Don’t ask, Don’t tell, and (mostly) Don’t care

Let me start by thanking all men and women who have served in our country’s military for their service, regardless of their race, creed, color, national origin, sex, or sexual orientation, whether revealed or not.  We all owe you a debt of gratitude.

There is a movement afoot to change a long-standing military policy.  It may have happened by the time I publish this but the nation’s military and political leaders are considering abolishing its restrictions on allowing homosexuals and lesbians from serving in our military.  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?  I don’t want to judge.  I just want to express my thoughts on the subject.

Is it a moral issue? We should all care about the moral behavior of our military as they are our ambassadors in other lands when they serve overseas.  However, in a real sense, this is not a moral issue.  People with concerns about “gays in the military” on moral grounds should be equally concerned about “adulterers in the military” or “fornicators in the military”.  If one wants to argue on moral grounds, to be intellectually honest, in my opinion, one should argue against having any “amoral” person (by the accusing person’s standards) serve.  Taking a point from Judeo-Christian teaching: If you break one point of the law, you’re guilty of breaking the whole law.  Homosexuals in the service should not be singled out.  I’ll let others argue the morality issue.  From the perspective of this writing, it doesn’t matter if you are hetero-, homo-, bi-, omni- or asexual.  For me, whether or not a homosexual can serve in the military is a non-issue, as long as you behave yourself and do not dishonor your uniform or our country.

So what are the arguments?

Don’t worry, I’ll watch your back(side)! One of the arguments against homosexuals and lesbians in the military is the assumed impact on camaraderie that could happen by mixing lifestyles and sexual orientation.  Perception might be the biggest problem because it means changing people’s preconceived notions. In fact, if statistics are correct and 10% of the population is homosexual, then if you know 9 people, there is a good chance that one of you is a homosexual.  Don’t flatter yourself.  You’re probably not a sex object.

Everyone on both sides of the debate has to realize that there are several restrictions in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that protect the sexual identity and physical person of all people from unwanted advances by people with whom they wish no physical engagement.  Just as in the outside world, rape and sodomy are not tolerated, neither is abuse of authority, so there are safeguards.  I’m not a psychologist so I don’t really know how to address this issue, so I’ll leave that to the experts.

Being safe in cultural hostility. No amount of training in political correctness and tolerance in the military has any meaning when our service men and women go into other countries and cultures.  This is my main concern about people being open about their non-mainstream sexual orientation with people who are not so tolerant.  Radical Islamists don’t like heterosexual Americans.  Given how they treat homosexuals in their own country, one can only imagine what would happen if a US soldier who happens to be an open homosexual is captured on the field.  Our volunteer military realize that nobody can dictate how others will act toward them.  They must count the cost and the personal cost may be high.  Some people’s treatment of our captured service personnel may make “military hate crimes” look tame.

So why do I almost not care? This, as with so many other things our politicians do, is going have impact on government spending and government regulations that will impact us all.

First will come the call for “partner benefits”, and the question has already been raised.  I have to ask, however, why a homosexual couple should be afforded benefits that unmarried heterosexual couples don’t have?  The answer is that they should not.  Spousal benefits are spousal benefits.  Granted that in relocating an unmarried couple it’s impossible to tell whose stuff is whose (“Did you buy that Streisand album or did I?”), so taxes pay for the move of the non-military person in many cases.  However, the unmarried partner does not get commissary or PX privileges and they don’t get medical or other benefits.

So, then we can also expect the complaint as to why homosexuals and lesbians cannot have spouses.  For some, this will be the next push to legalizing “gay marriage“.

The movement to allow openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military is not a question of who can serve or not serve our country.  It’s an act that puts us on the cusp of tremendous social change.  We must weigh that change carefully and see if it’s the way we want to go.

To Krista and Chris

Some who read this blog may think that all I am is a curmudgeon who only grumbles about what I think is wrong.  I would hope that as you read my ramblings that you would see that often I try to propose solutions to some of what I believe are the world’s and our great country’s problems.  This time, however, I want to write about something that is oh so very right in the world.

