Straight seniors rely on domestic partnerships

Domestic partnerships in Washington are about protecting families. All families. Grandma & Grandpa's included. Seattle Times staff writer Lornet Turnbull describes how anti-LGBT activists have framed the domestic partnerships debate around gays, sidestepping for them what must be an inconvenient truth: rejecting the domestic partnership bill would hurt heterosexual seniors.

John Boehrer and Lynn Elmore registered as domestic partners shortly after state law first allowed it two years ago because they wanted to be able to make critical decisions about one another's care, if it ever comes to that.

Together eight years and both in their 60s, they've chosen not to marry in part because Elmore, who is divorced, would lose certain benefits.

In Washington state, heterosexual couples can get a domestic partnership if at least one partner is 62 years old or older.

"I think people may not be very well-educated about the full scope of the law, that it affects more than just same-sex couples," Elmore said. "They may not consider what it means to people like us."

Inexplicably, the powerful senior citizens advocacy organization AARP has remained silent on the issue, despite their claim that

Advocacy

We stand up for our members and society as a strong nonpartisan advocate for social change. We work on the issues that are important to 50+ Americans, including health and financial security and livable communities.

Domestic partnerships qualify under "financial security" at least. AARP members may want to contact their organization (1-888-OUR-AARP) and demand that AARP stand by seniors in domestic partnerships. Heterosexual seniors are getting domestic partnerships in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Washington state and Washington, D.C.. So vital to have these family protections in uncertain economic times like these.

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/12839/straight-seniors-rely-on-domestic-partnerships

Good for these seniors. They aren't as dumb as young people think they are!

:hi:

I'm an old left wing geezer, but I'm glad that there's a feisty new generation like you, ccharles000.

That's the beauty of youth. We are sort of dumb in their eyes. Thank goodness for it, too. And no, of course not, they don't all think we're dumb. :hi:

Great article!

Seniors becoming domestic partners are teaching younger people a great lesson that everyone learned during the 1950s and early 1960s. That lesson is, "Mind your own business."

If a youngish person wants to know whether two seniors in a domestic partnership are performing sexual acts with each other, that youngster needs to mind his or her own business. Even if the curious youthful sprite is a judge at a lawsuit hearing, that judge has no right to invade others' privacy.

Same goes for gay marriage. If two men marry each other just so they can save money on healthcare, they have the right to do that. It doesn't matter if they are using the money they save to visit singles bars, hustle women and take them to hotel rooms for casual sex. Two people getting married have the right to do so for an underhanded reason that is nobody else's business.

If a gay icon like Madonna has the right to marry Sean Penn for an underhanded reason that is nobody else's business, then a straight man has the right to marry his law partner for an underhanded reason that is nobody else's business. As long as the two people living together or sharing a hotel room are consenting adults, please let them do what they want to do. Let them not do what they don't want to do. Whatever they do or don't do is their private concern. The only time a sexual act becomes the business of a stranger is when one person forces the other to perform it. The only time a marriage contract should be investigated for falsehoods is when one of the partners later tries to annul the marriage or he / she files for divorce. Otherwise, a wedding ceremony (or domestic partner ceremony) is just that -- a ceremony for two people who later move on to private quarters to sleep and use the bathroom.

Excellent rant! :hi: I agree with you, of course.

We're only doing it this way to threaten our neighbors' marriages, though.

unmarried because of exactly this up until he passed two years ago. I had been unaware that this was happening until then. I am so proud of her! She still mows her own lawn!

I can't remember the first time I read an article about it, surely it was in the 1980's if not the 1970's, that seniors coupling in later life had to "make the difficult choice to not marry" because it would often reduce the level of benefits to which they were entitled, or screw up pensions and other divorce arrangements.

I don't know how I feel about that. It kind of feels like a workaround, and I am not the only one to think that; the Canadian government has bee pursuing people who are living in common law marriages but not making it official due to benefit levels as fraud. The US government has been going after people who are defacto polygamists through much the same process. You can't hold forth to the community as married and then deny that you are married for legal purposes.

"You can't hold forth to the community as married "

How does one "hold forth" as married, in your eyes,
versus
2 people of the same or opposite sex living together?

this is just a reminder that the AARP was a big backer of the boondoggle of the failed Medicare Part D.

They lost a large number of members over that backing.

Simply living together as Joe Smith and Angela Adams is not holding forth to the community. Living as Joe and Angela Smith, or referring to each other as spouse, Mrs., my husband, my wife, etc... or leading others to believe or assume you are married is holding forth to the community. Mingled finances and stuff like that works like cement for the concept.

I would think that same sex couples cannot hold forth to the community except in states where they could be legally married, but I doubt that any notion of common law marriage has yet been tested for same sex couples.

It's an iffy area of law.

Utah man convicted of bigamy

Atlanta Journal-Constitution/May 19, 2001
By Hannah Wolfson

Provo, Utah -- A man who has five wives and 29 children was found guilty of bigamy in the country's first major polygamy case in nearly five decades.

Tom Green was convicted on four counts of bigamy and one of criminal failure to pay child support.

He faces up to 25 years in prison and $25,000 in fines. A jury of five women and three men deliberated for three hours before deciding early today on what has been called a test case for polygamy. Both sides say the case could open the door to future prosecutions.

Although Utah banned plural marriage in its Constitution in order to become a state, it has no specific anti-polyamy law on the books. Prosecutors combined the state's bigamy law and its definition of common-law marriage in prosecuting Green, who lives with his five wives and 25 children on a barren patch of the Utah desert.

As spectators in the courtroom strained to hear the jury's verdict, some of Green's family members could be heard crying. ''There was a lot of sensational evidence and a lot of pressure on the jury,'' said John Bucher, Green's attorney.

To make its case, the state had to show Green was married to one woman and cohabited with the others. Last year, a judge declared Green legally married to his first wife, Linda, although they didn't have a license.

Green said he never knew he might become legally married to the women he considers his ''spiritual'' wives. ''I was always careful and cautious to make sure they understood that it was a spiritual union that I had with each of them,'' he said. But prosecutors cited Green's experience as a part-time paralegal and said he must have understood the marriage law.

''Tom Green will use and bilk and abuse the laws of this state when it suits his purposes,'' Juab County Attorney David Leavitt told the jury in his closing statements. ''And when he doesn't want the laws to apply to him . . . then there's not a hair thin enough that he won't split to try to justify his position.''

Little of the evidence in the case was in dispute, in part because Green has appeared on dozens of television shows to spread his message about polygamy. Green believes religious freedom protects his right to marry more than one woman.