Your proposal suggests introducing discrimination in the form of additional taxes against people who want to get married more than once. Not everybody feels that having multiple marriages is necessarily and inherently "wrong" though, or even that multiple marriages is something that really needs to be discouraged. Personally, I don't see how permitting serial divorces and remarriages negatively affects society enough to care so much about discouraging it.
The ethical ramifications of your suggestion aside, the biggest problem with it is that this form of taxation doesn't discourage people from getting divorced. It only discourages people from getting remarried, so all it would do is result in the country having a lot more persistently single people instead of married people working harder to avoid divorce. Requiring that subsequent divorces be increasingly heavily taxed would be a more effective way to discourage serial divorces without discouraging marriage.
Keep in mind that marriage is already purely a state matter, and the only aspect of DOMA that Obama has abandoned support on is section 3, which forbids just the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. This does not affect section 2, though. The constitution explicitly requires states to recognize marriages that were licensed in other states, though. Only the eligibility requirements for applying for a marriage license in that state and the rights that are afforded to married people can vary by state law. Section 2 of DOMA is what gives states the ability to deny the same rights to people in same-sex marriages, and even though it also seems blatantly unconstitutional, Obama is not refusing to defend that because there there are still legal arguments that can be made to justify trying to prevent its annulment. That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be annulled from law, just that there are legal arguments that can still be made to support it. The administration just doesn't see any point in continuing to spend money on trying to prevent the judicial branch from ruling section 3 as unconstitutional.
If I'd meant any of this seriously, this would be the starting point of a great conversation. Since the sole intent was Swiftian satire, I'll just egotistically chalk one up to my mad skills.
The ethical ramifications of your suggestion aside, the biggest problem with it is that this form of taxation doesn't discourage people from getting divorced. It only discourages people from getting remarried, so all it would do is result in the country having a lot more persistently single people instead of married people working harder to avoid divorce. Requiring that subsequent divorces be increasingly heavily taxed would be a more effective way to discourage serial divorces without discouraging marriage.
Keep in mind that marriage is already purely a state matter, and the only aspect of DOMA that Obama has abandoned support on is section 3, which forbids just the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. This does not affect section 2, though. The constitution explicitly requires states to recognize marriages that were licensed in other states, though. Only the eligibility requirements for applying for a marriage license in that state and the rights that are afforded to married people can vary by state law. Section 2 of DOMA is what gives states the ability to deny the same rights to people in same-sex marriages, and even though it also seems blatantly unconstitutional, Obama is not refusing to defend that because there there are still legal arguments that can be made to justify trying to prevent its annulment. That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be annulled from law, just that there are legal arguments that can still be made to support it. The administration just doesn't see any point in continuing to spend money on trying to prevent the judicial branch from ruling section 3 as unconstitutional.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment