A HUGE Bottle of White-out!

I began a post on the subject of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) vs. allowing same-sex couples to marry in December of 2010.  I edited it a few times, but never posted it; after recent events, I've decided to made a few more edits and post.

This last week, the Supreme Court of the United States made a determination that not allowing same-sex marriages and their participants the same benefits as one-man-one-woman marriages was discriminatory.

I have maintained for a very long time that if our government decides to allow marriage between people solely based on love; while allowing them all the benefits of marriage (but none of the natural benefits of child-bearing); our country is doomed in many ways -- least of all in our population and economy.  This is not just a religious problem but an issue of historic proportion.

It will also open Pandora's box to a host of other related issues, including adoption/foster/child welfare, divorce and may well open the doors to polygamy and child-marriage being considered acceptable and legal.

My original blog post referenced a letter dated January 31, 1997 written by Barry R. Bedrick Associate General Counsel to The Honorable Henry J. Hyde, Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.  The letter addressed Mr. Hyde's query "in your September 5, 1996, letter, to identify federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status."

The letter and supporting documentation can be found here.

Mr. Bedrick's cover letter concludes:  “The result is a collection of 1049 federal laws classified to the United States Code in which marital status is a factor. “

It continues…

“To give readers a sense of the kinds of federal laws in which marital status is a factor, we classified the laws on the list into the following 13 categories⁴:

• Social Security and Related Programs, Housing, and Food Stamps
• Veterans' Benefits
• Taxation
• Federal Civilian and Military Service Benefits
• Employment Benefits and Related Laws
• Immigration, Naturalization, and Aliens
• Indians
• Trade, Commerce, and Intellectual Property
• Financial Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
• Crimes and Family Violence
• Loans, Guarantees, and Payments in Agriculture
• Federal Natural Resources and Related Laws
• Miscellaneous Laws

While we believe this classification scheme is useful for organizing the hundreds of statutes on the list, and for representing the range of federal programs and activities in which the law makes marital status relevant, it should not be regarded as definitive.

⁴The order of the categories is not significant, except that the first four are those in which marital status is most pervasive, and are the largest.”

Another source I read in my research was located at Great Green Room.

This post discusses the "Legal Consequences of Marriage".  

"Summary: To understand what we are talking about when we talk about extending the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage to gay couples, it is important to understand what those rights and responsibilities are. After some general discussion of what marriage is in a broader sense, this essay provides a summary of the ways in which married couples are treated specially by the law."

The author discusses what marriage is; civilly, fundamentally and religiously.  

"Public recognition of a marriage by the community, the churches and the government can be interlinked. Often a single wedding ceremony can formally establish all three. But they are still fundamentally separate. You can have a civil wedding without a religious wedding, a religious wedding without a civil wedding, and community recognition without either."

The author references the letter I used above and further clarifies a few points:  

"In 1997, when Congress asked the General Accounting Office for a summary of the Federal Laws that treat married people differently from unmarried people, their report turned up 1049 such laws. There are probably more. Even the GAO wasn't eager to do all the work necessary to make a complete list.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The fifty states each have their laws that frequently give special rights and responsibilities to married couples. Connecticut's Office of Legislative Research did a similar report on laws in which marital status was a factor, and found 588 such laws. Other states probably have about as many, all different from each other, so on the state level there are probably 30,000 laws relating to marriage. And who knows what laws various municipalities might have.

Besides that, there are also companies that give different treatment to married couples. I'm no lawyer, so I'm not sure how legalization of gay marriages will effect what private companies do, but my guess is that one way or another, most private companies would eventually fall in line with government policy.

