Family Values For One
There is an invisible minority in our society. Oppressed by morons with hateful fears and delusions of superiority, this overlooked underclass is single people.
Much of the prejudice is institutionalized and therefore incomprehensible. For example, those in power have come up with the misnomer "The Marriage Penalty."
According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 20 million married couples pay higher taxes than they would if they were single. But 25 million couples have lower taxes because they are married, so it really ought to be called "The Marriage Bonus."
The young urban professionals with double income and no kids are probably paying the penalty. Fortunately, couples being driven mad by children and crushing mortgage interest payments probably aren’t paying the marriage penalty — at least on their taxes.
In the eyes of the family values crowd, single parents are almost as worthless as single non-parents. Single fathers encounter the most insidious prejudice. I know a man who had a hard time getting the insurance company to pay a claim on his daughter. When he finally spoke to a human, she told him that the company had repeatedly denied his claim because he could not possibly have custody.
One step lower in the moral pecking order are unmarried couples, only slightly more sinful than divorced ones. Even people in committed relationships far healthier than typical marriages are prohibited from having family values by those who talk the most about them.
At the very bottom of the singles underclass are gay people, where the family values preachers intend to keep them permanently with bans on marriage and adoption.
None of this is fair, of course, but those who will continue to suffer the most from bigotry are singles. In our culture, anyone not part of a "traditional family" is automatically a second-class citizen.
But we are now the majority, and it seems a minority with unwarranted influence has been doing all the talking.
Much of the prejudice is institutionalized and therefore incomprehensible. For example, those in power have come up with the misnomer "The Marriage Penalty."
According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 20 million married couples pay higher taxes than they would if they were single. But 25 million couples have lower taxes because they are married, so it really ought to be called "The Marriage Bonus."
The young urban professionals with double income and no kids are probably paying the penalty. Fortunately, couples being driven mad by children and crushing mortgage interest payments probably aren’t paying the marriage penalty — at least on their taxes.
In the eyes of the family values crowd, single parents are almost as worthless as single non-parents. Single fathers encounter the most insidious prejudice. I know a man who had a hard time getting the insurance company to pay a claim on his daughter. When he finally spoke to a human, she told him that the company had repeatedly denied his claim because he could not possibly have custody.
One step lower in the moral pecking order are unmarried couples, only slightly more sinful than divorced ones. Even people in committed relationships far healthier than typical marriages are prohibited from having family values by those who talk the most about them.
At the very bottom of the singles underclass are gay people, where the family values preachers intend to keep them permanently with bans on marriage and adoption.
None of this is fair, of course, but those who will continue to suffer the most from bigotry are singles. In our culture, anyone not part of a "traditional family" is automatically a second-class citizen.
But we are now the majority, and it seems a minority with unwarranted influence has been doing all the talking.
posted by John Marsh at 7:54 PM
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