Closet
cell family: advantages
have your ever noticed how the weddings pages of the paper always swell around new years? it's not because winter ceremonies are always "in". it's because lots of savvy couples out there know they'll save a bundle on the year's taxes if they take the plunge before the end of the year. the financial benefits of getting married are tremendous. denying these tax-breaks to lesbians and gays is heterosexism at its most pernicious. but it is the law and it is likely to be so for a the forseeable future. in fact, i fear that efforts to gurantee legal marriage and its benefits to lesbians and gays will only encourage more proposition 9-style backlash legislation, which we are certainly better off without.
the cell family is not an attempt to reify a larger family of closeted individuals; it is simply a means of recasting the family which would offer *tremendous* benefits to lesbians and gays. i'm not suggesting a house of free love, partner swapping, or any sort of polygamy. sexual relations would be strictly intra-couple. but spousal and parental responsibilities be would inter-couple and inter-individual. And the cell family-- not unlike a Communist cell-- would have at least a three-, and probably a four-person income.
moreover,
each cross-married pair could file their taxes
as a "normal" couple and the household, the cell family (all four people)
could save a tremendous amount of money. The Partners Task Force for Gay &
Lesbian Couples explains:
benefits
are often granted to married parties because it is well recognized that
the spouse of the working partner generally gives invaluable (usually
unpaid) assistance and support to the worker, which can allow a worker to
do a better job. over a ten-year period, a partnered worker earning
$40,000 a year would have earned about $55,800 less in benefits than a
married worker co-worker. in addition, if the gay worker's partner outlives
the worker by ten years, he misses out on $4,900 in social security
benefits,
and could loose $8,000 in pension programs.
the cell family can
enjoy all of these benfits tomorrow by cross marrying.
each member of the unit will be given what he most needs, and will offer
to his or her spouses what he or she can most give. if each spouse
contributed 1/3 of
their net income to the joint family account (rent or house payement, food,
&c) the ensuing quadruple income would allow for a standard of living
far beyond that of an ordinary couple. the amenities of life which
make child-rearing easier become a bit more financially possible under
this scheme. to follow the communist metaphor a bit further, spheres of
influence could be established: for instance the lesbian couple could
consider themselves as the pirmary influence over certain sections of
the house and the gay couple
others. for that matter certain duties could be divided -- thereby ensuring
more material wealth for the group resulting from
less work from each individual.
most importantly, the children of a cell family would receive the twice the love as the child of nuclear family. the cell family child would receive twice as much attention (it would have four parents after all) while each parent would have half as many direct responsibilites for the child. moreover, all the necessary genetic material for procreation would be readily at hand (to be joined and delivered in whatever manner the pair who choose to be the biological parents see fit) and, even more important, the aboslute bigotry of most u.s. courts could be completely circumvented: each child would, in the eyes of the court be the legal child of one a legitamately married man and woman; though the same child would in actuality have four parents.
