Gay Marriage Can Be a Taxing Issue

Your editorial on gay marriage (“The Meaning of Marriage,” July 14) left out a simple means of resolving the issue of gay marriage. If the federal laws on taxes, inheritance and other issues were amended to recognize civil unions, the pressure for allowing gay marriage would be greatly reduced.

Amending federal laws to remove their bias toward non-gay marriage would be a great compromise in letting gay people form unions as they wish.

David Burkenroad

Santa Monica

*

Your editorial misses the mark and the point. You seem to have forgotten to mention that the constitutional amendment being developed is a clone of one already passed in California.

Why does the will of the people mean nothing anymore? When the will is ignored, anarchy is the result.

Our court system is useless because the will of the people, legally supported by the Bible, 6,000-plus years of history and our God-based Constitution, is ignored.

Dale Laskey

San Pedro

*

Ultimately, the concept you articulated so well in your editorial about the “bright line,” you’re either married or you’re not, is what pushed my partner of 16 years and me to drive all night from Santa Monica to San Francisco in February to join thousands of other ordinary working-class families in achieving some degree of full legal protection of full civil rights.

We agree with you, that by redefining the state’s role in marriage, it gives everyone an equal opportunity to reach their dreams and goals with full legal protection under the law and without fear of familial vindictiveness.

Given this equal protection, gay working-class people like me can continue filling our shopping carts with Two-Buck Chuck at the grocery store and my partner can continue to wait tables and we won’t have to move to Vancouver.

Craig Ayliffe

Alberto Vazquez

Santa Monica

*

In a nation founded in part on the concept of “no taxation without representation,” it is shameful to see our nation’s leaders debate the idea of establishing lesser representation and limited rights under the law for some because of their sexual orientation, while taxing them at the same rate as others with more benefits.

Unless Congress passes a tax cut for gays and lesbians to account for these discounted rights, the only logical and fair conclusion to the debate on gay marriage is one of total inclusion and equal rights.

David C. Zweig

Los Angeles

*

As someone who has been married to the same man for over 53 years, I wonder why gay marriages are such a threat to the institution of marriage that we need a constitutional amendment to ban them.

If this is the case, why not a constitutional amendment to ban divorce?

Judy B. Rosener

Newport Beach