Today I had the extreme pleasure and honor of attending the wedding of my nephew, Chris, to his lovely bride, Krista.  With all due respect to my other family members, one would be hard pressed to find two people who are better matched for each other.  Some would call it serendipity while others choose to believe it was God who brought them together.  I won’t try to influence you one way or another.  One thing is certain, they are a young couple who love each other very much and our prayers and support will be with them always.

The wedding was wonderful and the reception was fantastic.  As expected, the bride was radiant.  Everyone, including yours truly, had a great time.  The food was second to none, the drink of your choice flowed freely, the music was great, and love and friendship was definitely in the air.  Family, both blood relatives and newly formed family ties mingled with the joy that emanated from this bond of matrimony between two exceptional and spirited individuals.  The feeling was infectious.  I look forward to getting to know my new extended family members better as the years go on.

There was throughout the ceremony and reception an air of gratitude for these two having found love in each other and between themselves.  It is my fervent hope that this love deepens and expands as they share this life together and as they live out in their own way what it means for two to become one.  May they never forget and daily understand more deeply what it means when one reads, “Now these three abide: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.”

So, Chris and Krista, I know I speak for all of us when I say that we wish you the very best in all ways for all days.

P.S. On another note, Bethany, since you caught the bouquet I was not in any way going to even come close to catching the garter.  I am your uncle after all.

Raging Incrementalism – Part 4e: Fixing Education

I don’t like to be a person who only complains about something.  I want to suggest real solutions.  Some may say that because I have no children that I have no skin in the game and should just keep my mouth shut regarding Education.  Obviously these people were educated in our public schools and cannot reason properly.  As I get older and get closer to retirement age, I realize that the children of today will be paying my Social Security.  I paid for our elders and soon enough it will be my time.  They will also pay for my Medicare, Medicare drugs, and full health coverage, should the ObamaCare plan come into fruition.  The taxes they pay will be staggering so I want to make sure they can afford me.  Here are my suggestions to the problems I outlined in my previous 4 blog entries.

Federal meddling in primary and secondary education is fundamentally unconstitutional. There is no direct mandate in the US Constitution.  The “promoting the arts and sciences” clause is insufficient justification for taking over that segment of society and the economy.  I even oppose the feds giving block grants to the states for education and meals for disadvantaged students.  However if they do there must be no program, curriculum, or topic either suggested or mandated and no accounting other than to ensure that costs are kept in check and that the money doesn’t get siphoned off to someone’s brother-in-law’s company or service.

States and counties should build schools close to where the students live. Let them walk to a local school.  The exercise and extra sleep they get will do them good.  Parents can be more involved.  Granted, larger schools may afford more programs for the children and have a better pool from which to choose their football team, but at what social cost?  Which is better: a great football team or having no hope of seeing your classmates socially because you live on different sides of the city?  I find it funny in a demented way that school districts build schools so far away from the students so that the parents cannot come by and then complain that the parents are not more involved.  It’s hypocrisy.

Build bike paths to the school and provide safe places for kids to lock up their bikes.  Allow students with good grades (and parental consent) to ride skateboards to school.  Use it as a reward for maintaining good grades and require safety equipment.  (This assumes that there are sidewalks and bike paths for the children to use.)  It would be a privilege that they can lose for misbehavior or unsafe riding.

Make the school boards more responsive to parents. Here in Wake County, North Carolina, where I live, there is one school board for the entire county of almost 900,000 people.  Parents are largely ignored because the people from Apex don’t answer to those in Knightdale.  School board members can hide behind plausible deniability and say, “I wanted to do such and such as you requested but I was outvoted by the others.”  What should be done?  Make school districts small enough so that all the board members are responsible to all the people.  Parents will have more control, which, of course, is not what the school boards really want.  It is probably wise to have, for example, one school board for a major city in a county such as mine that is separate from those in the rest of the county.  Large city school boards are probably unavoidable but why should the rest of the county suffer?  People choose to live outside the big cities for a reason.  Smaller school boards would have jurisdiction over the smaller cities and rural areas.

