Thursday 30 April 2009

QFT

DJW sums up perfectly my thoughts on continued attempts to prevent same sex marriage by attempts at prevariaction or passing the buck:
On the one hand, the wrong venue/method tactic of delaying marriage equality is annoying and tiresome. But it's heartening that we live in a climate where direct adovcacy of marriage discrimination is increasingly beyond the pale.
This sort of thing always reminds me of hearing people start sentences with "Now, I'm not a racist, but..." What they may say next may, in fact, be hideously ignorant and bigoted, but it actually does represent progress when people start realising they have to at least pretend to be OK with people different from themselves. That's not meant to imply those who say "We're not sure this is the right time to enshrine gay marriage" are necessarily as bad as someone who says "I'm not a racist, but have you ever noticed how the Chinese can't drive", I'm just using it as an illustration.

10 comments:

Dan Edmunds said...

Personally I think they should do away with government endorsed marriage in its entirety. They can have a standard “Marriage” type contract that can be taken out between two parties which would cover the rights of the two people (money if they divorce, who gets kids etc), and the ceremonies (religious or not) can still be conducted (and I like them and think they are a good idea), but they should do away with all of the government related “perks” (tax breaks, single form for married couple etc, etc). The government “marriage” is designed to support the rather outdated, man goes to work, loyal wife looks after home front, scenario and in my view doesn’t serve a useful purpose in today’s world where there is a bit more variety in the way people live their lives. Keep and even up the benefit for person or persons who have responsibility for a child to allow adequate support for families, but remove the whole marriage element as it doesn’t make a lot of sense in a lot of modern day scenarios and actually serves as an obstacle towards proper equality.

Guess that means I’m technically against gay marriage – And regular marriage – At least in a government related way (actually quite support the idea of marriage on a general principle – two people expressing their love and agreeing to stay with each other for the rest of their lives – all good as far as I’m concerned).

SpaceSquid said...

I quite agree that government endorsed marriage is antiquated, though without further thought I'm not sure how many perks I would suggest be removed from marriages, and how many I'd suggest be extended to various alternative forms of co-habitation (putting aside the difficulties in regulating such things).

Gooder said...

To be honest these days marriage doesn't really come with that many extra benefits. The tax benefits have pretty much all but disappeared.

Essentially what it does is make things easiser if someone dies when questions of next of kin and who inherits what.

SpaceSquid said...

The Tories have been talking about adding to them. Whether that will materialise if and when they return to power, I don't know.

Tomsk said...

Spielbergo, please tell me what these mysterious perks are as I would like to take advantage of them!

Tom

SpaceSquid said...

If you fight crime they immediately make it into a TV series.

BigHead said...

Don't really think marriage deserves any tax breaks, apart from where one half of the marriage earns a lot and the other half earns very little. The couple will be paying too much tax in this situation, and should get a reduction.

Dan Edmunds said...

Tom - Well again this may be me with my foreign country cap on. But higher level of exemption in respect of income tax (£19K compared to £12k), higher personal allowances (£5,200 compared to £2,600), plus additional allowance for Wife’s earned income (£4,500). And of course only having to fill in one income tax return instead of 2.

Tomsk said...

Well there's a simple solution if you want the perks of marriage removed - move to the mainland. :)

Our only solace is we don't have to fill in any tax returns.

Tom

Dan Edmunds said...

Clearly we need to arrange a swap. You being a married person need to move over here and gain the tax advantages of being married. Me being single need to move over to the mainland where I can’t complain about all those marriage “perks”