So, here's my best list of the more significant legal effects of marriage:

• Taxes: Taxes are different for married couples. Tax law treats a married couple almost like they were one person. This has advantages and disadvantages
• Health Care: When a person is seriously ill and not able to make their own decisions, hospitals regularly turn to the person's spouse to make health care decisions, up to and including whether to disconnect a person from life support.
• Judicial: Married people cannot be required to testify against each other in court.
• Government Assistance: Married people can get higher payments from some government assistance programs, including Medicaid, supplemental security income, and federal employee and veteran's disability payments.
• Death Benefits: If your spouse dies, you may be eligible for a wide range of different benefits.
• Bankruptcy: Married couples can file jointly for bankruptcy which can be beneficial.
• Immigration and Citizenship: Spouses of legal aliens are automatically legal and are not subject to immigration quotas.
• Divorce: The legal system often provides mediation services and expedited hearings for married couples who are breaking up.
• Government Employment: Spouses of veterans can get preferential treatment in hiring for government jobs.
• Retirement Plans: Changing the benefits in a retirement plan often requires written consent from your spouse.
• Domestic Violence: There are state and federal laws relating to the special circumstance of domestic violence.
• Parenthood: If a married woman has a baby, her husband is assumed to be the father.
• Adoption: In some states, it may be necessary for a couple to be married to be able to adopt children. 

[I've only listed the topic headings; not all of the post.  Please read for yourself for more details.]

Of course, with any relationship, there can always be a break-up.  Divorce is messy enough between one-man-one-woman marriages:  Division of assets, custody and visitation for the children, child support, etc.  Courts have traditionally awarded custody to the mother for many years, birth parents take priority over adoptive or foster parents in many custody cases and then there's the discussion and medical web of surrogate parents and donors.  This entire process will feed the court systems for a great many years while no one truly wins (does anyone win in divorce now?).

So, now that the President of the United States, the government and the Supreme Court have upheld the "right for everyone to marry", they will be required to change 13 categories of the tax code in addition to a host of other legal and religious rulings.  Changing the definition from “one man and one woman” in any way will allow for marriage and civil unions of all modes to be recognized.  If marriage is no longer between one man and one woman, but between consenting persons, then what defines “consent”?  What determines "person"? You cannot define consent by age or race or gender or species; moreover you would need to open consent to any being that did not disagree with the union. 

Can the government expect to deny the right to marry to anyone who says they're in love?  Is love is any less real and strong between a 14 year old and a 50 year old than between two persons of close age?  Can it be upheld as law that if love between two is acceptable, then love between more must be as well?  Can it still be considered illegal for cousins or relatives to marry?

What about the states that have not yet allowed same-sex marriages?  Will they be forced to uphold the federal standards instead of their state laws?  At what point will the government override the beliefs of many churches and religions that have to this point been able to refuse to marry couples that do not share their beliefs?  The government has already been asked to rule about businesses who choose not to serve clients based on difference of beliefs; in Colorado, Washington and New Mexico, just to name a few.  

Changing the availability of marriage to be a "right" is dangerous ground to tread; and one not easily swallowed by many people.  20 years ago I would have never dreamed that people of the same sex would be allowed to be lawfully married and have the same standing as couples who married to follow their religious and moral beliefs about family, love and children.

If marriage is only about love and benefits and rights, then it demeans the beauty of the vows for every person; regardless of sexual orientation.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
Alexis de Tocqueville 


Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
George Washington 

As far as I can tell…

Microsoft expects me to keep my existing phone forever and never change to another brand within my lifetime…OR

They expect me to start out every new phone I have with a new email address and life (contacts, apps).

I say this because…

We purchased insurance on the phone we gave to son #2 (I gave him my old phone when I received my new Lumia 900).  Of course, Son #2 damaged the phone and the insurance came in handy.  We made him pay the $50 to replace the phone (gasp – fascist parent warning!) and they shipped the phone to us at home.

I made the decision to take the new phone – HTC 8x Windows phone; and give son the ‘old’ phone – Lumia 900.  So, to transfer my ‘stuff’ to the new phone should be easy-peasy, right?  Well apparently, not-so-much.