Put an immediate halt to the Social Experiments in our schools. Stop busing student across town just to achieve some kind of academic, economic or racial mixture in the schools.  It is not uncommon for a school district, if it’s large enough (see the previous paragraph), to bus students miles and miles, past other closer schools, to produce a “better” mixture or to dilute students who under perform due to incompetence in their previous schools.  If a school does poorly, fix the problem; don’t just sweep the students under the bus to hide their previous school’s failures.

Pay good teachers better than you pay the mediocre ones and fire the bad teachers. Merit pay works in the “real world”; try it in education, too.  Unions that force all teachers to be paid the same only encourage mediocrity in education.  Why should one strive for excellence when her fellow teacher down the hall sits and reads the newspaper during his class?  We have many excellent teachers.  Let’s reward them.  What would be the criteria?  Look at the improvement of the students through standardized tests at the beginning of the grade and at the end of the grade.  If the average of the students coming in is “B” and you raise them to “B+”, you did a great job.  If they dropped to “C“, your job should be in jeopardy.

Reinstate and/or expand trade schools for students not heading to college. A college education is not a Constitutional right; it must be earned.  Not every student is college material and not every student wants to go to college.  Let’s teach them trades while in high school without forgetting the basics of English, math, basic sciences, and social studies.  With so much outsourcing happening today, perhaps the only real jobs that can be guaranteed are those of plumbers, electricians, mechanics and landscapers.  I don’t see anyone shipping his car to Bangladesh to be fixed.  Looking at the way things are going, parents may be complaining if their child has too much college aptitude for a trade school.

When students get into serious trouble, require parents to come for a conference. Do this even if you have to send the county sheriff to give them a ride if they don’t have a car.  The problem can’t be hidden from the parent and perhaps the parent will emphasize to the student how his or her behavior has disrupted the family and caused a loss of time and wages.  Start this early enough in the child’s life and perhaps they’ll grow up to be better citizens.

Stop curriculum-based money and state aid to colleges and universities. Government, regardless how well intended, only messes things up.  Institutions of higher education must survive on their reputation, tuition, fees, and endowments.  This may mean priming endowments for schools that have none.  States may give block grants for scholarships but those scholarships must be decided anonymously and must be awarded without any consideration to the student’s race, creed, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or any other affirmative action criteria.  Let the student’s record stand on its own.

Rework the way scholarships and financial aid work. Scholarship assistance can be for academic or athletic purposes.  Any student receiving financial aid must agree to stay at the university and obtain a degree.  We must stop students leaving school after one year for the NBA or NFL.  The university has made a commitment to the student; the student must make a commitment back or buy his or her scholarship agreement back through reimbursement several-fold.  It’s a contract; treat it as such with cancellation clauses.  Since there will probably be fewer seats available, let the universities compete for the best students and reject students of lower caliber.  The higher standards will force high schools to do a better job of preparing their students for college.  Let students who missed the cutoff for universities take college preparatory classes at community colleges or private institutions and try again.  The high schools with low acceptance rates will put pressure on the elementary schools and perhaps social promotion in schools will stop.  Pass a student on academic merit, not the birth date.

I would make one other significant change for academic scholarships.  Any student receiving federal assistance for education (and the award process would be similar to grants below) must agree to spend one year overseas in an underdeveloped nation to serve in one capacity or another.  Alternatively, that student could serve in an underdeveloped area of our country (Appalachia or in some Inner City).  The service could be digging wells, teaching remedial reading or math, or helping with agriculture or building a school or hospital.  It can be through the Peace Corps, Vista, or a Non-Governmental Organization.  Besides giving something back for the assistance already received, I would hope that the student would gain an appreciation for all that we have here in the US and would not take our freedoms and blessings for granted.  The work must be satisfactory or the money must be paid back with interest and penalties.

If the states wished to impose some kind of community service at the state level for state assistance, I would be all for that, too.

