Passage of an unmarried pathbreaker
Thanks to Kevin for the sad news that Michelle Triola Marvin passed away.
Ms. Marvin was one party in the law suit that established in California law the right of unmarried partners to sue for joint property on grounds that their partners had violated a relationship contract. Thirty years later, many courts recognize property rights for unmarried partners, but there is no consistent law on this. In 2000, the American Law Institute recommended that all de facto domestic partners should have property rights.
On the less wonky, more human side: It is really neat to learn that, although she became famous as a result of her six-year unmarried relationship with Lee Marvin, Michelle’s ultimate life partner was Dick Van Dyke. They were unmarried to eachother for 30 years! Our condolences to Mr. Van Dyke and their family.
You need a health care proxy, New York needs a law
A New York Times article about medical patients who need advocates reminds me again how much each of us needs to designate a health care proxy. Unlike a writing living will, designating a proxy means thinking about life not death! And it’s easy! Just pick your state, print your forms, get it done!
Too bad the Times didn’t mention that patient advocates in New York state don’t have the right to challenge doctors’ decisions unless they are properly designated proxies, and that only about 20% of patients name proxies. New York is still the only state besides Missouri that lacks a medical decision making law. If you live in New York state, click here to tell the Assembly to pass that law!
If you live in another state, check out our map showing how your marital status can affect your hospital righs. Then write your advance directives!
D.C. Council Hearing on Same-Sex Marriage: Round One
Wearing my Alternatives to Marriage button and carrying a sign saying “Don’t throw domestic partners under the marriage equality bus”, I headed into the offices of the District Council yesterday afternoon to attend the hearing on gay marriage. The hearing proved so popular that I was only able to join other visitors in an overflow room, but I watched several rounds of testimony there on closed-circuit TV. The opinions proved to be diverse and passionate.
Nearly 300 individuals have signed up to testify before the Council on this bill that would allow same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia — including AtMP! I’m slated to testify at the second round of the hearing, to take place next Monday, Nov. 2, at 9:30am. Officials report that this is the largest number of requests to testify at a hearing that it has seen in decades.
Most of the testimony centered on the pros and cons of allowing same-sex marriage licenses to be offered by the District government, and, while AtMP supports the rights of same-sex couples to marry, we will testify that this bill unnecessarily harms other couples by ending the District’s domestic partnership registry program. The current program requires that partners be over 18, competent, living together and neither married nor already registered as domestic partners. That means that domestic partnerships are open to same- and different-sex couples as well as other types of partners including those related by blood (such as siblings). Domestic partners are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as spouses. The District’s program is so well-written and comprehensive that it has served as a model for other programs across the country.
But while endeavoring to expand rights for some same-sex couples who would choose to marry, this bill, if passed as written, would deny rights to other couples who would not, or could not, marry under the new law. At the continuation of the hearing next Monday, I will argue that this is an unwarranted and unfair step backward and this language should be removed from the bill.
So, join us in spirit by emailing the Council and tell them not to discontinue the domestic partnership registry. And, if you’re in DC, join me in person at the hearing on Monday, November 2, at 9:30 a.m. in the 5th Floor Council Chambers, John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004.
To learn more about D.C.’s domestic partnership registry, and the reasons we don’t want it to end, read AtMP’s official testimony.
And if you wish to watch any or all of the 7 hours of the first part of the hearing, you can download the video.
MVP and MIP on DP benefits for federal employees.
Last week the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held its hearing on the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act. In comparison to the House hearing held this summer, the Q & A took wonderfully positive steps in the direction AtMP advocates: let every federal employee share employment benefits with one non-dependent adult, regardless of gender or sexual relationship.
Senator Sue Collins has been our Most Valuable Player on this bill for years; she consistently and sincerely raises the example of Maine’s inclusive domestic partnership registry and benefits for state employees (as opposed to the specious questions raised by Representative Chafetz in the House hearing). We are delighted to also give a Most Improved Player award to John Berry, the director of the federal Office of Personnel Management for responding to Sen. Collins that “You clearly have identified a fairness issue” and for promising that the federal government will look into the costs of extending more inclusive benefits. This is extraordinary progress over a just few months. For a good time, listen to their exchange at appx. 70:20 in this video clip.