I start off by backing up my photos, etc. to my Zune.  That’s what the online guide said to do.  I then removed the SIM card from the Lumia and place it into the HTC.  Follow the instructions to set up the phone and BINGO.  Right?  Not.so.fast.

First I have to install the “Windows Phone App for Desktop” which keeps telling me my phone isn’t plugged in.

When I finally (four tries) get it installed, it won’t let me drag anything from my PC to my phone – only from my phone to my PC.  There’s nothing ON the phone.

THEN, I go to my Windows Live account to re-install my apps and…uh, oh…

Let me back up a bit.  A few weeks ago, Microsoft finished their “migration” of Hotmail to Outlook.  Apparently, I’m special because I was one of the few people who had to create new passwords and user names to access my Microsoft Live account. I now have two – one for my phone and email and one for my online Windows Live Account. 

The two accounts can be “linked” for email purposes, but they do not “link” for any other purpose under the sun that I can tell. There’s no way to switch between the two and copy or sync or upload or download or…oh brother!

So, my phone won’t let me use my frontier.com/Hotmail/Live account.  Which has all my “stuff” on it – but doesn’t recognize my new phone.  I have to use my new Outlook.com sign in to get my phone to continue setting up.  Okay, my phone works; my contacts are there, but no apps.

To FURTHER confuse the issue, my calendar has “disappeared” from my phone.  Oh, it’s there at the start screen, but my calendar is apparently linked with my frontier.com/Hotmail/Live account – which my phone won’t let me use to set up my phone.  I have NOTHING on the Outlook.com sign-in except contacts.

I thought I’d be smart and install my frontier.com email and disable the email sync function (I don’t use that email anymore).  This partially resolved the calendar issue, but not completely.

I tried to fix the problem myself by looking at helps online.  I watched two videos that had lousy sound quality and the screen didn’t match my phone.

I contacted the Microsoft Community help boards online.  The answer was for me to contact Xbox and get it fixed.  I’m not even sure how that can be.  Why would I contact Mattel if my Wii wasn’t working?

In desperation, I emailed my contact at Microsoft – the one who gave me the help with my original post regarding Microsoft / phone products.  He never answered.  Okay, it’s not his job to help me.  Or he’s busy.  Or he’s left the country.  Pick one.

So, in FINAL desperation, I bring a bottle of wine over to my friend Jen’s house.  She says “it’ll take about 15 minutes for me to fix this”.  Two bottles of wine and an hour-and-a-half later…she’s had to ‘crash’ my phone (start from scratch), delete the Lumia from my frontier.com/Hotmail/Live account and I have to come up with a new Outlook.com sign-in password.  Finally, I have my apps.  (There is a lot of the story I’m not writing here because it’s too confusing to put down on paper and I’m not even sure I understand how to explain it to anyone unless they could have looked at it.)

NOW my problem is that my calendars STILL don’t sync; I have no ringtones other than factory MS tones (migraine anyone?) and some of the apps I had on my Windows 7 phone no longer are available for Windows 8.  Like the off-market Starbucks card app that I LOVED.  Starbucks won’t write one for Windows.  I know, first world problems.

So I’ve spent a total of about 5 hours upgrading my phone.  It should be ‘easy’.  It shouldn’t require me to have a MCSE figure it out for me.  Overall, I’m not impressed, AGAIN with Microsoft Windows Phone product. 

ON a separate note, I think the HTC charger port is phony.  The charger cord doesn’t slide into the port easily, and it doesn’t charge completely overnight if not correctly plugged in. 

The next phone I purchase will either be a Lumia product OR i'll jump the Microsoft ship and switch to an iPhone.  If the Lumia has the same issues that I’ve had with the two previous Windows OS for phones; I’ll be an Apple customer and Microsoft will have lost this housewife to the evil Borg.

Just catching up

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say; but I’ve had so much to say it’s difficult to get it down in between everything else.  And frankly, some of it just shouldn’t be put out in the blogosphere for anyone to read.