Federal grants and scholarship money must be anonymous. Federal grants will not be abolished.  We need research in the sciences and the promotion of the arts.  However, to stop patronage and bickering of whether or not federal money can go to faith-based educational institutions, develop a system where the grant proposals and scholarship applications have no reference to the institution or people getting the money.  The administrators would have two levels who must not, under penalty of severe punishment, communicate anything other than the grant proposal or scholarship application body.  The first level would receive the grant proposal or scholarship requests, ensure they were complete and that the writers were qualified.  All references to the origin would be removed and the body would be passed to the evaluators who would evaluate the proposal or request on its merit alone.  Patronage and government bill pork barrel ear marks would be eliminated.  Go ahead, Senator, put in a provision for a $10M grant to study the best way to cultivate Belgian endive but there would be no guarantee the person you wanted to get the grant would get it.

Conclusion. These problems cannot be fixed overnight.  It took us decades to get into the educational mess we are in.  It will take time to get out of it.  Start by reducing grant money and instituting “pay for performance” for teachers.  Start building schools closer to where the students live so more can walk to school.  Split up the large school districts into smaller ones.

No problem is so big that there is no solution.  We just have to have the backbone to address the problem and implement the solution.

Raging Incrementalism – Part 4d: Education 301

Apart from morality, education should encourage investigating all ideas without partiality, especially when the evidence is inconclusive.  Why is Intelligent Design omitted from our schools when there is at least as much evidence of that as there is for pure evolution?  Why are we taught that people are the major cause of Global Warming when there are mountains of evidence supporting our climate change to be part of a natural cycle?  The schools are not teaching students how to reason according to the scientific principle.  Rather they are taught one line of thinking and taught that anything that contradicts that line of thinking is wrong, silly, or inconceivably stupid.

Need proof?

I find it strange that apparently millions and millions of years ago and long before dinosaurs roamed, the earth was covered by glaciers that stretched from pole to pole.  Even the equator was covered with ice on “Snowball Earth”.  These glaciers lasted for millions of years, too.  The only thing that saved us was Global Warming caused by volcanoes pouring billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  These gasses trapped the heat of the sun, melted the ice and made the way for life to begin to flourish again.  If volcanoes can reverse Snowball earth, how then could mankind be responsible for Global Warming?  But what about the fact that volcanic ash cools the earth?

One eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in the 1980s put more CO2 in the atmosphere than all of mankind since the Industrial Revolution began.  Oh, and by the way, the Yellowstone and other super volcanoes that erupt every 600,000 years or so were suspiciously quiet during this entire time.  It sounds to me that if you want to stop Global Warming we have to limit volcanic activity.

On another note, if all the glaciers are melting because of Global Warming, why are some threatening towns and villages in Alaska with their advance?

Can any public school child rationally discuss these points?  Are any of them aware of these conflicting bodies of data that somehow must be put into balance?  Can any of them reconcile the differences?  No, because they’re only taught one thing: Mankind is killing the earth by causing Global Warming.

Manmade Global Warming, Ecology.  Evolution.  Multiculturalism.  Alternative lifestyles.  These are just a few topics in a curriculum that attempts to unify the education process across the country and put all power under the control of a single philosophy and secular religion.  Students are taught one belief system that emanates from a humanistic central repository of knowledge and no beliefs or facts are tolerated that differ from that system.  Through a system of scare tactics, bullying, and demonization, our students are taught to toe the line in critical scientific, political and social areas.

Children are taught to criticize parents who don’t turn off lights or leave a door open (that’s a change from when I was a kid!)  They are even encouraged to report when parents don’t properly recycle.  All this happens under the cover of taking care of Mother Earth and saving the ecosystem.

Immigrant children are taught that the customs of our society are not important to integrate with their own.  It is not even important for them to learn English as education will be provided in their native tongue in many instances.

