Kenneth L. Zimmerman

Huntington Beach

Marriage tax always the same

The letter “Same-Sex Marriage Tax Issue” (Letters, April 15) was interesting but wrong. Whatever the California Supreme Court decides, nobody will be getting a bigger refund, retroactive or otherwise. When it comes to our money, the Franchise Tax Board has always been an equal opportunity taker.

It is federal taxation that treats married couples differently. About half enjoy a marital tax benefit while the other half endure the “marriage penalty.” But California income tax rates do not distinguish between single, married and unmarried people. “Single” means someone who has never married, while “unmarried” indicates a widow(er) or divorcé(e). Tax law sometimes blurs this distinction.

“Gay marriage” is also blurry. Sexual orientation has never been a marital qualification. The discriminatory factors are age and sex. If the state Supreme Court strikes sex discrimination from the law, it will be just as legal for two heterosexual men to marry each other as anyone else. Just as there are already asexual marriages of convenience between men and women, so there would be same-sex marriages just like them; but those would not be “gay marriages.”

Michailian “Micheal” McLoughlin

San Francisco

Strange bedfellows

Politics does make strange bedfellows indeed! Jay Ambrose writes in your April 15 paper, that he, along with Hillary Clinton, doesn’t think much of Barack Obama as a leader because of a single phrase about “bitter” midwestern Americans, whom Jay refers to as “yokels.” (See how easy it is to irresponsibly mislead?)

As Hillary says, Jay “just doesn’t get it.” Or as John McCain says, Jay’s being “elitist” (just continuing Jay’s schlock-jock editorial technique). None of these three apparently read the whole transcript of Obama’s answer to a Pennsylvanian’s question about bitterness over our present economy and past administrations laxity. It’s worth reading. A respectable guy like McCain (the only one of the three I’ve given money too) ought to read it carefully too, because it in fact speaks to those folks who really have points about the failure of our past administrations to address job loss, etc. In avoiding honesty on this, Jay’s in mindmeld with Hillary.

Yes, Jay, there are Americans, who are actually more American than you in the sense that they talk truth, who are indeed more than bitter. All because of politicos to whom you gave your imprimatur over at least these last seven-plus years.

So Jay, as you sniped at Obama, let me paraphrase your writing as: “Jay portraying himself as a conservative, honest commentator that he is not.”

A. Cannara

Menlo Park

Republican tax cuts

Your editorial on “Two different Americas” (Examiner, April 14), while focusing on taxpayers and tax consumers, conveniently dismisses the concept of poverty, and ends by deriding the Democrats as somehow having been responsible for 12 years of Republican fiscal mismanagement. Republicans have lost all rights to demonize Democrats as “tax-and-spenders.”

“Trickle down” tax cuts as a solution to budget imbalance are central to Republican fairy tales and have never worked. Unfortunately our children and grandchildren will pay the price of that story by both higher taxes and lowered standards of living. They can thank the Republicans for both.

Charles Perl

San Francisco

Torch run a sneaky affair

Imagine that, as Dr. Martin Luther King marched on Selma in nonviolent civil disobedience, the authorities were able to move Selma two miles away and, hours later, put Selma onto a plane bound for Argentina.

The Civil Rights Act might never have been passed. The news-ticker on March 7, 1965, would have read only: Selma march route changed: Selma Mayor cites public-safety concerns.

On April 9, at the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, Selma was moved for me and my wife, who is a Tibetan-American, and that threatens all our civil rights.

The right to protest must include the right to protest in reasonable proximity to the target of the protest. If I wanted to protest against City Hall, a permit to protest two miles away does not afford me the right to effective communication of my protest.

The Olympic torch relay was the Tibetan-Americans’ best hope for conveying their message to the American public — probably in their lifetime. That chance was dashed as news crews and news helicopters were diverted to following the hide-and-seek-torch two miles away.

Instead of the U.S.A. lifting China into free speech and democracy, Mayor Gavin Newsom and police Chief Heather Fong allowed San Francisco, my hometown, to be dragged down to China’s dark, sneaky level.

Joshua Kyle

San Francisco

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