Quick rant: marriage tax breaks

I got sent an invite to a Policy Exchange Debate entitled ‘Should the State Support Marriage Through the Tax / Benefits System?’. Apparently, ‘the debate about whether the state should support marriage raises many important philosophical and economic issues’.

Really? Because here was me thinking this policy was just a way to discriminate against a whole bunch of people who don’t live their lives and loves in a certain way. Needless to say, I think Cameron’s plans to bolster marriage are bullshit. It’s 2010, do we really want to go back to the good ol’ days when couples stayed together through thick and thin, boredom and unhappiness, violence and abuse, because there was so much social stigma attached to divorce? And the ‘tax breaks for married couples save the kids’ argument is a complete misnomer: Cameron et al never once stop to consider that – just maybe – kids might be better off with separate parents than unhappily married ones. They’re just freaked out by all us socially liberal weirdos who refuse to force ourselves into the oppressive, heterosexist enforced nuclear family box. We might spill out and threaten the cushy little privileged world they’ve built for themselves on the back of women’s domestic slavery. Quick, give’em a tax break, that’ll rein them in! I think not, Mr Cameron.

Oh, and the debate panel is made up entirely of men. I rest my case.