[Vision2020] Anti-Gay Discrimination is Expensive

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (April 3, 2005) Spokesman Review with a special thanks to Deb
Price of The Detroit News.

Like I have been saying all along, it is a simple matter of equality.

When will America realize that marriage is based on mutual respect, love,
and a willingness to compromise (some times), not on which block you check
on your Form 1040?

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Refusal to recognize marriages costs many families dearly, Deb Price says.

Anti-gay discrimination is expensive 

Deb Price
The Detroit News

April 3, 2005

'Do you think I'll get a refund again this year, Joyce?"

Somewhere along our 20 years together, my spouse Joyce took over preparing
my mom's taxes: My mom loves the deal - she in return cares for our cats
when we're away - because Joyce's command of tax code details often
translates into refunds. So, every year, Joyce sweats over crumpled
receipts, trying to please her mother-in-law.

But Joyce never gets frustrated until she turns her attention to our taxes -
hers and mine, that is. To my mother, our mortgage company, our credit
union, American Express, my minister and even our Spanish teacher, we're a
unit - blended financially and emotionally. Only U.S. governments insist on
the fiction that we're single.
 
This tax season is our second since we married in Canada. Thousands of gay
Americans have wed there. Meanwhile, it's the first tax season for the 4,962
gay couples who married between May 17 and Dec. 31 in Massachusetts, the
first state to welcome gay couples into legal matrimony.

The Massachusetts couples are filing their state taxes as married, but must
file as single on federal returns. But the rest of us - except Vermonters in
civil unions - must pretend we're single in filing state taxes.

All married gay couples are discriminated against by the federal government,
which refuses to recognize our marriages. That discrimination costs
taxpayers a whopping $1 billion a year, according to the Congressional
Budget Office, largely because it means more gay people qualify for poverty
programs than would if their spouses' incomes were factored in.

In terms of taxes, the discrimination affects different couples in different
ways. For Joyce and me, filling out tax forms means playing a surreal game
of pretending it's possible to separate our finances. Who writes off
donations of joint household items? How about gifts to a cat rescue league,
tsunami victims and an anti-hunger group?

And Joyce gets hit with an extra $792 in state and federal taxes because her
employer puts me on her health plan - a benefit that (unlike for married
heterosexuals) is treated as taxable income.

And the $10,899 we paid in 2004 Social Security taxes doesn't buy us the
same protections as heterosexuals: Neither of us is eligible for spousal or
survivor benefits. The 2000 Census hints at how Social Security
discrimination hurts gay families: More than one in 10 gay couples includes
someone who's 65 or older.

The Human Rights Campaign estimates elderly gay survivors receive an average
of $5,528 a year less from Social Security because of the government's
shameful refusal to be fair.

Married heterosexuals inherit one another's 401(k) nest eggs and IRAs tax
free. Their gay counterparts do not. And gay survivors are hit with estate
taxes - unlike married heterosexuals - upon inheriting even a jointly owned
home.

Meanwhile, more than 1 million children are being raised by gay couples.
Sixty percent of the kids live in states where both gay parents can't be
legally recognized.

The outrageous result: If the unrecognized parent dies, the child gets zero
Social Security survivor benefits.

Federal tax policy hurts gay-headed families in other ways: A breadwinner
who isn't recognized as a parent can't get child-related tax credits. For a
one-earner family with two kids and a $30,000 income, that would mean a loss
of $561 in federal tax breaks, HRC found. If the breadwinner's employer
offers health care to the family, the benefit is taxed. That creates an
extra financial hurdle for gay couples who want one parent to be a
stay-at-home mom or dad.

Governments ought not undermine families. Instead, tax policies should
encourage stability - the kind on display when my spouse reminds her
mother-in-law to save receipts.

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Wake up, America.

Take car, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Hog Haven, Idaho


"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they
are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say
about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

-- Robert F. Kennedy