Monday, March 02, 2009

Why Marriage Matters

I found this earlier today on Andrew Sullivan and I am still amazed: Annie Leibovitz took out a loan against her life's work to pay off her mortgage debt, not because she made poor economic decisions, but because she needs to pay up to 50% of what she inherited from her long time partner, Susan Sontag.

Meg's first response was, "Holy Sh!t... it is almost not fair that they were together as they are too talented." (As Meg's just pointed out, I am paraphrasing her as this sounds like something I would say, not her.) And, that is true.

Yet, this certainly is a profound argument as to why marriage equality needs to be granted for same-sex couples. Without protection, there will not be economic freedom and economic advancement for couples. Certainly individuals could still live alone; however, without protection, it is not rational to be in a same-sex couple. This perpetuates the problem: why would anyone want to be in a same-sex couple? In fact, it could be a major detriment to be in a same-sex couple. Instead, economically speaking, it would be much more viable to the financial benefit of the individual to remain single, which may perpetuate the of the promiscuous life-style.

1 comment:

harrogate said...

Opponents of gay marriage complain that the scrubbing of "our traditional values" from governmental purview has led to all kinds of cultural and social bankruptcy--including rampant, tawdry, sexual promiscuity.

Interesting how this post shows that the hard social cons' own argument winds up working against them on the issue of gay marriage.

But then, Solon, there's the fact that almost every gay marriage advocate Harrogate knows would not be satisfied with Civil Unions that provide every legal and civil right covered by marriage, including inheritance laws.

Sully himself has compared Civil Unions to Jim Crow--Which argument Harrogate thinks is fucking ridiculous for what its worth, but many liberals that Harrogate knows personally (perhaos even some Situaioners?) agree with Sully that anything but Marriage is unacceptable.

So clearly for a lot of people, this is not "Why Marriage Matters." For the gay marriage activists anyway--

brave enough to picket a Mormon church but not brave enough to picket an African-American church--

it is about making a statement.