Queercents

Today is Tax Day in the US. Whether you procrastinated or filed early, tax season is ripe with opportunities to be reminded how we, as gays and lesbians are second class citizens in the eyes of the law. Bottom line - we pay more than our straight counterparts. In my opinion, this alone is a reason for supporting gay marriage (or at least some legal equivalent).

I was shocked and pleased to see that CNN brought this very disparity to light this week in their article “Gay Couples Face Higher Tax Bills”:

Most states ban gay marriage and don’t recognize same-sex unions in any way. Only in Massachusetts can gay couples legally marry. Since 1997, nine other states and Washington D.C. started offering civil unions or domestic partnerships that give some or all the legal protections of marriage.

Those protections include allowing gay couples to file state taxes jointly — and potentially save them money. But they can also make tax filing more complicated for the couples.

That’s because the state protections do not help with federal taxes. Under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the government defines marriage as being allowed only between a man and a woman.

“You’re running one household,” said John Traier, a partner in the Butler, New Jersey, accounting firm Hammond & Traier. “But the federal government and a lot of states treat them as two households.”

When it comes to tax time the issues are plentiful. Read the rest of this entry »

“Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” – previously proposed constitutional amendment on marriage

Last month, a study partially funded by the National Science Foundation, found that Broken Homes Damage the Environment. Shirley Siluk Gregory at Planetsave offered this commentary on the news:

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes a new study that finds yet one more way in which we humans can screw up the environment: get divorced. Actually, as weird as it might sound at first, the discovery… makes perfect sense once you consider the typical result of divorce: two people and, possibly, children who once all shared one home now live in two separate 2,000- to 3,000-square-foot households with two sets of refrigerators, two water-heaters, two heating-and-air-conditioning units, etc.

We get it. Divorce is bad for the environment and so the Foundation offers this remedy: Read the rest of this entry »

I previously blogged about how I would eschew diamonds in my marriage proposal to my partner. At the time of that post, I was still trying to figure out exactly how I would go about proposing. Over the holidays I finally did propose, so here’s how it went.

Heterosexual couples have some well-established guidelines that describe all sorts of things surrounding engagements. The man is supposed to propose to the woman. The engagement ring is supposed to have a diamond and cost a certain amount. Immediately after the proposal you’re supposed to call your family. The bride’s parents are supposed to throw an engagement party. In deciding how to propose to my partner during the recent holiday season, none of those guidelines were much help, because they just don’t make sense when a man is proposing to another man. Read the rest of this entry »

As of January 1, the state of New Hampshire is offering civil unions. Here’s an article from the Boston Globe about the potential economic boon of the new legislation.

Estimates of the long-term implications of joint filing and marriage penalties on taxes, as well as the cost of marriage licenses, vary significantly depending on state and study. In the short term, though, as large numbers of couples file for unions at once, including those visiting from other states, both tax and tourism boosts are expected to be significant:

A 2005 study predicted that legalizing same-sex marriage in New Hampshire would bring in an additional $630,000 a year in rooms and meals taxes in the first three years. The study, by The Williams Project on Sexual Orientation and Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law, was funded by two national gay rights groups. It estimated that half the 2,703 same-sex couples counted in the 2000 census in New Hampshire would choose to marry within three years if marriage was offered to them. A subsequent study in 2006 calculated that 1,352 gay couples, each spending about $7,600 — or one-quarter of the $30,510 straight couples spend on weddings in New Hampshire — would spend more than $10.3 million on weddings if they were allowed to marry. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Jean Chatzky has an article in Money magazine about the particular perils of single finances. I’m sure it will comes as a shock to all Queercents readers that financial structures and tax, real estate and health care law are all designed in favor of the legally married.

The article talks about some of the important ways to work a will and living trust if you’re unmarried–including those who are unmarried in long-term committed relationships. As I looked into it, I found this older Money article that contains a very simple outline of how joint tenancy works for unmarried couples, friends, or partners who own property together. None of it’s comprehensive financial advice, but it’s all a good place to start. These arrangements are important for single straight people, but they’re even more important for LGBT people who can’t rely on the law to protect their unions.

To me, one of Ms. Chatzky’s most interesting assertions was that many of the steps toward financial maturity take place around traditional, heteronormative milestones: “Get married: Merge your financial lives. Have a child: Buy life insurance and start saving for college. Stay single: ummm.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I want to propose to my partner. Do I want to do something simple and romantic? Something dramatic and public? It’s not something I ever really thought I’d need to consider, but lately I’ve been searching around on the web to see what other gay couples are doing. As more and more same-sex couples have weddings or commitment ceremonies, it is tempting to adopt much of the ritual that heterosexual couples have long used, but there is one part of that ritual that will not be making it into any of my own plans - diamonds as a symbol of love.

The demand for diamonds is the result of what has probably been the most successful marketing campaign in history. De Beers has controlled the majority of the world’s diamond supply since about 1880. As people became aware that diamonds were really as common as cheaper gems, demand fell through the 1920’s, 1930’s, and the Great Depression. Then, in 1947, De Beers launched their “Diamonds Are Forever” campaign. Ultimately, De Beers marketing was shockingly effective at convincing people that diamonds were the proper way to express love. They also managed to convince families to hold onto their diamonds as heirlooms, keeping used diamonds off the market. Hollywood helped out by enshrining the idea in films such as the hit musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, which included the now-classic number “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. You can’t buy advertising that good. As demand rose and De Beers purposely restricted supply, diamonds commanded a premium, all because of good marketing. The recent movement against blood diamonds has helped by further restricting supply. Read the rest of this entry »

“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” – Erich Segal

Jeanine and I celebrated our fifth anniversary last Thursday. We never had a commitment ceremony and although we consider ourselves married, neither one of us ever had a burning desire to stand up in front of our friends and family and profess love for each other. Quite frankly, we both think the white dress ritual is a bit much – especially knowing that my family would wince at the spectacle of two lesbians exchanging vows in wedding gowns and boycott the entire event. Even I sometimes think queer ceremonies seem nonsensical. Some people want one and that’s fine for them… but it’s unlikely we’ll ever have a “wedding”.

That said, I thought it was important to have a fortieth birthday party and we’ll do the same for Jeanine early next year. We spent a small fortune on mine (done fashionably at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills). I paid a handsome sum for my outfit as well. Jeanine thought my birthday budget was very unNina-like, but I justified the expense by saying that we never had a wedding so I thought we should make up for it on our milestone birthdays. A life event like this has a way of marking time and is money well spent. Of course, next time I’ll think twice about hosting an open bar. Beer and wine only for those lushes. Anyone want to guess what a martini goes for at the Avalon? Read the rest of this entry »

I spent a good part of the day yesterday chewing on a WTF? moment after I finished reading a post Nina sent me from the Time Work in Progress blog. The post called, “Gay men earn less, but not lesbians,” discussed findings from a study by the University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics. According to the post’s author, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, “The authors [of the study] analyzed labor and wage information from more than 91,000 heterosexual and homosexual couples collected by the U.S. Census March 2004 Current Population Survey.”

Something about the numbers in an excerpt didn’t sit right with me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“gay men who live together earn 23% less than married men, and 9% less than unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman.”

Thankfully my partner was able to nail it: Why are unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman making 14% less than married men? Read the rest of this entry »