NationStates Jolt Archive

Two men are heterosexual friends and wish to get married or have a civil union for economical purposes. Should this be allowed? This is more directed at anti-gay marriage folks such as myself. NOTE: this thread is not about whether gay marriage should be legal.

I'm not sure but I think some sort of "union" should be allowed for multiple people to file taxes and stuff together, like a tribe or something. Not really for love...well brotherly love/tribal love...

I believe it should be allowed. Whether or not people would do it though... It seems a fairly drastic option if you are having economic difficulty, I for one would not have even thought of it in the first place. Wouldn't it raise a lot of issues when, for example, one or both of the men wanted to go out and marry. I am sure they could get a divorce and then they would need to split the goods or whatever. At any rate, it seems like a convoluted process to go through for whatever small economic benefit there might be.

Perhaps we should just re-work the tax structure so that we need not worry that the only tax-friendly co-habitation is marriage. Let whoever wants to consider themselves married, consider themself so, and let co-habitation be the term for tax purposes.

woman and men can do it with no bother at all why can't I civil unionize a Russian guy to get him into the country?

then again I'm not your target audience, but your going to have slim picking if only anti-gay rights post *pokes with stick* :p

Perhaps we should just re-work the tax structure so that we need not worry that the only tax-friendly co-habitation is marriage. Let whoever wants to consider themselves married, consider themself so, and let co-habitation be the term for tax purposes.

Hey, yeah. I mean, why is it only marriage that gets these benefits?

Hey, yeah. I mean, why is it only marriage that gets these benefits?

I think that marriage and tax benefits have historically fit into some sort of procreative enticement. This isn't necessarily the case anymore, and tax benefits should really be applied to people who co-habitate, regardless of their affiliation. Marriage should be completely outside the realm of the state. That's one last vestige in the separation of church and state that still stands.

Men and women already do this on occasion. I see no reason that they should be allowed to do it and a same-sex couple should not be.

this is why it is a good idea to legalize gay marriage rather than relying on "domestic partnerships" that are covered by some local municipalities and companies.

today, a man can just put his male roommate down as a domestic partner and have him covered under his insurance with no strings attached. then if he decides to get married, he can drop the guy without any big cost involved.

if he needed to be married, he would have to think harder about adding a non-permanent person to his insurance since marriage includes all sorts of other legal rights and obligations. plus the cost and hassle of divorce would keep this kind of semi-fraud to a minimum.

Even if you wanted to ban such arrangements, how could it be enforced? I don't think anyone wants to have to "prove" to the government that they're really in love.

It would probably be better to just make co-habitation the requirement for the tax benefits currently given to married couples. And transfer all the other legal benefits of marriage to civil unions. That way the law doesn't discriminate, but conservatives can't complain that we're "redefining marriage".

Two men are heterosexual friends and wish to get married or have a civil union for economical purposes. Should this be allowed? This is more directed at anti-gay marriage folks such as myself. NOTE: this thread is not about whether gay marriage should be legal.

I'm not sure but I think some sort of "union" should be allowed for multiple people to file taxes and stuff together, like a tribe or something. Not really for love...well brotherly love/tribal love...wait, wait, wait... you're saying you're anti-gay marriage?

Hmm... I thought... I didn't think you'd be anti-gay marriage.

My dad had a friend who lived with us for like 13 years. There was no relationship between any of them (mom, dad, friend) but they were close friends who went to school together, and at one point they shared an apartment for financial reasons and it worked so well that they agreed to keep him around. He was a great guy, good role model for me and my bros too, so that's a bonus. He never got any tax breaks, though, and I think this is what the topic is about.

Co-habitation doesn't have to mean relationship. There are often times, especially in a persons' 20s, right out of high school or college, where friends are more stable than relationships and you wanna leave your parents' house, so friends of either gender move in together. I would highly support any sort of co-habitation instead of marriage change in tax forms in any country I lived in. I think there'd be a few ... complications, we'll say, when it gets to where three or four or more people are sharing a large apartment or a house. Have to have an extra form :D

Course, I'm not anti-gay, so that might not count. :)

Two men are heterosexual friends and wish to get married or have a civil union for economical purposes. Should this be allowed? This is more directed at anti-gay marriage folks such as myself. NOTE: this thread is not about whether gay marriage should be legal.

I'm not sure but I think some sort of "union" should be allowed for multiple people to file taxes and stuff together, like a tribe or something. Not really for love...well brotherly love/tribal love...

I think it is ok. The laws should provide special protection to ANY people who choose to live together, INDEPENDENTLY of their sexual life:

1.because the state has no place in my bedroom - what I and my partner(s) do, provided it's between consenting adults, is just our business!

2.because it is good for the society to have people living together and helping each other. This means (example) that, if one of them catches a bad flu, he hasn't to resort to hospital care (that is paid by the state healthcare service, or by private insurances), but he can stay home and receive basical care from his/her partner(s).

I think that the "marriage" thing has more a religious meaning than anything else. The state should protect and encourage people who choose to live together, and provide also some sort of help for those couples/groups who choose to raise children, independently on how they got them. Biologically own or adopted, who cares? Two fathers, two mothers, a father and a mother, who cares? It is the love and the care the parents can give to the baby the real issue, not what they do in their intimacy. I guess than any baby would be better off being raised by a couple of intelligent, loving humans who also happen to be gay, than by a couple of idiot, violent humans who also happen to be straight.

add: usually, choosing to live together makes people happy; and the happiness of the people should be important to a state.

I think it is ok. *snip*

Absolutely agree, 'marriage' should be solely within the confines of any Church/religious body that wishes to conduct one and have nothing to do with taxes whatsoever.

Marriage is perfectly lovely as a symbol of love between any 2 people (or pet I suppose, depending on the Church/religious body), nothing else.

I don't think this is a gay union and I like the idea of paying tax as a tribe or something, But I think you should have to live together or in a very close community group, like a commune and stuff, but they shouldn't get married tax breaks. Those should be reserved for heterosexual married - not unionized - people.

I like the idea of giving tax breaks to co-habitat.. er.. roomates and stuff but I don't agree with what those two are doing. I don't care about homosexuality, and I fully agree to two people who are in love getting married (or unionized for all you sensitive folks) but what those two men are doing is just dispsicable. Seriously... they aren't just taking advantage of a loophole they are seriously underminging many people's views on morality and love. Its quite frankly... disgusting...

I don't think this is a gay union and I like the idea of paying tax as a tribe or something, But I think you should have to live together or in a very close community group, like a commune and stuff, but they shouldn't get married tax breaks. Those should be reserved for heterosexual married - not unionized - people.

Explain the logic behind that. NOW.

People in these threads always seem to have this idea of "marriage tax breaks" as something that would actually be helpful to two random people off the street. In most places (in the US anyways), there is no "marriage tax break." The tax benefit of marriage is that the couple can now file jointly. This awfully damn convenient for many people, since they now jointly own everything and probably have meshed their finances to the point that the two are indistinguishable in the first place. For many, because the tax brackets are different, this means paying more in taxes than they would singly, but the filing itself is much more convenient. For others, it may mean paying in less.

But, one way or another, people who are simply living together as roommates are generally not going to merge their finances to this extent. If they do, they can (or should be able to) certainly seek legal protections for that through legal marriage or something else (which also leads to legal protections for anyone they owe money, btw). But people who aren't planning on spending a long, long time together are generally going to have no use for this construct. Ending it would be too much of a hassle to bother - especially if you don't have pretty absolute trust for the other person.