How The Supremes Saved Marriage
And
Didn’t Even Know It
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling, making marriage legal throughout the country, may just have the exact net-positive effect that the religious fanaticism of the far right has been postulating would not be the case and would, in their warped world of wonder, bring down modern civilization as we know it, begging the question;
Can marriage be all bad….or all good?
If you follow the logic of the Kim Davis’ and Mike Huckabees, and Pat Robertsons, or god forbid, any of the Duggars, marriage is a good thing and despite what the flood of polling tells us about marriage in America (it’s on the decline) and/or divorce (it’s like a Katy Parry concert bra…on fire and exploding), then an very interesting fork in the road in fast approaching that may just give incense burning, robe-wearing, bible-thumping persons everywhere sudden pause….and possibly a huge case of the vapors when the actual statistics start piling up.
Budgets are under attack, just like all funded institutions these days, but leaving the 1% diatribe aside for this discussion, the very real ways that governing bodies, be they governmental or corporate, save money is from cutting benefits. We see it all the time, Social Security being the piñata of punching bags for this concept.
For a couple of decades now, progressive, correct-thinking companies (and more than a few states) have offered domestic partnership benefits, primarily to allow same-sex couples to enjoy a degree of sameness that their married counterparts take for granted. True, a small percentage of heterosexual, non-married couples have availed themselves of these benefits as well and why not, benefits are benefits.
Until they aren’t.
Now, the budget crunchers and actuaries across the country are quickly lining up their line-items and looking for ways to once again impact their collective bottom lines. Now that marriage, with all its inherent, god-given largesse, is the law, why have a two-tiered benefit structure that costs them money to administrate and allows virtual scofflaws to piggy back onto their fellow couplers and tap into a fixed pool of monies that only the sanctioned should have access to. And everyone is now sanctioned. Everyone may now marry.
States and companies alike are rapidly reassessing their packages and realizing that they no longer have to separate out the married from the merely self-proclaimed joined. Fire up the ovens for those wedding cakes (if you can find a bakery that is not under litigation); pull out those wallets for the stipends paid to the officiants and endorsers of marriage (if you can find ones that deem to follow the law of the land) and let the masses marry.
Institutions, always the arbiters of all things fiscally responsible (sic), are quickly coming to the obvious conclusion that marriage, all marriage, will be a boon to their budgets or at the very least no longer a sucking hole in their profit balloons. A recent Pew Charitable Trust survey http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/09/11/after-same-sex-marriage-ruling-states-reconsider-domestic-partner-benefits informs us that this next phase of reexamination is already well underway.
Within moments of legalizing same sex marriage, some states (Maryland) immediately, quietly, eliminated domestic partnership benefits from the arsenal of weapons aimed at the wanton. If we follow the leader, can corporate America be far behind? Silicon Valley pay heed. All that talk about “attracting the best and brightest” will fly out the window along with all the rice, or the more politically correct birdseed.
The net result, if everyone can marry then every should marry, if only to be on equal footing, benefit-wise. Again, putting aside the relative merits of the overall premise, the logic is fairly true to form and thus marriages, of all stripes, should soar or at least uptick in a quantifiable way.
And isn’t this what the religiousitous who live among us have been advocating all along. Shouldn’t the Kim Davis’ of Middle Earth (Amerka) be rejoicing instead of threatening yet another taxpayer funded lawsuit aimed at preventing people from marrying?
If more people marry isn’t the world a more “Christian” and god-fearing homeland. Isn’t this what security is all about? The more stable, committed, relationships exist, the better off society, as a whole, will be.
But then I suppose Kim Davis’ divorce lawyers might have an opinion on this.