SPECIAL RIGHTS

Consider this: Earned Income Tax Credits (EIC) hold promise as an incentive for personal responsibility. But, they need to be more broadly implemented. Non-custodial parents, for example, may not claim or share EICs given to custodial parents. That's not a concern for 2-parent families, which was the focus of my last post. But, it's important in the context of any desire to promote the responsible behavior of fathers, as well as others who might take responsibility for the welfare of their neighbors if we expanded our conception of family and supported people in making differant choices.


Recognition of the trend toward cohabitant unions holds more immediate promise for alleviating poverty and reducing dependancy on public resources than attempts at reversing trends away from marriage--trends that are not a purely American phenomena, but are occuring worldwide. Eliminating impossibly restrictive dependency tests in tax regulation in favor of extending multiple new EICs (in support of education, retirement savings, residential investment, and suppot of children or adult dependents, etc) to cohabitant partners, extended family members and other individuals who assume responsibility for the support of individuals in need, will encourage personal responsibility and economic self-sufficiency.

In the marriage debate (rhetorically) and in tax regulation (practically), everyone seems to agree that American society would be better off to support families. The trouble comes in deciding what makes a family. Whether these families of choice are gay men and lesbians or are Christians living in intentional communities, making EICs (or shared EICs) available to anyone who takes responsibility for the care of another, has higher potential to support children and depedent adults, to expand health coverage and to increase access to education than does the continued restriction of these tax benfits to married couples alone.

If ever there were "special rights", it's those rights already granted to married couples under current laws. The Constitution of the United States, however, does not guarantee rights to couples, nor should it ever. It guarnatees inalienable rights to individuals who, if empowered to do so, can extend benefits will beyond the limits of the nuclear American family.