One benefit from our California recall

[wintergr3y]

Governor Davis promises to sign sweeping gay rights legislation. The bill legalizes broad changes to the rights (and responsibilities, such as child custody and debt) of domestic partners.

``As governor I will continue to do everything within my power to honor the dignity, humanity and privacy of every Californian regardless of their ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation,'' the governor said.

I guess it's time for a lot of eleventh-hour legislation before he potentially gets booted out of office, huh? Not that I'm going to complain if it's a lot of bills like this one...

Comments

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

I suspect this is also to take some of the pressure off Bustamante, as well. It's much easier to say, gee, I don't want to mess up the existing laws, then to take a stand on whether you're going to pass new ones.

[aoibhill.livejournal.com]

"The Goldberg bill would, among other things, allow domestic partners to file joint income tax returns and give them the same tax exemptions enjoyed by married couples."

Hmmm.... since I am married and don't have any children or a house, my tax rate has shot up and I/we are paying more taxes. Could this be an attempt to get more taxes from dual-income no-kid couples?

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

Um, no. It's probably more of an attempt to court the gay and liberal vote by allowing same-sex couples some of the same rights as opposite-sex couples.

[aoibhill.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right, but it did just strike me as ironic that one of the "rights" of married couples is to (possibly) get bumped into a higher tax bracket.

But then again, more folks would probably have enough deductions to lower their taxes. If it would increase the amount of taxes overall, the republicans would probably be all for it.

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

Or a lower tax bracket, depending on your circumstances. It's about fifty-fifty as to who gets a penalty and who gets a bonus from the way the tax laws are set up.

[wintergr3y.livejournal.com]

I'm with Laurel on this one: Davis may, indeed, support domestic partner rights. But he is also a very shrewd politician, and the timing is very suspicious. Happening now, this could well be an attempt to curry favor with liberal voters. Or he could be sensing which way the wind is gonna blow, and he's ramming the issue through before he gets booted out.

[neverjaunty.livejournal.com]

Or both!

I suspect that Davis has guessed there will be no political fallout from this. People who were opposed to the recall are not going to change their minds over this bill.

[seathan.livejournal.com]

Another good article on this can be found here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/18/MN161067.DTL

[chrisfs.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be a little suspsicious and say that Davis is also try to boost his image as "liberal" so that more liberals vote "no" on the recall. But I'm not complaining about the law either. If a recall makes him more liberal, so much the better.

As far as taxes goes, if you want to be treated like a married couple, you get to pay taxes like a married couple, it's part of the package.