Congratulations and a big thank you to all the AtMP members who have been working on this project, especially the fantastic team in Madison, Wisconsin who are committed to the crucial task of educating Representative Tammy Baldwin. Pablo the intern is trying to build a similar team of Connecticut residents to educate Senator Lieberman – can you help?
D.C. Council wrong on domestic partnership
Washington D.C.’s governing Council is planning to recognize same-sex marriages. Unfortunately, they also plan to stop registering domestic partnerships – that’s a terrible idea! If you live in D.C., please help:
First, email the Council and tell them not to discontinue the domestic partnership registry.
Second, go to the one of the hearings to share this message with the public and the media. Over 100 people will testify at each hearing, and most will be speaking for or against same-sex marrage. We encourage you to make a sign, tell your story, and remind the Council that domestic partnerships are important whether or not same-sex couples can marry.
The public hearings are on Monday, October 26, at 3:30 p.m., and Monday, November 2, at 9:30 a.m. Both hearings will be in the 5th Floor Council Chambers, John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004
To learn more about D.C.’s domestic partnership registry, and the reasons we don’t want it to end, read AtMP’s official testimony.
Things you should read while I’m out fundraising
Many thanks to Dorian, Rachel, Craig and Ashton for sending these great articles that everyone should read:
Queer Kids of Queer Parents Against Gay Marriage!
What if Marriage Is Bad for Us? (requires subscription – email copies are available)
And thanks to Jon, who reminded me that not every blog post has to be an original essay.
Response to proponent of government-funded marriage promotion
Recently we were tickled to discover that the Fatherhood and Marriage Leadership Institute is using the existence of our new Get Marriage Out of TANF Coalition as a threat to mobilize pro-marriage-promotion forces to defend their federal funding.
On seeing FAMLI’s dire warning, the director of a marriage counseling program sent AtMP this friendly inquiry:
Wow! You must really believe that you are promoting a good cause.[1] One of my areas of disagreement would be that funding TANF efforts takes away from poverty projects.[2]
Married couples often have a higher family income. Isn’t that in itself proof that poverty is diminished through promotion of healthy marriage?[3]
Why do the two programs have to be mutually exclusive? Your choices are your choices. My choices are mine. If you want to promote your cause, why down play mine?[4]
Here’s a fleshed-out version of the brief response I sent him:
1. Yes, we really do believe our cause is a good one. AtMP’s cause is fairness and equality for all unmarried people, societal support for all healthy relationships, and the end of marital status discrimination, singlism and couplism. Admittedly, a very big vision! There are an infinite number of ways we could work towards our vision; we pick just a handful to work on at a time, and protesting welfare-funded marriage promotion is just one of many issues we have tackled over the years. One reason this issue captures our attention is that many of AtMP’s staff and board members over the years have personal histories and values that center on social justice and anti-poverty work. So it is particularly galling to see anti-poverty funds redirected to marriage promotion.
2. In fact, the federal TANF budget (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) was not increased to fund marriage programs; rather, marriage programs took a slice out of the pie that would otherwise fund more directly targeted anti-poverty programs. Similarly, the FAMLI-led campaign to get each state to allocate 1% of state-controlled TANF funds to marriage programs does not increase the state’s TANF budget to 101% of its former size; rather, it decreases state-funded anti-poverty programs to 99% of their former size. Furthermore, federally funded marriage programs are explicitly not anti-poverty programs: they need not serve low-income people, and their effect on participants’ economic well-being barely made it into the evaluation criteria. (For detail on that, see Let Them Eat Wedding Rings pages 4 and 14.)
[3] The correlation of marriage with family income does not prove that marriage diminishes poverty! If that’s not obvious, read this. In fact, researchers recognize the importance of the selection effect: people with higher incomes, more education and maybe even more ambition are more likely to choose marriage and to choose to marry similarly situated people. The academic debate is about whether marrying has any significant impact on income beyond the selection effect. Even a glowingly pro-marriage-promotion literature review found that marriage increased men’s incomes by well under 10%.
[4] “Your choices are your choices. My choices are mine.” This could not be better said! That’s why so many Americans are dismayed that their tax dollars are being spent to tell people that one choice (marriage) is better than another.
Bad news on hospital rights
Today we got terribly disappointing news from Lambda Legal: a FL court has dismissed the potentially ground-breaking case which we hoped would have created a legal basis for the widespread assumption that hospital patients have a right to visitation.
