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From: dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Discrimination, gay marriages
Message-ID: <19415@wivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Apr-84 20:51:51 EST
Article-I.D.: wivax.19415
Posted: Wed Apr 18 20:51:51 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Apr-84 01:26:45 EST
References: <19407@wivax.UUCP>, <925@hao.UUCP>
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 31


  	Exactly right, Steve. Financial issues. Exactly what I was talking 
	about. Every six months, change partners?!?!? Surely, that's not your
	idea of commitment, the kind that (supposedly) earns tax deductions
	for married (heterosexual?) couples. Can you really claim to be a
	financial unit with a different person every six months?  Do you want
	or expect to be doing that? How much demonstrated commitment does
	there have to be? Is willingness to fill out a required form enough,
	regardless of gender(s)?

Um, just so no one misunderstands, I'm on Greg's side (reread my articles.)
I think the S.F. ordinance was asking exactly for what you object to.
My complaint is that long-term gay relationships cannot be presently be
recognized as a legal unit for the purposes of taxation, inheritance
and the right to live together.  Too often one hears of landlords who
decide arbitrarily that two unmarried men or women may not share an
apartment, or of the situation where one's partner dies, and the surviving
person is left on financially shaky ground, or the relatives come in and
clean their life away, or the survivor is evicted from the apartment
they shared because the dead person's name is on the lease.  None of
these situations are made up; they have been well publicized in the gay
press.  It *IS* possible to legally circumvent some of these problems
by careful legal attention to wills, insurance policies, tenancies in
common, etc, but there are still large inequities.  My comment is that
the S. F. ordinance doesn't address these problems at all, preferring
to institute a quasi-legal morass which is fiscally irresponsible,
questionably useful, and not particularly desirable (at least to my mind.)
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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