Issues #5 Marriage as a Right and Privilege...

Yes, the assumption would be right, this post is about, ultimately gay marriage, or Marriage Equality, if you prefer. This has been a hot topic for many years, and a favorite of Republicans as a wedge issue to use GLBT people as scapegoats to scare people into voting for them.

However, lately things have seemed to have come to a tipping point, with the narrow passage of Proposition 8, along with decisions in many other states, some postive for equality, other negative, it seems 2009 is going to be the year when equality will take center stage. 2008 was just run up to this.

I was frankly appalled at the passage of Proposition 8, I can never understand why people would vote to strip a basic civil right such as marriage from an entire segment of the population. I've heard the arguments, through the years, both for and against, and the ones that make the least amount of sense are the ones against Marriage Equality.

The religious arguments in particular make no sense to me, particularly when coming from Christians, for I read the Bible, and as far as I can tell, marriage in the Bible is not necessarily between one man and one woman. Indeed, in the Bible, it seems to be between one man, as many wives as he can afford, concubines, and if that isn't enough, if his wife or wives can't conceive, then any servants he can have sex with, for procreation purposes, of course. *sarcasm*

Even if Christians accept the concept that Gay sex is a sin, they must also think screwing the maid is also a sin, yet the bible condones one act, but not the other. Why is that?

Frankly, the above is a non-issue, in this country, we have separation of Church and State, and Marriage, for all the claims of it being sacred, or a sacrament, is not exclusively either. Marriage was, and always will be a property contract between people. The nature of said contract has changed throughout history, many times, in many different cultures, including our own.

Whether it was a contract where one family sold their daughter to the groom of another family, in a form of slavery, or it was two(or more) people "shacking up" by moving in together(common law marriage), and hell, even Same Sex Marriages have precedent in history within some Native American tribes and some ancient cultures in the Old World.

Ultimately the arguments against Same Sex marriage have been rife with logical inconsistencies, outright bigotry, and just plain old ignorance of history.

But, that's neither here nor there, the subject at hand is whether marriage is a civil right or not, and frankly it is, as the Supreme Court wrote in Loving v. Virginia in 1967: "Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival...."

So what does this mean exactly, well basically that entering into a marriage contract is a right, the contract itself comes with numerous benefits and privileges that the government bestows on couples who enter into this arrangement, benefits that unmarried couples do not have. At the same time, the contract also comes with contractual obligations that the couple must abide by, or else the marriage may be dissolved. What I'm talking about, of course, is divorce.

So, how would this apply to same sex couples? Well, it could be a matter of interpretation, however, a reading of the 14th amendment might help. Specifically Section 1:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis is entirely mine, but I think this is rather clear cut, once the courts get a hold of it. GLBT citizens of the United States are having their privileges abridged by the states through laws and amendments like Proposition 8. This, in addition to the courts precedence of declaring marriage a civil right seems to me that it will be inevitable that Marriage Equality will come before the Supreme Court, sooner or later, and they will have to, yet again, like in all civil rights cases, "legislate from the bench".

Until this time comes, however, people who are fair minded and fight for justice must not sit on our hands and wait for this time to come. Right now the battle is being fought state by state, in legislatures, courthouses, and the ballot box, and the pressure must not be let up. The only thing I can think of that truly positive about this, even with setbacks like Proposition 8 is that history is on the side of justice. Plessy v. Ferguson was a setback as well, so hope shouldn't be lost.

The Problem with the health insurance industry is that there is no free market for it.

This is one of those ideas that just popped into my head this morning, but it seems to make sense. Think of a traditional capitalistic market, such as toys, food, or pretty much any other market. Generally the more competition there is in these markets, the lower the prices. Cost cutting measures in these industries would involve making more of the product per man-hour and for a few cents less, and make up the loss through volume. They can then try to out compete each other, etc.

I then realized that the health insurance(and most other insurance) industries don't work this way, in fact they CAN'T. What's the most effective cost cutting measure for an insurance company besides denying claims? Its volume, but not in mass production of some type of widget, instead by expanding the risk pool of insurers to low risk groups of people. The problem is that people don't get built off the assembly line.

There's a lot of talk about "choice" and competition within the insurance industry, the problem is that population shifts, and and growth, occurs too slowly for costs to drop. There are no pricing wars within this industry in regards to premiums, simply because the amount of people any individual company can potentially sign up is negligible, and may not offset the costs of paying claims.

Usually, in a capitalistic market, the more competitors there are, the lower the prices in that market. In the Insurance industry, the opposite happens. The reason is simple, for every new competitor out there, the size of the risk pool for EVERY insurance company out there actually drops, and this can increase costs for those companies that are then passed on to the both current and future policy holders.

This tells me that the industry itself isn't sustainable in the long term at all, and the cracks are apparently showing now. They can try other cost cutting measures, I hear a lot of talk of computerizing claims and billing, but over any extended period of time, this would have a limited effect. We were promised the "paperless office" back in the 1980s, I doubt that the 2000s can deliver on the promise any more than the 1980s had.

The most effective cost cutting measure for insurance companies would be consolidation, not competition, the problem is that this would be advocating for a monopoly, which is generally bad for customers of any sort. It seems to me that the insurance industry will end up being destroyed, or at least marginalized, in this country, if not by being replaced by some public financing system, then by destroying themselves. I just hope we are smart enough to be able to set up an effective public system to fall back on when that happens.

Long time, no post...

Had a lot of shit go down, mostly medical and personal related, so I'm not going to bore anyone, have a new post for today, and besides, I said that posts would be infrequent anyways. Oh well, on with the post.