally in favor of same sex marriage.
However, well before it became an issue - it bugged the hell out of me that the govt was involved.
My boyfriend and I were living together; we were perfectly happy and didn't see why we needed the govt to make our pairing official. BUT - this was the mid-80s. There are a ton of benefits if we did the legal thing - he could be on my health care; less taxes if we sold our house; if one of us died, property taxes wouldn't go up if we were married officially, would if we weren't; hospital visitation was tied to legal status; on and on and on.
So while I did not need govt to sanction my relationship in any moral or emotional way - I needed the benefits that came with it so we got married. Easy to do; we were on a vacation in Hawaii and tied the knot.
Unfortunately, a same sex couple we knew did not have the same opportunity; longtime partners - almost 30 years - one of them died. The other had to sell the house, because he could not afford the increased property taxes (which would not have happened if they had been married).
So well before it was obvious that same-sex marriage would be happening I both a) said govt shouldn't be in the business of marriage and b) said that same sex couples should be able to get married; that it was ridiculous that my b/f and I got so many benefits just from getting married while that long-term couple couldn't. (we ended up divorcing; total time together , including dating, maybe 15 years? which couple was a better bet?)
(funny side note: I kept my name when we got married, as did he. After a few months, we hadn't gotten his medical card from <large hmo>. I asked my company to check into it; they asked the HMO and the HMO said basically "because we had different last names, they didn't believe we were married". My company, to their credit, said "if we say they are married, they are married" and we got covered. I assume the HMO doesn't do that anymore.)