Like many other readers of this blog, I have followed the progress of the Prop 8 and DOMA cases to the Supreme Court and waited with bated breath during the month of June to see how the cases would be decided.
On June 26th I rejoiced in decisions that brought the United States several steps closer to affirming the full equality of all human beings. I am happy that lesbian and gay couples can now get married in California, the state of my birth, the state where I still vote. As one commentator remarked, “This story has a happy ending—it leads to marriage.” I am also pleased that lesbian and gay couples will not be excluded from “marriage benefits” offered to heterosexual couples, simply on the basis of their sexual preference.
Still, the gay marriage victories raise other questions. Much of the rhetoric surrounding the push for marriage equality assumed that “marriage” is or should be “the norm” for all people. Those arguing for the right of gay people to marry often seemed to be saying: “We are just like everyone else.”
This assumption leaves out a whole lot of people—among them large numbers of single women. Recent statistics indicate that 38% of women in the United States between 15 and 44 have never been married. Like me, many of my friends—including women who are straight, gay, and bisexual—are not married and are not in couple relationships at the present time. When will our situation become part of “the new norm[al]?
Are we single by choice? The answer for most of us is “yes” if that means that at some point in our lives we have chosen not to stay in relationships that did not promote our full humanity and psychological and physical health. At the same time, most of us (at least at some point in time) have wished that we had a truly mutually supporting couple relationship. In this regard, we simply weren’t as “lucky” as some of our other friends. On the other hand, most of us enjoy the lives we have.
Despite the fact that there are so many of us, it is not always easy to be a single woman. Recently a single friend who was visiting me complained that in most cases she is the one who has to call friends who are in couple relationships to suggest meeting for lunch or dinner. This is my experience as well. Friends who are members of couples may have less need for intimate friendships and often seem to find it “simpler” to spend time with other couples, even when one couple is lesbian or gay and the other is straight. This seems to be as true for gay or lesbian couples as it is for heterosexual couples. If you are part of a couple and reading this, why not call a single friend today and ask her (or him) out?
As I said above, I rejoice that “marriage benefits” that are offered by the federal government to married couples will not be denied to lesbian and gay married couples. But my question is: why should single women (or men) be “punished” by the tax system for not being married?
On the programs discussing marriage equality on MSNBC which I avidly watched, the issues of taxes and health insurance were cited as among the “benefits” marriage equality would bring. Never once did I hear anyone seriously question the assumption that married couples should be entitled to “preferential treatment” as compared to single people when it comes to health insurance and taxes.
When I got married in the 1979, I told my tax accountant that I intended to continue to file separately, as my husband and I did not intend to pool our finances. He pointed out to me that this decision would cost me several thousand dollars in extra taxes. It did not seem “fair” to me at the time that my husband and I—who never had children—should be getting a tax break just because we were married. Of course we took it.
Today I compare myself to two gay male friends whose economic position is similar to mine. They are considering the tax benefits of getting married. The question I ask is why they or any married couple should be getting tax benefits simply for being married.
If anything, the fact that my friends are a couple means that they have fewer expenses than I do. They share a house, they share vacation expenses, and one of them may soon add himself to the other’s health insurance. When they get married, they will also lower their federal taxes. In effect, single people like me are being “punished” by the tax system for our choices or “luck.”
As we all know, the tax system is based on the assumption that the purpose of marriage is to have children. Yet today, many people who are married do not have children or do not have children living with them. So why the automatic tax break for married couples? Wouldn’t it be more equitable to give anyone who is caring for children truly significant tax breaks and to do away with all automatic tax breaks for married couples?
The only reason that tax breaks for married couples make any sense is the assumption that one partner, usually the woman in a heterosexual marriage, will be supported by the other. Yet as we all know, more and more married women with children are working—whether by choice, necessity, or a combination of the two. This is true of lesbian and gay couples with children as well. Women (or men) who “choose” to stay home with their children put themselves and their children at considerable financial risk, as they could at any moment—by divorce or death—find themselves required to reenter the workforce to support themselves and their children.
I think it is high time we had a rational discussion in the United States about overhauling the tax system to take account of changing social mores. No one should be forced by death and taxes to lose a family home shared with a partner. On the other hand, those who are married should not receive automatic tax benefits that are in effect “denied” to single people.
I am aware that such a rational discussion is unlikely to occur in a Congress controlled by white male Republicans who (it appears) wish to keep women barefoot and pregnant and who are happy to punish anyone (but especially any woman) who tries to live outside the “bonds” of patriarchal marriage. But now that marriage equality has been achieved on the federal level, it is high time that feminists and other progressives begin this conversation among ourselves.
