Recent federal agency actions rippled across their Louisiana counterparts,
when the Internal Revenue Service declared
that a married jointly filing status could be used by those legally married in
a state or the District of Columbia regardless of residence, and the Department
of Defense the same
for National Guard benefits. Louisiana’s response was that the law would have
to be changed in regards to income tax filing to unlink status because the
Constitution forbids marriages that are not one man to one woman, and that it
would refuse to convey such benefits to same sex couples for the identical
reason.
Citizens should note that both of these federal decisions institute forms
of tax increases and/or encouragements for deficit spending, although one may
have a minor negative impact if at all. While individual income tax
circumstances vary, in aggregate an expansion of the married jointly filing
status certainly will decrease
taxes taken in the immediate future, but may increase them in the future,
this having to do with the vagaries of different rates at different,
non-equivalent individual and family income levels between this status and
filing individually.
But the benefits expansion certainly deprives the federal government of
revenues it could use elsewhere, so if other spending remains unaffected this
means either more deficit spending or future tax increases to make up for the
loss. While Louisiana’s decision to remain faithful to its Constitution, its
general police power governing this area of policy granted by the U.S.
Constitution as with all states, will save both Louisiana and U.S. taxpayers from
these extra costs that would have emanated from within the state’s borders,
other states having or choosing to do so will foist these upon all Americans,
Louisianans included.
In the granting of benefits, whether they be in the form of cash or tax
breaks, best policy dictates that some useful societal purpose be served in
exchange for certain parties to have the privilege of paying less than others
in an otherwise similar situation, where fairness dictates that those in
similar situations get treated similarly. Until now, this dictum has operated
regarding marriage as an encouragement for it, because marriage often leads to producing
children
who typically benefit from having one man and one woman married to each other
as opposed to single-parent households. And children are the most important
product society makes, because without them society withers away, and the more advantaged
children can be, the better off society as a whole becomes.
Thus, it makes good sense for government to subsidize marriage and
thereby to encourage it by conveying inducements like cash benefits extended beyond
the receiver of them on the basis of legal family size, survivorship, etc., because
it wants people to marry and to produce
children. Which is where the equation breaks down in regards to same-sex
marriage because, try as they might, people
of the same sex cannot produce children together. Unless there is that
possibility between a married couple, it makes no sense to subsidize such arrangements;
all that does is promotes the interest of a particular class of individuals,
unfairly discriminating in its favor to the detriment of those outside of this
special interest.
(A potential counterargument could go against extending the privileges of
marriage to between an older man and/or older woman and to an infertile man
and/or infertile woman, but fails for multiple reasons in that there is no
absolute biological certainty that they cannot have children, whereas there is
concerning people of the same sex, and to disallow thus could be
discriminatory, yet most importantly that marriages between these individuals
also provides examples of and reminders to others that the main purpose of
marriage is to encourage a biological act that can produce children, something
a union of same sex individuals by definition cannot do.)
Recognize then that much of the impetus – always unstated,
unacknowledged, and sublimated to avoid realization of it – behind the privileging
of the ability of those of the same sex to marry each other has a self-interested
economic basis. In no way is it a “civil right” or an establishmentof “fairness” to allow people of the same sex to marry legally. Instead,
to do so creates less fairness by allowing the transfer of wealth from some to
others without a meritorious reason. Thus we see an immoral taking by a special
interest with government’s assistance the property of Louisianans that even the
sensible current policies of Louisiana cannot mitigate.
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