The court ruled that the hospital has neither an obligation to allow their patients’ visitors nor any obligation whatsoever to provide their patients’ families, healthcare surrogates, or visitors with access to patients in their trauma unit.
This is not a gay issue, nor a same-sex marriage issue, nor even an unmarried issue. Everyone who is concerned about patients’ rights should be outraged, and this court ruling should spark a statewide movement in FL at the very least, if not an addendum to national health reform legislation. We’ll be strategizing about what AtMP can or should do… suggestions welcome!
Better ways to fix what’s left of the income tax marriage penalty
Last week Forbes magazine ran a commentary by two Notre Dame professors about the income tax penalty faced by low-income couples who marry.
The Bush tax cuts attempted to make tax rates “marriage-neutral”; for most middle-class taxpayers, there is now, in fact, little if any difference between filing as a married couple or as unmarried singles. … [But a] single parent earning $21,000 with two children would receive an earned income credit and child tax credit of $5,460. Say that same parent is living with, but not married to, another single parent with two children who earns the same amount. Their combined income is $42,000. Unmarried and filing their taxes separately, they would receive a total of $10,920 in earned income credits and child tax credits. If they were to marry and file jointly (listing four dependent children), they would receive only $3,400 in earned income credits and child credits. So it would cost them $7,520 to be married. To make the situation worse, this “penalty” will occur every year, adding up over time to a huge amount.
AtMP believes that taxing people based on their marital status is wrong, and that it’s especially wrong to tax lower-income people more heavily than higher-income for the exact same behavior (in this case, marrying). Naturally, we’re less concerned than those professors about rising rates of cohabitation. More importantly, we’ve heard more creative solutions than the two options they propose:
If you “remove” the marriage penalty by lowering the credits for single taxpayers, you invoke the wrath of those who would say you’re “raising” taxes (by reducing their credits) on people who can least afford it. On the other hand, if you raise the credits for married taxpayers to the point where getting married offers the same tax result as being single, you’ve got a budgetary issue–where is the money to compensate for these additional credits going to come from?
In fact, we printed another professor’s more creative solutions in our newsletter last year!
Given the many forms of modern families, two policy alternatives are clearly preferable…. First, policymakers should expand the definition of family for tax purposes to include unmarried opposite- and same-sex couples, single parents, cohabiting unmarried family members, and perhaps even platonic roommates demonstrating economic interdependence. These families share the same kind of expenses, responsibilities, and liabilities as married families. There is no reason for the tax system to treat them differently. Under an expanded definition of the family unit, “marriage” penalties would become “family” penalties, and doubling tax brackets for families would benefit all multi-person households.
Second, we could abandon the family as a unit of taxation altogether and move to a system of individual filing. This approach would effectively eliminate all marriage tax penalties. As importantly—and unlike preserving the family as a unit of taxation—individual filing would eliminate the secondary-earner bias in the tax system that currently taxes the first dollar earned of the lesser-earning spouse (disproportionately women) at the higher rates associated with the last dollar earned of the primary-earning spouse.
Either approach—expanding our concept of “family” under the family tax unit or adopting as the norm the individual unit—would more effectively address the concerns of the modern American family in its various forms.
Arizona takes back gifts it gave unmarried couples
Among the news reports filtering in during Unmarried and Single Americans Week, it is upsetting to find that the state of Arizona has rescinded the domestic partnership benefits it had just recently extended to state employees.
Although DP benefits are often wrongly described as a “gay rights” issue, the article points out that more than 3/4 of the employees receiving benefits were in different-sex couples. That fits what we hear all over. In 2006 the NYC media reported that different-sex couples made up 3/4 of NYC registered domestic partners.
In fact, Pablo, the AtMP intern working on plus-one benefits for federal employees, discovered these facts about state employees:
- Washington State – The Human Resources Department reported a positive boost in recruitment and retention since instituting benefits for both same- and different-sex partners.
- Vermont – the earliest state to champion equal benefits for both same-sex and different-sex partners, it found initial, marginal increases in premium costs but ultimately saw no effect on state costs.
- New York State – covers over 4,880 employees’ domestic partners, and the majority of these are different-sex partners. New York reports that the plan has been easy to implement.