I find it most interesting that Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union were taught to report when anyone, including parents, might not be acting according to “proper” Communist Party behavior.  Hitler’s Youth Corps were also taught to turn in their parents if their beliefs differed from the Führer or if they supported hiding Jews.  Is this where our society is headed?  Will we end up with a police state with little snitches that would rather have the State care for them than parents who love them?  Are we raising an eco-gestapo army that is incapable of seeing the bigger picture, that all things are related, that there is cause and effect, and that there are unintended consequences?

As things are going, the answer is yes.  The one world government will be intolerant of any who do not conform.  How will The State know who does not conform?  Until TV sets are two-way and constantly monitored, I suspect they will use the children to rat out their parents when they speak about resisting or reversing programs.  How can this happen?  When you own the education system and children are away from their families for more time than they are with them, what chance does a parent have of undoing the indoctrination The State is instilling in them?

The State does not have any interest in teaching that there may be a higher authority than it, be it deity or the people as a whole.  To do so encourages students potentially to rely on themselves or on that Higher Power for answers and direction rather than to rely on the State itself.  This cannot be tolerated by The System.  Students must learn that all outcomes are under the control of the “Powers that Be” and with enough effort and money any situation can be changed or avoided.  Do we have a problem in some area?  Obviously we have not yet spent enough money there.  Mankind has wanted to build its Utopia and any thought that says that Utopia cannot be done by mankind cannot be allowed.  Come Hell or high water, mankind will do it!

Blame it on the seeming need for two incomes and the problems of a single parent household but if you are not teaching your children what you want them to learn, others are teaching them what they want your children to learn.

And they Lived Gaily Ever After

The question of same sex marriage is on some levels a very easy question.  Two people want to get married.  So why shouldn’t they be allowed to?  On other levels, not so easily is it answered.  I would like to examine a few areas where the answers to this question may not be so simple.

To start with, I know that many people consider marriage to be more than a social occasion.  To many it’s a spiritual one as well and the spiritual aspect is deeper and more meaningful than the social one.  For these people, should same sex marriage become legal, it is not in the best interest of the State to interfere with their religious convictions or articles of faith.  In no way should a person be required to perform a marriage ceremony when it contradicts his or her beliefs.

I’m not going to get into the middle of the fray of asking, “What next?  Can a man marry his dog?  After all a dog is a man’s best friend and my heterosexual friends say that they each married their best friends!” argument.  Frankly, that’s just silly and there are laws against zoophilia and bestiality, even if they are not enforced.  Besides, how do you know that the dog would even consent to the marriage?  It can’t even sign its name on the marriage certificate and it might like being single with no commitments.

That having been said, I wish to return to the same sex within the same species marriage question.  Just as the State has no compelling interest to force a rabbi to perform a wedding between a Hindu and a Buddhist, or require a Roman Catholic priest to marry a Muslim and a Jew (although I think that would be an awesome situation), so, too, the State should have no interest, nor should there be any repercussions to the minister or the sponsoring organization if the minister should refuse to marry any couple.  Ministers are free today to reject a request to marry a heterosexual couple.  The same consideration must be granted in the question of same sex marriages.

So, since the State cannot dictate religious scruples or require acts that do not conform to religious practices what are the State’s interests in same sex marriage?  Why should the State wish to get involved in a topic that is so divisive and seems to create more problems than it solves?  I’ll take a stab at this one question and leave the others for the reader to ponder.  The reason the State would get involved is because politicians, like computer programmers, are paid to create problems that only they can solve and the “solution” that they develop usually only causes more problems, thus perpetuating the cycle. By not taking a decisive step on a topic that divides the country, they foster so much infighting that many people are distracted from the real problems that our nation faces and they get a free pass to do what they want (or nothing) for those problems.

Here are my top areas and questions that must be considered.

It’s a legal contract. Besides being able to have a sexual relationship with no fear of police intervention (sodomy is technically a crime in many places), marriage is a legal contract between the parties.  The legal contract is there to protect the traditional stay at home mom from a husband who just wants to trade her in for a newer model.  Any skills she had before the marriage are now probably outdated in the open market should the marriage dissolve.  Dumping her would put her into a financial bind and she is worthy of the alimony due her if he decides to split.  Similarly, if there are children, the legal contract protects them and would force both parents to support them until they were old enough to take care of themselves.

