Should the State sanction gay marriage?
NO:
Civil union, civil partnership, gay marriage. It's all the talk, these days. Unless you're one of those (say in the Vatican) who believe homosexuality is some kind of curable disease, or else a fun lifestyle choice like drinking wine instead of beer, you would have to feel sorry for the plight of gays and lesbians in a hetero world.
A tiny minority wherever they go, often - and wrongly - despised, disliked or disparaged, whether to their face or not, I doubt they can ever feel fully comfortable except amongst fellow-gays.
Furthermore, except for those torn few who suppress their true sexual nature, conventional marriage is out, as is having children and enjoying a "normal" family life. Conventional marriage is, of course, a State-endorsed union between one man and one woman who vow to stay together for life.
Thus, when you hear proposals for making marriage available to gays, you'd have to be especially hard-hearted to remain unsympathetic. Of course, there's nothing to stop two gays vowing to remain together as a couple for life.
But without legal standing they would be denied the social benefits of marriage, specifically the opportunity to be taxed as a single unit rather than individually; tax-free inheritance of assets between spouses; the continued payment of a pension to a surviving spouse; and certain other less pecuniary rights such as next-of-kin status. These benefits help couples procreate and raise children by reducing the financial penalty of the parent who spends more time rearing and less time earning. Only last week, Kate Holmquist lamented in The Irish Times how motherhood reduces earning power.
Yet numerous studies demonstrate that kids have a better chance in life if reared by their married biological parents. This is society's return for the tax breaks. Thus, the practical argument against gay marriage is that without the possibility of children, marital tax concessions have little payback.
It is true, however, that availability of gay marriage might help reduce promiscuity among gays, but although this may be intrinsically beneficial to society, it is not comparable with raising responsible future citizens.
Granting legal status to gay unions means conveying very real financial advantages. So, a question immediately follows: what's so special about a partnership that's gay? If gays are to benefit, there are plenty of other partnerships that should also be considered: two elderly brothers who have shared a house all their lives; a spinster daughter and/or bachelor son living with their widowed mother; lifetime bridge partners who have long shared a home together; celibate gays; three siblings.
Once you move away from the one-man-one- woman formula, the possible permutations become limitless. The one thing that would distinguish gay partnerships from all the others is that sex is involved, albeit fruitless sex. But that is a ridiculous prerequisite for tax breaks.
Yet without it, the doors would open to all kinds of people - genuine and mountebank alike - claiming to be civil partners as a tax-convenient ploy, some undoubtedly exercised on the deathbed of a conveniently ageing relative or friend.
Linda McCartney, resident in England for three decades, hired top lawyers to have her will probated in New York, which avoided 40 per cent inheritance tax, estimated at £60 million.
Without discriminating in favour of gay sex, it will be impossible to stop two people hitching up for purely tax purposes, or indeed three or four. In jurisdictions - such as the UK - which have granted significant tax advantages to gay couples in civil unions, it is only a matter of time before non-gay couples claim and obtain similar rights. It's already happening.
Britain's two elderly Burden sisters, who have lived together all their lives, are appealing, on anti- discrimination grounds, to EU courts to avail of the inheritance tax waiver now available to gay couples. Otherwise, when one of them dies, the other will have to sell their shared house to pay her sister's inheritance tax. Eventually, someone will succeed in extending gay tax breaks to non-gays.
Just as abortion law - originally highly restrictive - has over the years become de-facto abortion-on- demand until late into pregnancy, so tax- advantageous civil unions will eventually become available to any couple (or triple) who ask for it.
The "equal rights" argument does not hold water because gays already have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex; they just usually choose not to, albeit for understandable reasons.
So, for all the understanding gays deserve, any kind of statutory non-traditional marriage for them or anyone else is insupportable and unjust. It's either too discriminatory against non-gays, or else too wide open to abuse by tax-dodgers.
Resultant tax concessions would, in the absence of any discernible payback, unjustly increase the tax burden on others. Non-marital vows and commitments are personal arrangements. The State has no business getting involved.
• Tony Allwright is a part-time engineering and industrial safety management consultant and a blogger (www.tallrite.com)
