MARRIAGES OF CONVENIENCE: Jennifer Roback Morse

...Non-involved pairs of people will choose to call themselves "married" just to obtain government or insurance benefits. Some gay activists dismiss Kurtz's analysis as hysterical fear-mongering. Others, such as NYU queer studies professor Lisa Duggan embrace the outcome as desirable, since only the recalcitrance of the capitalist establishment to enact national health insurance prevents people from getting all the benefits they are morally entitled to. But a case in San Diego shows just how right Stanley Kurtz is: Society needs for marriage to have well-defined boundaries.

A woman sailor, Judy Ann Patterson, looked around for a man she could marry to qualify for the housing subsidy that the military pays for married couples. A friend introduced her to civilian Jason Huff. Two weeks later they got married and Patterson filed for the allowance, claiming that Huff lived in San Francisco. She picked San Francisco because the Bay Area has the highest housing benefits in the military. She also qualified for cost-of-living adjustments and extra benefits because her spouse lived in a different city. All totaled, she got an extra $2,600 per month, which added up to some $41,000 over the 16 months the scam operated.

Why was it a scam? The couple acknowledged that they never intended to live together as husband and wife. The whole point of the union was to obtain military housing benefits. Each month, Patterson sent her "husband" $500 and made a $300 payment on a truck in exchange for his going through the motions of being married.

Naturally, the military took a dim view of this fake marriage. Patterson was sentenced to 30 months in prison, a $4,800 fine, forfeiture of all pay, reduction in rank to seaman recruit, and a bad-conduct discharge. According to Navy Prosecutor Charles Olcutt, "Our military budget would be brought to its knees if every sailor thought they should get an extra $43,000 every year and a half." He said that housing-allowance fraud is a "large and growing crime."

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[Look, I do think that many advocates of same-sex marriage make their case in a way that makes marriage look like a benefits package rather than a vital societal institution. Okay. But the case Morse is discussing--which involves the (fraudulent) union of one man and one woman!--obviously arose in the absence of same-sex marriage, and strikes me as much more about divorce and general turpitude than about SSM. Michael Triplett agrees, here. --Eve]

posted by Eve at 7:40 PM VOTE

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