Gay Marriage

Indiana appears to be the central focus in the whole gay marriage debate. Truthfully, I'm a little burned out about debating the idea on Facebook and Reddit, so I thought I would share a perspective that I rarely get a chance to bring up since this debate -I think- has devolved into another religion versus secularism argument. Proponents of gay marriage will often cite their belief that marriage is a fundamental human right and that any two consenting adults should be able to get married. That sounds perfectly reasonable, but when asked why they want to get married, it's always about some kind of perk.

Marriage existed as a formal and legally binding way of combining people of two families into a new single family unit. This has deep roots in both the religious communities and in nobility. In the modern sense, it was incentivized to promote the nuclear family consisting of a husband, wife, and two and half children (I think the half is from an average). You can still see this concept in television sitcoms like The Simpsons for example. In order to promote the nuclear family, the government provided married couples with perks such as joint tax filings and over 1000 other federal benefits. My objection is that if marriage is a human right, then are single people being denied their rights?

I've been in the Army for a few years now, and one thing that has frustrated me to no end is how married people in the Army are much better treated. As a single person, I have to live in government housing, and I have to eat in government dining facilities - zero choice in the matter. If I were married, I would be entitled to Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) which is several thousand dollars. Never does a house or apartment take up the entire sum, so I know plenty of soldiers who pocket the extra money. All soldiers also get Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) which is basically the money supposed to used for the purchase of food. As a single soldier, I get a substantial sum of that money forcefully deducted from my paycheck, so that I am basically force to eat often substandard food (although breakfast is generally pretty good). And again, the married soldiers who don't have a ton of kids pocket the extra cash. Basically, if you are married in the military, you get more money and more entitlements. And I feel this is the root of the whole gay marriage debate.

I'm sure some are using gay marriage as another means to delegitimize religion in politics, but I think the real driving force is money. Aside from the obvious financial benefits, look at how the political organizations describe themselves, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender). What does being transgender have to do with being gay? I've seen that acronym longer too in some places. These LGBT organizations are fighting for "gay rights". Well they haven't named any other rights except for the supposed right to marry. I'd be willing to bet that if there were zero financial benefits to being married, then this wouldn't even be an issue in the first place. If gay marriage does become legal in Indiana (which I think is just a matter of time), I'm curious to see if these organizations will just go away, or if they'll find some other way of getting more money to "right more wrongs".