Elizabeth Warren Demands Reparations for Same-Sex Couples By Tyler O’Neil
https://pjmedia.com/trending/elizabeth-warren-demands-reparations-for-same-sex-couples/
True to form on the intersectionality front, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to extend the idea of reparations to LGBT people. While far more limited in scope than frequent calls for slavery reparations to black Americans, the proposal blames the U.S. government for withholding benefits same-sex couples allegedly should have received before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
On Friday, Warren re-introduced S. 1940, the Refund Equality Act, which would allow same-sex couples to amend past tax returns. According to a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation, the bill would direct $57 million in refunds. The funds would go to same-sex couples in states that had legalized same-sex marriage before the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. Warren introduced an earlier version of the bill in 2017.
“The federal government forced legally married same-sex couples in Massachusetts to file as individuals and pay more in taxes for almost a decade,” Warren said in a statement on the legislation. “We need to call out that discrimination and to make it right — Congress should pass the Refund Equality Act immediately.”
“It wasn’t until marriage equality became law that gay & lesbian couples could jointly file tax returns—so they paid more in taxes,” Warren tweeted Saturday.
“Our government owes them more than $50M for the years our discriminatory tax code left them out. We must right these wrongs.”Such claims echo the argument for slavery reparations. According to that argument, the government allowed and fostered the horrific practice of race-based slavery, which stripped black people of their right to the fruits of their own labor. While slavery was abolished, the government did not return the property unjustly stolen from black people. The wealth inequalities among black and white Americans are a result of this horrific injustice, so the argument goes. Therefore, the government must pay their descendants the debt it owes them.
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