Carol P. Christ has just returned from a life-transforming Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete which she led through Ariadne Institute. The culture of ancient Crete, the last flowering of Old Europe, is one of the wellsprings of her spiritual vision, and there she participates in rituals that invoke Goddess and celebrate the connection of all beings in the web of life. Carol spoke on a WATER Teleconference recently. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.
feminismandreligion.com 
Thanks, Carol, an interesting new topic, and something we can all relate to, Gay or straight, marriage is not the necessary outcome of every great relationship, tax breaks or not. I think anyone we share an abode with should be able to qualify as a “tax partner.” And a lot of us are finding more and more interesting ways to communicate online, so that friendships are evolving into unknown territory. One of my best friends is someone I have never met — a marvelously engaging exchange, but for all the world, I could not begin to “classify” the connection.
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It is unjust that people should be rewarded or penalized based on their marital status. Here is to a new movement for equality!
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I was married and supported my husband until the president invited him to go to Vietnam. He joined the navy, I started graduate school, we had a son, I divorced him, and I’ve been happier single all these years than I ever was before. No, marriage should not be the only norm. Brava, Carol, brava! Your blogs are forever provoking–thought-provoking.
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As a lifelong single woman and single mother, I applaud this message. I think that recognizing singleness should also be related to paganism/polytheism: Hestia, Athena, Artemis, Hecate, ever virgins. Demeter the single mother. Hera as the “Completed One”, or widow. We also are sacred.
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Thanks, Carol. I have been raising these matters for years. I don’t see why those lucky in love should also be lucky under the law. However, the current changes make it hard NOT to marry is one is partnered for exactly the reasons you point out. I think it it important to say that ALL MARRIAGES are fundamentally contracts about money and property. RELATIONSHIPS are something different. The sooner we get clear on that the better. Warm wishes, MEH
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I have been a lurker to this blog sometimes, but I had to comment. As a single woman (by circumstances and choice-I will not settle), I agree and thank you! There are ways to make things more equitable and allow people to live the lives they choose. In America, we like to talk about our “rugged individualism” but the “American Dream” is a cookie cutter as dreams come.
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Thanks for your responses. If anything single women should be the ones to get a tax break as long as we are making 70-some cents on the dollar compared to white men, and as long as so many of us are working in the minimum or sub-minimum wage sectors, like for example, part-time at Walmart.
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I am married…but I have daughters and a sister who are not. I always felt like single woman had a lower status in our society and it bothers me. It bothers me when woman gather they must talk of marriage and kids…I always try to steer the conversation to more inclusive topics. Thanks for adding to the food for thought and conversation!!
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Marriage is about money and property. It is about ownership, and I have been a vocal critic of the idea that benefits like health care and taxes should be tied to anything at all. We should all be treated equally under the law, and I do object to the special status given in the tax code to married people. I think gay and lesbian marriage will destroy our community, it will create a class structure. Men believe they own women in marriage, yes, men believe this, even as hetero women are in denial about this. Why not have a social security beneficiary system where we choose who to give this survivor benefit to? I don’t like the couply nature and the social structure this creates Carol. To me, the whole point of being lesbian was to be about radical individuality, and radical love. It was not about being owned and controlled by a partner.
Every single person should have equal tax benefits, and particularly women. I think this obsession with married vs. single is what makes friendship difficult between lesbians and straight people, for example.
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When I signed on for radical lesbian feminism, I most certainly didn’t want some couple model or some heteronormative idiocy in the mix. Marriage is about property transfer, it is about the ownership of women and children. Women who marry men still in this day and age take on the male last name. In fact, last month, yet another hetero female friend did this when she got married. She is now about to have a baby boy, which her new husband is all happy about. HE prefered a boy, she was ok with either sex for a child. I was horrified and could see a million things wrong with this guy, all these red flags are invisible to her. Already, she seems more colonized and less in control of her free time.
I have a partner, we also are radical individuals. We are very different and have separate friends as well a few common friends. I don’t have to call her to ask permission to do things. We don’t merge our names or our assets. I spend a lot of time figuring out the tax code to my advantage, and in creating a unique financial structure in which we have what we call “the lesbian advantage” in finance. I love my single women friends, and my radical feminist straight women friends. My radical feminist straight women friends and I spend hours talking about life, politics and feminist activism– I have never met their husbands or boyfriends, and they know that when we are together, men are out of the picture. The boyfriends or husbands know that their female partners have a life of the mind that doesn’t include them. I cherish these friendships because they are real and not based on some fake ideal of coupledom. And just for the record Carol, I pick up the phone all the time and invite my single women friends out to do things all the time. I cook for them, I spoil them, I love them. Couples can be utter social bores!
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I truly fear for lesbian solidarity now that “marriage” has entered the picture! Maybe it might protect the children born to a lesbian couple, but this white picket fence nonsense is likely to destroy what was unique about a radical lesbian feminist way of life. Dull, conservative and not about freedom at all. Guess I don’t have much to say today do I :-)
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