I do not believe I'm overtaxed. I also believe most families with earnings in the same range as my family are generally not overtaxed. There are choices one can make that allow a person to legally reduce his or her tax burden. A person can move, or buy a house, or give to charity, or have children (which I wouldn't recommend just for the tax decuction); any number of things can be done to keep more of one's money.
I had a conversation with a friend last night, though, that really opened my eyes about straight privilege.
It was not his intent to convince me of anything about tax law or gay rights. We were talking about his stress level after becoming the sole breadwinner in his family. His partner recently stopped working to concentrate on school and spend more time with his children (the partner had been married to a woman before coming out and has custody of the children most of the time.)
My friend runs his own business, and does okay, but he made a comment about how hard it is to make ends meet when over half his income goes to taxes and insurance.
The thing is, he isn't bitter about paying taxes, he's just frustrated over the unfairness of the tax code and annoyed that he has to work a little harder than guys like me to achieve the same results. He is supporting a family, yet he doesn't get many of the tax breaks that many others tend to take for granted.
He can't file jointly and get the immediate benefit of the lower tax bracket. He can't claim the children as dependents, even though he pays for at least half their support. No child tax credit, either.
He could probably do some things, legally, to manipulate the way his earnings are taxed, but why should he have to do that? He is in essentially the same spot in life as me, except his partner is male. And he can't marry him in this state.
Now, I wasn't unaware of these things. I knew them only in theory, though. I could look at it from a legal perspective and see clearly how unfair it is, but it really hits home when you see:
a. The stress it puts on families.
b. The sadness of someone who has to adjust his life to accomodate the larger society's unwillingness to make things fair.
We had a good conversation. Most of it was about his personal feelings and about how to manage an intimate relationship during stressful times. It was not a political discussion. The observations above are my own, though we did speak briefly about them after I brought it up.
When we did talk about the legal ramifications, we agreed that the marriage laws were not originally written to exclude gay marriages. They are a holdover from the days when fathers gave away their daughters like one would sign over the title of an automobile when selling it. Times changed, though. Some tax laws were modified slightly to accomodate the new reality that most marriages in this country are legal partnerships, not transfers of property.
Frankly, I doubt anyone envisioned a hundred years ago that gay couples would (rightly) seek the same benefits under the tax codes that other families receive. I don't have to tell anyone here what the reaction has been to their simple demand to enjoy what other couples enjoy. Fearful and ignorant bigots want to change the law, claiming the law was intended all along to "sanctify" relationships between one man and one woman and just needs to be clarified.
That's crap.
Churches can sanctify marriages if they want. Individuals can create covenants between themselves without the government's help. Marriage in the legal sense should be solely about streamlining inheritance and care-giving decisions.
I know of no other group of people who are so unjustly singled out in the legal code. I'm told I have white privilege. I'm told I have male privilege. When I reflect on my life, I can determine that those things are indeed true, though I would argue with some that it's not always easy to evaluate individual events one way or the other. But straight privilege is written into the law. I can point it out in black and white, and it's becoming cemented in place in many of our United States.
Either give the tax benefits to my friend, or take mine away, but make it fair.