The federal government’s effort
to paint stripes on the same-sex pair horse and calling it a marriage zebra in
Louisiana produces both a challenge to the rule of law and emotionally
hyperactive invective bereft of intellect.
In recent months, courtesy of its
interpretation of what is permitted by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this past summer,
the Pres. Barack
Obama Administration has instructed that the federal government recognize
same-sex marriages wherever possible. However, only a handful of states
recognize them for their legal purposes, and like almost all that don’t Louisiana
has written into its Constitution that marriage occurs only
between a single man and single woman. Further, in terms of constitutional
law, the federal government cannot define marriage, only the states may and for
its purposes the federal government only can accept a license from a state as
proof of marriage for its administrative purposes.
So, the ruling allowed the
federal government to claim that (given the privileges and immunities clause of
the Constitution) a marriage in one place is good in any place for its
administrative purposes, but cannot force that on states that do not recognize
same-sex marriages for their administrative purposes. Practically speaking,
this has caused at least two
complications for Louisiana.
One is that military personnel
can file for benefits on the basis of a same-sex marriage (another recent Obama
Administration edict has been those who admittedly practice homosexuality now
may serve in the military), which can be done at a federal installation, but
also at state installations in the case of members of the National Guard. Maj.
Gen. Glenn Curtis, the state's adjutant general, ruled that filing for benefits
on the basis of same-sex marriage cannot be done at state installations. In
large part, this hardly changes anything, for typically benefits of this kind
already have many alternatives that do not require a physical appearance (such
as using the Internet to get forms to file for TRICARE, for example). At most, it is a
very minor-to-nonexistent issue.
The other does make life slightly
more complicated for a few, in that the head of the Department of Revenue Tim
Barfield ruled it cannot grant married filing jointly status to same-sex pairs
for state individual income tax filings. This gets tricky because the Louisiana
form asks for the federal adjusted gross income calculation and deductions and
income tax paid, which depend upon federal filing status. To make things
easier, state law mandates that the same federal status be used in filing the
state form, but lawmakers never anticipated a changing of the definition of
what something is to something else that could create conflict between different
kinds of filing statuses.
This means that any same sex pair
who holds a marriage license not only must recalculate federal AGI, deductions,
and income taxes on the basis of individual filings, but also then using these
numbers must file individually for Louisiana. By doing so, they technically
violate the law (although this assuredly won’t be enforced until a law is
passed in the spring delinking the two and applying it retroactively) but the
real problem is in the extra work that must occur for those same-sex pairs
insistent on filing married jointly filing on the federal tax form.
More burdensome for those few no
doubt, and perhaps additional logistical resources expended by Revenue, but
necessary to uphold the rule of law. The Constitution, which takes precedence
over statutory law such as the one tying filing statuses, lays out the basic definition
of marriage, a definition not only made legitimate by history and cultural
norms but also in that it serves
important societal objectives. To disregard the rule of law, to say changes
made be made to the rules by which all have agreed, explicitly or implicitly,
that determine the distribution of political resources in society because they
appear inconvenient to a few, invites replacing the rule of law by the rule of
man, by those few individuals who have the most power to impose their will and
inequality that favors them on everybody else. That path ineluctably leads us
to the gas chamber and gulag.
The ignorance of some, or perhaps
instead by those who favor the end of the rule by law, gets echoed in comments
about how these administrative decisions to stay consistent with the Constitution
reflect “pandering to the bigoted and intolerant segment” and that “individual
rights don’t matter.” Such remarks crop up as surely as Obama disclaims any
compromise to his views on any subject under controversy whenever something
displeases those who advocate greater acceptance of homosexual activities in
the law, which in equal parts connotes a lack of clear thinking and a deviousness
to try to extract special benefits out of the state.
To reiterate, government
subsidizes the concept of marriage – through, for example, as a result of
income tax filings a “marriage
bonus” – because it serves an important state objective: its perpetuation
by the production of children in the most hospitable arrangement for them to
grow up to have the best life prospects. Same sex marriage inconveniently cannot
accomplish the same because of biology, so there is no logical reason to have
taxpayers subsidize the activity. Once this is realized, any claims to have individuals
of the same sex “marry” become obvious either as anti-intellectual rantings
that display the very intolerance and bigotry they falsely impute to the
reasoned argumentation against or as attempts to claim from others special,
undeserved privileges such as reduction in income taxes paid.
1 comment:
Re; your previous column about "societal" benefits from marriage. How many children have you produced, Professor? Does that render your marriage as non-beneficial and should you lose any special status for your useless, non-beneficial marriage?
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