Having a same sex couple marrying each other would have implications if there is a stay at home partner or if one makes significantly more than the other.  Should a break up occur (and I believe that divorce is too easy regardless of the sexual orientation of the people involved), one of the partners may be entitled to alimony either until that partner remarries or for some definite period of time.  Questions about child custody will have to be worked out as well just as with other couples.  Could the one partner adopt the other partner’s children?  How will children be cared for if the marriage is dissolved?  Property settlements would have to be negotiated similarly to heterosexual breakups.  Some lawyer will make a fortune helping to negotiate who keeps the Streisand albums.  That much I can guarantee.

How will the people be named?  Will they both keep their last names?  Could one take the last name of the other?  Can systems handle a “maiden” name for a man?  Would they hyphenate their names and one becomes “Smith-Jones” and the other “Jones-Smith”?  Legally I suppose they could any of the above today (except for the “maiden” name piece) but the twists and turns get very interesting.

There are spousal benefits. If a couple is legally married, the company for whom one of the partners works may be required to provide benefits to the other partner, regardless of the company’s moral standing on the subject of same sex marriage.  The biggest impact here will probably be to health care.  One unfortunate outcome of this might be to change the company policy and pass the entire cost of partner health care to the employee asking for that spousal benefit, whether it’s a heterosexual or homosexual couple.  At first blush this seems to be a fair thing to do (you can’t discriminate, you know) except that many companies are self insured.  This means that they actually pay the health bills out of their pocket.  The health insurance company is simply there to administer the plan.  ObamaCare may take care of that by eliminating self insured health plans and force all companies to buy health care from the government.  Until then, companies themselves will have to work out how to pay.

I bring this up because the same sex couple may be two women who both want to have babies.  Health spending is usually based on a statistical amount of babies and new mother care assuming that only one of the couple may become pregnant.  The numbers may be thrown off with serious consequences to the company if both the employee and her spouse can both become pregnant, need prenatal care, delivery and post natal care.  Family and Medical Leave time may also become a burden to the company with a lesbian couple where both get pregnant at different times and the one takes time off for both births.  I foresee a lot of big changes to company health care policies as a result of allowing same sex marriage.  Perhaps the government supports this as it may generate pressure for the government to take over health care.  This might be part of the ObamaCare plan all along.  Of course company-paid abortions should decline with same sex marriages as neither the employee nor the partner should ever have an unwanted pregnancy.

Health care is not the only spousal benefit.  There are life insurance policies, Family and Medical Leave time off should the worker’s partner become ill or disabled, and personal time off to care for a sick partner’s child.  All of these are impacts to the company’s bottom line for an action which they may not support.

Outside of the impacts to the corporate world, spousal benefits would mean that the partner’s “spouse” would have the final say on medical decisions should the one become incapable of making those decisions.  There would be immediate power of attorney rights afforded to married couples and questions of inheritance would not be dictated in states where a spouse can leave everything to the other spouse and leave direct family members out of the will.  In some situations only legitimate family members are allowed to visit terminally ill patients; this would allow the partner to visit during the last moments of life.  Medical directives and general Power of Attorney documents can handle much of this today but same sex wills can be easily contested in some places and often patient requests are ignored.

In addition, same sex married couples would be eligible for consideration for Green Card status and could become citizens using the same legal paths as heterosexual married couples when one is a foreign national.  The immigration service would have to give these couples the same scrutiny as any other and determine if these marriages were purely “of convenience” to get someone into the country or if they are legitimate.  I don’t know the criteria they use now but it would most likely have to change to accommodate these new situations.  Today simply marrying someone from another country does not automatically get that person into the US.  This policy should not change simply because of the sex of the partner.  In addition, if a person is ineligible for a US visa on his or her own, I don’t think same sex marriage will make that person any more eligible.  It might grant them a longer visa but they will still need to meet eligibility requirements.

