my rant for the week: I don't care whether someone is gay or not. But the costs associated with spousal benefits, these I worry about -- especially since gays seem to be more likely to change "life" partners than married/heterosexual individuals. Currently, no federal marriage benefits are available to gay couples. Now that Congress has recognized gays, that is certain to change. Next up, the parade of lawsuits demanding military benefits for civil partners. Then, look out for the demand for federal employee benefits, followed by the demand for benefits from states. With many states close to debt collapse, one wonders what it will take to bring it all down ...
Generally, the point of spousal benefits is for society to help subsidize the costs involved in raising a family. One way to approach this is to hold back spousal benefits until dependent children are in the picture. Obviously we need to better grasp what the point of spousal benefits are and design policy around that. That can include gay adopting families. The issue of fraud involving people who pretend to be gay to get benefits could be remedied by making proof of dependency and verification of the union as legit be a pre-req for those benefits. Hey, we do similar things for people attempting permanent residency (verify if partnerships are indeed real, and not simply there to game the system.) I don't think its the end of the world, just the beginning of us having to deal with lots of complex questions and designing policy from the ground up.