Owen comes up with the good stuff:
Many of these statutory rights and benefits, [of marriage] while automatically conferred on married couples, are not exclusive to marriage and can be completely or nearly replicated for unmarried individuals
...Further, no evidence appears to exist to show that the intent of the provision in question is to prohibit unmarried individuals from receiving benefits or utilizing the law in such a way as to allow them to privately order their lives even though such benefits or use of the laws may result in the unmarried individuals sharing in benefits or protections that also happen to be offered to married persons.
(Wisconsin Legislative Council opinion.)
Plain and simple: the "Vote No" crowd is lying, lying, lying about the effects of The Amendment. That includes Fr. Brian Massingale, by the way. (PDF file, scroll down to P. 4)
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7 comments:
Count me officially in the Vote YES! camp.
Yeah. How old is Owen and where did he get his law degree? He has no idea what he is talking about.
Talk to any one of the hundreds of lawyers who have offocially signed on the Vote No campaign because they know it is not possible to provide protections to families.
I know, because I am one of them.
"Protections to FAMILIES"?
Pardon me for my density. What, exactly, does that mean?
'Splain it to me without legalese. I hate that stuff.
Marriage provides hundreds of legal protections to families and children. Inheritance, taxes, child support, medical decision-making, pension and retirement plan, property transfers, hospital visitation, educaitonal decision-making, etc. etc. etc.
It is not true that lawyers can draft around this. I am a WI lawyer that frequently works with these families, and there are major limits to what I can do. Statistics show that gay and lesbian families have children in ratios that are very close to heterosexiual families. This hurts real people and real families in WI.
It is true that "lawyers cannot draft around" current restrictions.
That's why we have a Legislature--to allow some (likely not ALL) of marriage's privileges to be enjoyed by other couples.
I have no problem with health-care POA, nor other POA arrangements, nor hospital visitation, nor an accomodation on inheritances.
But one does not have to be "married" to seek and obtain such legislation.
Sure, but why the second clause prohibiting anything substantially similar to marriage? In other states, offering only one of these protections was deemed too "substantially similar" and so all are dumped. So we now know with hindsight that the groups pushing the amendments really have no interest in offering protections to families. When one is tried, they sue and use the amendment as their weapon. A little bait and switch.
Also, why not just have legislation that says this rather than an amednment? If you believe in the legislative process, then support it all the way. The truth is this is a blatant attempt to manipulate thee electorate. Let's beat up the group its okay to hate.
Let's be clear: suits were brought ONLY in cases of "public payroll" health benefits. When taxes are used to provide benefits for unmarried couples, then one can expect challenges from taxpayers. However, these can STILL be legislated into existence.
As to the need for the Amendment: see SCOWI's roster. Those bozos would re-write the Law of Gravity if it benefitted the Liberal Agenda.
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