I had to make my blog a bit more restricted as I kept getting spam from “anonymous” about medications and lots of other junk.  So if you’re one of my readers who wants to comment and previously commented as “anonymous”, please use your real information or set up a Gmail account so you can comment on the blog. 

I’m amazed constantly at the ‘traffic’ the blog gets.  I’m sure it’s people like me who troll sites looking for someone with something important to say; so I hope you find what you’re looking for.  If not, and you’re a regular reader, I appreciate that you stop by and hope you stay.

Grandchild #3 has a peanut allergy, so that means we’re going to have to watch our peanut butter intake here in the house while he’s here.  Yes, we have an epi-pen; yes, I know how to use it.  Grandchild #2 is doing well after his feeding tube surgery (“G-tube”).  He’s funny and active and pretty much a boy all the way through.  Grandchild #1 – and my only grand-daughter so far – has been warned that this last birthday where she turned 9 years old, would be her last.  I can’t have her growing up on me now, can I?

I participated in my first 5K on Memorial Day Monday.  I only ran a small bit – due to the last of a head cold – but I finished just over 46 minutes and 206^th out of 260 participants.  Not bad for my first 5K and almost 50 years old.  I’ve signed up for another one in August and I hope to run more this time. 

Therapy is interesting; I’ve had it before and although I like talking to someone with an objective opinion, it’s also a bit strange because I can’t change anyone else; I’ve got to change how I deal with the situation.  And, even though I have a script – what I’m supposed to say or do – the other people DON’T have that script.  Since I can’t drag my therapist around with me all the time (that would be expensive and she’d probably need therapy); I have to punt.  And that never goes well.

One of the things I’ve discussed with my therapist is that my mother was never interested much in her grandchildren.  It’s always bothered me, but I try not to let it be a big deal.  Know what we figured out?  My mother – who was jealous of my husband and would have been jealous of any man I married – was JEALOUS of my kids.  JEALOUS of children!  Because they meant I no longer belonged solely to her.  Go figure.

I really, truly, honestly do not get Downton Abbey and the fandom thing.  Sorry, I’ve watched most of season three (because it just had to get better, right?) and I’m just not into it.  And, I’ve never watched Game of Thrones, Walking Dead or Arrested Development. 

I’ve started lots of posts but haven’t finished them.  Maybe I’ll post them and maybe I won’t.  Some of them just aren’t worth a read, but I had to get them out of my head.

It’s Day Camp season and I’m the registrar for our district.  I’m amazed how many people don’t complete health forms or complete them incorrectly.  I wonder if they are as careless in completing job applications or paperwork for school, or if they just really don’t realize how impossible it is to read their handwriting.  I could go on and on about incomplete forms, messy handwriting and what people name their children, but we’ll just leave that to your imagination.

I was at the grocery store the other day to pick up two items I forgot for dinner (potatoes and bread).  The total came to $6.68; I handed the cashier $7.00 (a 5-dollar bill and two 1’s).  She incorrectly entered in that I’d paid $6.00 so she asked for another 68 cents; I reminded her that I’d overpaid.  As she’d put in the wrong payment amount, she had no idea how much change to give me in return.  Her first excuse, was that she was tired as she’d worked all day.  I patiently told her to count back from $0.68 and guided her towards the pennies.  She then apologized because she’s “an art student – math isn’t my strong point” and couldn’t figure out whether to give me another 40 or 50 cents.  “Art Student” or not, she should know how to make change so she doesn’t get ripped off at the store for her art supplies.  Of course, she probably has a credit card and won’t need to worry about stupid things like cash.

That’s about all that’s going on right now.  Well, not really.  I have a 19 year old who works part time, and plays video games the rest of the time; a 14 year old who believes the only reason parents exist is to pay for his desires and a husband who doesn’t understand me after 24 years of marriage.  I don’t understand me either; so I guess he’s not alone.