[citation][nom]fracture[/nom]Who cares if you're gay or not. If you want to be together then be together. You don't need a paper saying that you're together. That just adds more legal things into the matter that you're just gonna give money to. Come on people.[/citation]
I'm afraid you haven't thought this through very well. Society provides many benefits to married couples that those without that paper lack. If one is in critical condition in the hospital, only family will be allowed to see them. Without that paper, you're not considered "family" (MANY cases of this happening and partners not even being able to say goodbye to their loved ones before they died). If a married person is again in critical condition and a decision has to be made about life support, that decision automatically defaults to the spouse. Without that "piece of paper", it could be Great Aunt Ida making the call instead. If a spouse dies without a will, all property defaults to the surviving spouse except under certain circumstances. With an unmarried gay couple, it defaults to the closest living relative. I know of one case with two gay men in their early thirties... one had a business and a very good income and was the sole earner. He died tragically in a car accident so there was no will. The court declared that his aunt and cousin were the closest relatives and thus sole inheritors. These two were very anti-gay and hadn't even spoken with him in many years. They not only took all of their relatives' property, but much that was joint property and some that was actually the surviving partner's. Since the house was in the name of the dead man, they gave his partner 10 days to leave... so he'd just lost his life partner and now was getting evicted with no income. This could never have happened to a married couple.
Money is another MAJOR factor. Let's say a wife decides to buy her husband a new car for Christmas. Nice! She pays for it, puts the title in his name, and that's the end of it because the IRS recognizes the marriage. If gay partner A wants to buy partner B a car for Christmas, watch what happens: the IRS considers these people as having no relationship whatsoever. When A buys the car for B and puts it in their name, it is now considered a gift that B is going to have to pay tax on!
Another scenario: husband and wife get married. Husband owned a home and now adds wife's name to deed. No problem. If the scenario involves a non-married gay couple, putting the other person's name on the deed again counts as income transfer and they're going to owe a nice chunk of change to the IRS, the same as if a stranger had given them half-ownership in a home. That's partly what led to the fellow in the earlier example being evicted from the home.
It's even worse if the house is in the name of A but B is the principal earner. Now B is paying the mortgage but can't deduct the mortgage interest because the mortgage isn't in their name. A can't get the mortgage interest credit because they're not the one paying the bill, so they lose out big time.
Tax time becomes a nightmare for a lot of other reasons, if the couple lives in a state where they ARE legally married because they may need to file as married to their state, then draw up another set of tax documents as if they had filed separately because the IRS won't recognize their state tax filing, and use those documents to base the federal taxes on... but the state may not like the filing as single for the federal, so more things need to be drawn up, etc. I've read that in some instances legally married gay couples have needed to draw up four different sets of tax forms!
There are lots of other benefits society bestows on married couples: courts can't compel someone to testify against their spouse, child custody issues, etc. One lesbian couple got married in Massachusetts and then after moving out of the state eventually wanted to file for divorce. The judge told them that since this state didn't recognize their marriage (courtesy of DOMA, which violates the clause in the constitution where states are supposed to recognize each others' licenses to avoid this kind of nonsense and why you don't need 50 driver's licenses to travel around the country) he couldn't grant them a divorce. To be considered a resident of Massachusetts you have to live there for a year. That means to get a divorce the parties would need to quit their jobs and move back to MA, hoping they could find another, and stay there for a year just to get a non-contested divorce!
I know there's a lot of other benefits I'm not listing, but these are just some I know of off the top of my head and some of the real-life cases I know of (I didn't have the heart to give real-life examples of those who weren't able to be with their spouse (or parent, in the case where one woman of a lesbian couple gives birth via sperm donor and the other partner is not recognized by the state as a legal parent), but they're real and heart-wrenching. Even in my state, where civil unions are legal, people in these situations have had to go home, get their c.u. papers, and are then told "We don't know what that is, but even if we did, it's not a marriage certificate, and we only let family or spouses in to see the patient and you're neither. One woman told me about having to worry about whether she would even be able to pick up the cremated remains of her partner of 30 years, but fortunately the funeral service people were understanding and didn't trouble her about that - but that's yet another burden when society refuses to recognize your relationship and it could've played out differently.
Whoops - forgot HEALTH INSURANCE. Again, in my state with civil unions, UPS said that civil unions weren't marriages so they wouldn't put the partner on the company health plan. The unbelievable thing was there were only - I forget, 7 or 14 - employees in the whole state at that time who has asked for their partner to be included. The governor had to personally intervene and talk with one of the higher-ups at UPS to get them to change their policy. He couldn't talk to every company, though, and in places with no marriage or civil unions, people are just out of luck and can't get the benefits they would otherwise be entitled to. And then of course there's social security.... I guess I really could go on and on....
So, for all of these reasons and many more, a marriage license isn't just a piece of paper you have to give money to and should just forget about. It has major implications in terms of both rights and financial matters, all the more so if children eventually become involved. It also, like sitting in the front of the bus, acknowledges you're as much a citizen as anybody else and your relationship and your love is just as real.
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_and_Lesbian_Employees_at_Microsoft
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