You know, when you’re married, it really sucks to STILL be considered “legal strangers” by the government. The latest example of why comes in the form of the Stimulus Bill. From Citizen Crain:
[I]magine my elation when I heard President Obama describe the $2500 tax credit in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the purpose of helping families offset the cost of tuition for education.
Then I started looking into this. I contacted my accountant, my Congressman and various gay organizations to see exactly how my family could participate in this provision of the stimulus bill. The answer is, we can’t.
It appears that the definition of family in this bill is not defined broadly enough to include LGBT families. Without a broader definition of family, the tax credit would have to claimed via the normal mechanism of filing for it on the1040 federal income tax return form. But by law, our relationship is not recognized by the federal government, we cannot file jointly and I cannot claim him as a dependent, even though he really is. This #%@##!
It isn’t as though it’s impossible to include gay families in legislation. After 9-11, the fund that was set up to re-imburse families for their loss in the Twin Towers collapse was written broad enough so that partners of gays could also be eligible for the money. Congress knows how to do this.
Not only do I have to be flogged with the unending refrain “we can;t talk about your civil rights right now, because there are more important things than that.”, but now I get the honor of watching gay families being frackin written out of the “important things” my civil rights have been put on hold for.
AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY I’M ANGRY.
Commenter Adria over at Citizen Crain had this to add:
I don’t know how many other family-related benefits there might be in the bill that rely on the IRS definition of family or dependent, but however many there may be, LGBTs are getting screwed by each and every one of them.
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p>Who out there is going to contact their members of congress on behalf of your LGBT fellow citizens and make them make this bill help all American families? With NO employment anti-discrimination protections in most states, and NO aid to our families via federal means open to heterosexuals, we are being crushed. Why does Obama hate LGBT Americans to the point that we’re dispensable?
Specifically, I’m curious as to what if any definition to family is actually in the bill. If family is not really defined then for better or worse we are left to the mercy of bureaucratic interpretation. If I were the bureaucrat you encountered I’d interpret the provision as broadly as I could get away with because it seems that even if you and your partner are not “married” in the eyes of the feds, you still live under the same roof and would not necessarily be excluded as “family”. Certainly any child you and your partner raise would be “dependent” regardless of other definitions as one who literally depends on you for being fed, clothed, educated, kept healthy, etc. Anything else just makes absolutely no sense.
presumably because these are tax breaks. Due to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the IRS does not consider same-sex couples as spouses.
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p>Of course it makes no sense. This is why I keep railing against this stuff. It is sheer brainless bigotry. Every time new federal programs or legislation are enacted to help families, LGBT families are automatically excluded. From every. single. program. It was quite painful to listen to Obama announce today that he was going to beef up the support programs for the families of soldiers, because families (spouses, children) of LGBT soldiers are automatically exempted from the program due to DADT and/or DOMA. ANd it is LGBT soldiers and their family who need suipport most, since we’ve had to suffer in silence while heterosexuals can have the public support and involvement of their families. So it’s a double punishment for us.
Because the argument either stems out of the fact that he is not married to his partner, and the gov’t isn’t considering people who are not in legally-bound and/or recognized relationships in families. This would make sense, because a boyfriend and a girlfriend or boyfriend and boyfriend are not a family under any definition. If he is married and the government is not recognizing his marriage as valid then it is discriminatory.
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p>If it comes down to he would be married but can’t and therefore would be unable to qualify as a family because a boyfriend and a boyfriend is not a family, then it’s not the stimulus bill that has bigoted language, it’s just the issue that the place he lives isn’t recognizing gay marriages and should.
to remove any of its own anti-equality barriers. They could do it if they cared to live up to their duties to the US Constitution and to the promises they made to voters.
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p>Look at this from my point of view: Obama and Congress are willing to pass a possibly unconstitutional law in an attempt to remedy a terrible inequality: lack of federal representation for DC residents. Yet they make no steps to fiangle workarounds or to repeal the existing unconcsitutional law that make it impossible for families like mine to benefit from this major economic legislation that is supposed to help everyone. EVERY law or policy that the feds pass to help families will, by definition, exclude me. The sad part of it is, they don’t have do do that. Congress and the President are letting that happen. They condone the discrimination with every successive failure to address it.
As you should know, even gay couples legally married in MA cannot get any federal benefits because of DOMA. I am not familiar with the ins and outs of the particular issue raised in Laurel’s post, but my (uninformed) guess is that the stimulus bill doesn’t say anything in particular about family definitions; therefore, the governing federal law on what marriages are recognized are what aren’t — DOMA — continues to control.
You’re absolutely right, Laurel. The government should be working on fixing this. It’s disgraceful that all taxpaying families aren’t given the same access to benefits under the law. And I don’t blame you a bit for being pissed, because it’s maddening that there are any Democrats sitting still for this. But there are no lion-hearts in this business any more, unfortunately. I think the last one was LBJ. Everyone else is too worried about getting elected or re-elected.