What's less clear is the impact on as many as 16,000 gay and lesbian couples who have wed since June.

The answer could come from the same court that overturned California's previous law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Or it could come from a higher-ranking tribunal in Washington, D.C.

There are several legal benefits to marriage. There are both federal and state laws available only to married people. Other benefits include Social Security benefits, inheritance rights, property rights, the ability to sue third parties for the wrongful death of a spouse or loss of consortium, and the right to make medical decisions on a spouse's behalf.
. . .
Getting married is one of the most important things people do. Hopefully, it reflects a deep emotional commitment because it also truly changes the participants' legal statuses. By understanding your rights and obligations as a married person you may more fully appreciate the step you are taking.

On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:
- joint parenting; bullet joint adoption;
- joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents);
- status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;
- joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;
- dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;
- immigration and residency for partners from other countries;
- inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;
- joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;
- inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate);
- benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare;
- spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;
- veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;
- joint filing of customs claims when traveling;
- wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;
- bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;
- decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;
- crime victims' recovery benefits;
- loss of consortium tort benefits; bullet domestic violence protection orders;
- judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by TheRooster

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Sex with minors, sex with animals, sex with trees. Christ man, are you even aware of how absurd this logic is??...

Homosexual Marriage is consensual between two adults.

The Gay Community SUPPORTS that marriage should be consensual and between two adults.

Your leap in logic isn't a leap in logic at all. It's a leap to bigoted ignorance.

[edit on 5-11-2008 by Lucid Lunacy]

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes interracial sex between whites and members of other races. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have since 1863 been termed "miscegenation." Contemporary usage of the term "miscegenation" is less frequent. In North America, laws against interracial marriage and interracial sex existed and were enforced in the Thirteen Colonies from the late seventeenth century onwards, and subsequently in several US states and US territories until 1967. Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany, from 1935 until 1945, and in South Africa during the Apartheid era, from 1949 until 1985.