laissez fairy

Self-proclaimed “independent gay blog,” Citizen Crain, is touting “federal civil unions.”  That alone almost made us fall out of our chair laughing.  But then Mr. Gay Independent started off with:

“More properly, the title of this post should have been ‘Federal recognition of our relationships as civil unions: so simple.’”

Oh no, he just replaced the phrase “civil union” with “recognition of our relationships as civil unions.”  That’s right: we’re the bitter ol’ queens in the third row weeping - literally weeping… with laughter at this nonsense.  Honestly, is this politics or a Lifetime movie?

Oh, but ol’ CC almost tops himself (if that’s possible) in the next paragraph:

“Of all President Barack Obama’s proposals for the LGBT community on the official White House webpage , I believe this one is the best and most powerful. It will achieve more rights and benefits for gay people than all the others combined.”

“Most powerful”?  Oh dear lord. Weeping again.

Let’s look at just a few of the reasons why “federal civil unions” ain’t gonna happen this side of the looking glass:

• Entitlement programs.  As it is, Social Security and Medicare are fiscal time bombs.  Add even a few million gay civil union couples who will receive Social Security or Medicare benefits via their civil union spouses, and the already bleak numbers fall off the charts.  Add five to ten million non-gay civil union couples (since, presumably, civil unions would not be limited to same-sex couples or, for that matter, couples in love), and you’re in fiscal la-la land.
• Taxes.  The Federal Gov’t makes alot of money off single individuals.  Singles, esp. singles without children, pay more taxes than the rest.  If the Federal Gov’t creates civil unions - which, presumably, would include long-term roommates or elderly siblings living together - there will be a huge decrease in revenue, which would entail tax hikes, etc.  The decades of transactional costs  involved with the IRS and the courts trying to determine what can and can’t count as a “civil union” for federal tax purposes are astronomical.  And inasmuch as a great deal of state tax law “piggybacks” (heh, no pun intended) on federal tax law, the state courts would spend years and who knows how much money sorting out what living arrangements can or cannot count as civil unions for state tax purposes.
• Family law.  Tons of family law at the state level - and under the Fed Constitution - is based on the current definition of marriage.  Federal recognition of “civil unions” (for gay and straight couples) would result in the re-litigation of literally hundreds of thousands of court adjudicated custody and family law decisions over the last decade and a half.  It would potentially mean rethinking decades of Supreme Court 14th-Amendment law related to family.  It would also result in absolute chaos for decisions related to wills, trusts, and estates.

Those are just a few reasons why “federal civil unions” are not so simple.  As ol’ Donald Rumsfield might put it, there are too many “known unknowns.” Even a heavily Democratic Congress would balk nonsense like this.

I’m not saying that impracticality makes it okay to deny people rights.  But I am saying that “federal civil unions” simply are not going to happen any time soon.  That someone would cite the fact that it’s a policy proposal on the White House website is truly laughable.  Candidates and politicians put all sorts of silly policy proposals on their websites, most of which have little or no chance of ever being enacted into law. Policy proposals found on politicians’ websites are just marketing and (for herd gays) FUNDRAISING tools.  That’s right, Citizen Crain, keep trying to justify why the herd gays keep shoveling all that money into Democratic Party coffers.

Heck, way before “federal civil unions,” maybe the Dem’s could manage to pass a federal workplace non-discrimination law for gays and lesbians?  That’s actually easy to do and has broad public support.  Let’s see how long that takes!

And then to top it all off - and just to let us all know that Citizen Crain has some bigshot inside connections:

I wish I could say my thinking is original on this, but it is based on my discussions with a prominent LGBT Obama campaign official and a prominent ACLU attorney neither of whom wishes to go on record at this time.

Meanwhile, dear gay readers, please send more $.$$ to the Democrats.