From National Eagle Forum:
Options For Dealing With Same-Sex Marriage
Licenses
Mar. 3, 2004 by Phyllis
Schlafly
Congress overwhelmingly passed and President Bill Clinton signed
the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, and there it rested
peacefully on
the law books until this year. Recent events are now
placing the monkey
squarely on the back of President George W.
Bush to do his constitutional
duty to "take care that the laws be
faithfully executed."
It's not
enough that he is "troubled" about the marriage licenses that
have been
issued to over 3,000 same-sex couples in San Francisco
and 26 in New
Mexico, and may soon be issued in Massachusetts,
or that he is carefully
pondering whether to endorse a proposed
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
He should meanwhile enforce
existing federal law.
DOMA states
unequivocally that the federal government recognizes
marriage only as "a
legal union between one man and one woman as
husband and wife," and the
word spouse only as "a person of the
opposite sex who is a husband or a
wife." The General Accounting
Office compiled a 58-page list of 1,049
federal rights and
responsibilities that are contingent on DOMA's
definition of marriage.
The GAO report lists these 1,049 federal laws
in many categories,
including Social Security and welfare, veterans,
taxation, federal
employees, and private employees. The GAO report states
that the
man-woman marital relationship is "integral" to the Social
Security
system and "pervasive" to our system of taxation.
The
widespread social and familial consequences of DOMA impact
on adoption,
child custody, veterans benefits, and sponsorship of a
non-American spouse.
DOMA's enormous financial consequences
include joint income tax returns,
survivor's rights to Social Security
benefits, and the tax-free inheritance
of a spouse's estate.
It is impossible for same-sex couples to apply
any equal-protection
theories to America's tax or Social Security
architecture. Both
systems are designed to prefer husbands and wives over
single
people because of society's consensus that it is right
and
economical for husbands and wives to raise their children, and
for
wives to be provided for after their husbands retire or die.
Even in the world of private industry, DOMA has a big impact. A
third
of Fortune 500 companies offer health insurance benefits to
domestic
partners, but employees must pay income tax on the value of
such
partner benefits because that insurance is not recognized by
federal
law as a deductible corporate expense.
Fathers and mothers
are usually in shock when they discover that
auto insurance for their
single children costs so much more than their
parents' rates. But those
differences of treatment are based on
accident statistics.
Gay
activist groups are already starting to instruct same-sex couples
to file
joint income tax returns, so the Bush Administration should
establish
procedures right now in order that the bureaucracy will
know how to handle
the paperwork. The model is already in place.
In earlier times, our
friendly Internal Revenue Service used to take our
word for how many
children we had when we claimed child
exemptions, and most kids didn't get
a Social Security number until
they started their first job. Suspecting
some hanky-panky in the
matter of child exemptions, Congress required tax
returns starting in
1988 to include the taxpayer identification number
(usually the Social
Security number) of each dependent age five or older.
The age at which a child's Social Security number must be
reported
was subsequently reduced to age two, then to age one, then to
birth.
Most children now receive their Social Security number as
newborns.
Millions of children disappeared as tax exemptions when the
federal
forms required this specific information. But everybody's used to
it
now, and parents don't get income-tax exemptions unless they
report
their children's Social Security numbers.
The Bush
Administration should immediately instruct the Internal
Revenue Service to
prepare 2004 income tax forms with a line
requiring joint returns to
include the date and place of marriage,
thereby enabling Internal Revenue
to identify and reject joint returns
claiming fake marriages. But that's
just the first step the federal
government should take.
President
Bush does not have the power to give orders to the San
Francisco Mayor. But
he should additionally (2) instruct all federal
agencies to prepare for
energetic compliance with the 1,049 federal
regulations impacted by DOMA,
(3) investigate whether Internal
Revenue will have to reject joint tax
returns from ALL couples
(same-sex or opposite-sex) who are married in any
county, state or
country where the legal definitions of marriage and spouse
are
changed, (4) investigate how federal funds can be withheld
from
states that permit the travesty called same-sex marriage, and
(5)
announce his full support of Rep. John Hostettler's bill (H.R. 3313)
to
prevent the federal courts from overturning DOMA.
Read
this column online for related links:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2004/mar04/04-03-03.html^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
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