Vox

AZ Propositions - 107

Proposition 107 - Protect Marriage Arizona

I have posted before about my opposition to gay marriage, and one of my arguments is financial. There is no reason to extend the Social Security system even farther, it is broken enough as is. I already have a problem with paying out to people who didn't pay in, I don't want to create a whole new class of survivors.

I wasn't sure this was a topic that required such drastic action as Prop 107, but they have thrown me some extra goodies with this one. The end of government support for domestic partners, hetero or homosexual. Bonus.

In the commercials against 107, they list such horrors as seniors having their SS benefits reduced. Good. There is a reason that the payout is reduced when you are married, staying unmarried to scam the system should not be rewarded. They talk of families losing their health care. That is just bull. Private companies still have the option of offering the benefits if they choose, but they will not be compelled to do so.

I have never supported domestic partner benefits. If you don't feel strongly enough about your relationship to make the commitment, why should your employer or the federal government?

All the things the gay marriage proponents claim to want can be achieved via other means; wills, powers of attorney, planning. Everything except Social Security survivorship benefits and automatic permanent U.S. resident status for spouses - oh, and the right to not testify against your spouse. I would like to keep those privileges from being abused.

This one gets a YES.

From the official site:

What the amendment does:

• Reaffirms the definition of marriage in the Arizona Constitution.
  
• Prohibits judges and politicians in Arizona from redefining marriage.
  
• Restricts all levels of government from using taxpayers' dollars to undermine the state's marriage policy by giving recognition or benefits to marriage counterfeits, like "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships."

What the amendment does not do:

• Does not prevent the state of Arizona from granting benefits on an equal basis.
  
• Does not interfere with benefits granted by private corporations to their employees.
  
• Does not void benefits granted in existing contracts.
  
• Does not prevent governmental bodies from the common practice of giving benefits to financial dependents.
  
• Does not prohibit or prevent individuals from establishing any hospital visitation or health care decision-making arrangement they see fit.
  
• Does not interfere with the individual choices of citizens as to the private and/or legal relationships they desire to enter into and maintain.

Some well reasoned arguments in the gay marriage debate from around the web, click through and read the full text.

Thomas Sowell:

The "equal protection of the laws" provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to people, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate between different kinds of actions.

When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways but forbids bicycles from doing the same, that is not discrimination against people. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else.

Insomnomaniac:

Now before anyone says "sure Deb, but you haven't made a good case against gay marriage, you've just impugned the arguments for it" let me say that I think this is half the battle. The other half I'll let you get for yourself from your answer to this question: If it's "no big deal" to you--as a hetero or homosexual--whether marriage remains reserved for hetero couples, then why have marriage at all?

Insomnomaniac again:

Not only don't I see any acknowledgement of why our society instituted marriage in the first place, I don't see any honest acknowledgement that marriage was always, and is still, defined as one man and one woman. To listen to the rhetoric, you'd think there was this definition of marriage somewhere that read something like this: "When two humans decide they love each other a whole lot or just want to live together, share custody of some kids, make medical decisions for each other, bury the one who dies first and inherit that one's stuff without having to go through probate first, they get married."

Posted by Vox at November 4, 2006 03:03 PM | TrackBack | Arizona , politics