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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,330 posts, read 54,428,613 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanlife78
So do you understand why it wad wrong to deny same sex couples the right to marry?
Of course, but that still doesn't tell me how a city got away with requiring hetero couples to marry to receive the same benefits same-sex couples received without marriage.
Of course, but that still doesn't tell me how a city got away with requiring hetero couples to marry to receive the same benefits same-sex couples received without marriage.
Simple, same sex couples were considered different because they were denied a right that heterosexual couples had. Therfore same sex couples were able to get a benefit that unmarried heterosexual couples couldn't get because they were considered different due to being denied the right to marry.
Now that marriage is legal for both heterosexual and same sex couples, they are no longer considered different and thus have to go by the same requirements.
Not sure why this would be difficult for anyone to understand, but this site never surprises me.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,330 posts, read 54,428,613 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanlife78
Simple, same sex couples were considered different because they were denied a right that heterosexual couples had. Therfore same sex couples were able to get a benefit that unmarried heterosexual couples couldn't get because they were considered different due to being denied the right to marry.
Now that marriage is legal for both heterosexual and same sex couples, they are no longer considered different and thus have to go by the same requirements.
Not sure why this would be difficult for anyone to understand, but this site never surprises me.
Probably because I never had to deal with it personally and wasn't aware it went on but I still find it difficult to believe this didn't prompt law-suits by hetero couples who lived together but didn't want to marry.
Probably because I never had to deal with it personally and wasn't aware it went on but I still find it difficult to believe this didn't prompt law-suits by hetero couples who lived together but didn't want to marry.
Of course, but that still doesn't tell me how a city got away with requiring hetero couples to marry to receive the same benefits same-sex couples received without marriage.
At the time, this sort of discrimination was legal (clearly, since gay people weren't allowed to get married).
If you want to hire the best workers, you have to offer decent benefits, so denying partner benefits costs your company. You can get away with not giving benefits to unmarried straight couples, since they have a way to get the benefits, but gay couples in the past didn't have that option, so companies had to take steps toward rectifying that. Unequal treatment was the standard back then, so in order to compete for gay workers, you had to offer them something that was, for once, to their benefit.
I don't doubt for a minute that companies would drop all married couple benefits if they could get away with it both legally and without losing their good workers. That isn't going to happen, thankfully. Now, though, they don't need to offer benefits to unmarried gay couples.
Polygamy is a red herring here. Contracts between two parties are not the same as contracts between arbitrarily many, and polygamy, unlike marriage, is not the foundation of our social structure. No one is being excluded from society because of being forced to choose one person to marry. There might be other arguments on this issue, but the main arguments in Obergefell aren't extendible to polygamy. It seems people mostly bring that up as an example of something most people don't like (and most people associate with patriarchal, misogynistic culture, with a superior man looking down on multiple wives) in order to make a slipperly slope argument against gay marriage.
Either that or a lot of people who were against gay marriage just really want to marry their turtles.
The OP states the city extended benefits to unmarried same sex couples that weren't extended to unmarried hetero couples. My question was how they got away with that sort of discrimination?
They got away with it because they were erasing the "discrimination" part when they voted to extend the "married" benefits to those who were denied equality rights of marriage. You know that - the US Supreme Court just voted in favor of those Equality Rights. This was not a case of one person making a decision for a City - it was a City Council that was voted into office and supported by the voters.
It was a Band-Aid solution to a problem of Equality -- NOW, they no longer need the Band-Aid, so they have removed it. This isn't Rocket Science.
This is a non issue, and totally predictable and fair, to me. There's zero discrimination in it, whereas there would be if they allowed unmarried, same sex, couples to continue on, as is. THATS where an issue would arise. Want to cover your partner, get hitched. Simple. Don't want to do that, no or higher cost insurance. Just like everyone else.
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