There are retirement benefit implications. The federal tax law and many state tax laws provide that if a marriage is dissolved after being intact for ten years or more, each spouse has a claim to a portion of the other spouse’s retirement benefits.  That includes Social Security, military retirement and corporate pension payments.  Many retirement plans also have an optional “surviving spouse” provision where reduced payments continue throughout the life of the remaining partner.  Annuity and other life insurance instruments also have these provisions as riders to the policies.  A great actuarial recalculation will be needed to accommodate same sex marriages.  I don’t know if statistics even exist yet to cover all of the male/male and female/female choices and possibilities.  Should  the rider costs differ between same and different sex couples, what would happen if the orientation of the marriage changes by a divorce from one sex and a marriage to another?  If an insurance company guesses wrong here before the numbers start coming in, look for more bailouts needed in the financial industry to cover the miscalculated mortality rates.

There are tax implications. Same sex marriage will allow more couples to claim the marriage benefit afforded in the tax code by filing a joint return or by filing as married but filing separately.  What will be the impact to the income tax brackets and percentages that the others will pay?  Will same sex couples truly pay their “fair share”?

So, what are the benefits? I suppose there are many benefits to same sex couples that go well beyond simply sticking it to the heterosexual community.  Even with my cursory analysis I see several:

• More options such as joint filing status on income taxes to lower tax liabilities
• Right of survivor for life insurance, financial and inheritance purposes
• Spousal power of attorney and medical directive decision making
• Company-provided health care for the partner
• Green Card or other spousal visa status and residency provisions
• Alimony and child support in case of a dissolution of the marriage

What are the objections? Religious and faith implications not withstanding, I can’t list them all but a few that immediately come to mind that fall outside of the morality arena.  They all center around the idea that many may enter into a marriage not for the reasons that marriage was originally founded (spend a life together and possibly raise a family) but purely for selfish financial gain.  However, this marriage sham happens even in the heterosexual world.  There are numerous “marriages for convenience” where a person with a good name marries a person with a good bank account.  Hollywood stars marry as a PR move.  Often heterosexual marriages happen just to let a girlfriend’s maternity coverage or a friend’s health care be paid for by someone else’s employer.  It’s going to happen regardless of the sexual orientation of the couples.  How much will it happen?  I don’t know but it must be taken into consideration.

Therefore, I think that the fear is that when there is little or no chance of having children (unless they adopt) that the temptation to defraud the various systems and institutions will be increased.  This is a real concern and must be addressed.  “Adultery” that involves a same sex couple should be seen as seriously as within a heterosexual one.  Perhaps promiscuity could and should negate the guarantee of benefits or other provisions, regardless of the couple’s orientation.  I don’t know.  I’m not paid to know (at least not right now; I’ve not yet put a PayPal “Donate” button on my blog page.)  You can legislate morality; every law does it.  You just can’t dictate behavior; you either reward it, punish it, or ignore it.  However, even if you can’t dictate behavior, you can mitigate the negative effects of that behavior on individuals and society in general.

Conclusion. All of these questions and issues, and more, need to be addressed.  I know I only scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg here.  I don’t think there is a good, “one size fits all” answer for many of these questions posed here.  I know there are other objections such as know to know if the marriage is for legitimate purposes and not just to unfairly gain benefits for a friend.  There are news stories and movies that cover all of this and it must be addressed if same sex marriage is codified into law.  Each law carries with it the loopholes that can encourage some into a conspiracy to commit fraud. The State must always balance freedom and responsibility when making legal decisions and every decision must be made for the overall good of the society over which it governs.  None of this should be taken lightly.  What message are we giving our children?  What are we saying about us as a society?

The discussion of same sex marriage is often more emotional than logical.  Let’s start working some logic into this and look at some of the intended and unintended consequences.  “Because if they can do it, I want to do it, too!” is not a reasonable argument.  The potential impacts to the nation’s economy, political structure and moral fabric are huge.  Let’s not run the deficit up even more through bad planning.  Let’s also not run headlong into a morass without a good moral compass.