Ogre Lies Again

Ah, Ogre. What would the blogosphere be without your precious, self-absorbed ignorance to make the rest of us glad that we are at least not as oblivious to reality — and as egregiously dishonest — as you are?

In another of his fits of oblivious exhibitionism, Ogre claims that...

So now, New Jersey has given [gays] the same benefits and rights as every other family (which they already had).

It is reassuring to know that the natural order of the Cosmos is as it should be — which is to say, that Ogre is once again spectacularly (and unsurprisingly) lying. Gays have most emphatically not had “the same benefits and rights as every other family” in the past. In 1996, Henry J. Hyde (R-IL), then Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, asked the Government Accounting Office to compile a list of “federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status”. The GAO issued its report [PDF] in early 1997, and found 1049 such laws. These included laws relating to Social Security benefits, housing, veterans’ benefits, taxation, employment benefits, crime, loans and guarantees, and many others. The report is replete with examples of many statutes in which spousal status is essential. A few examples:

Medicaid is a jointly funded federal-state entitlement program to provide medical assistance to qualifying low-income people, including those eligible for AFDC2 and SSI, non-AFDC low-income children and pregnant women, and low-income Medicare beneficiaries. In determining a person’s eligibility for Medicaid based on income, states may consider the spouse’s financial responsibility for the person, but may not consider anyone else’s financial responsibility. Spouses are considered “essential” to individuals receiving Medicaid benefits, and are therefore eligible for medical assistance themselves. The Medicaid statute also prescribes how to account for the income and resources of the spouse of an institutionalized person, for purposes of determining that person’s eligibility for benefits.

Veterans who have at least a 30 percent disability are entitled to additional disability compensation if they have dependents. For this purpose a spouse is considered a dependent. A veteran’s spouse may also receive compensation if a veteran disappears… The spouses of certain veterans are entitled to medical care provided by the government. In determining, based on income and assets, whether a veteran has the ability to defray necessary home care and medical expenses, the property of the spouse of the veteran is included as an asset of the veteran.

The Railroad Retirement Act confers many rights on retired railroad employees and their spouses. Spouses may be eligible for annuities and lump sum benefits. Congress has also enacted a workers’ compensation law for longshore and harbor workers that establishes survivor benefits for spouses.

Federal law prescribes the right of debtors to seek bankruptcy protection and the rights of creditors when their debtors adopt that strategy. It expressly permits spouses to file jointly for bankruptcy protection. This may benefit both the debtors and their creditors: the married couple pays only one filing fee and creditors file only one claim.

Under federal criminal statutes, spouses and others have some protections against domestic violence. It is a federal crime for a person to travel across a state line with the intent to injure a spouse or “intimate partner” if that person intentionally commits a crime of violence and causes bodily injury to the spouse or intimate partner.

Again: Gays have never had “the same benefits and rights as every other family”. Ogre knows this, and chose to lie about it anyway. Which makes the end of his little verbal vomitus all the more amusing:

Damn liars, the lot of them. Why can’t anyone be honest these days?

Pot and kettle, meet Ogre. Ogre, meet pot and kettle… and take that huge beam labelled ‘hypocrisy’ out of your eye while you’re at it.