McArdle starts by stating she believes in marriage. She expects it to make her happier and more fulfilled, despite the tax hit she might suffer. She can't think of a reason to stay single except for the sake of "contrariness"--being different for its own sake. Not that she needs to marry, she hastens to add. She has nothing to prove to anybody, being above the moral and legal laws conservative followers are required to inflict on each other.
And yet, she will marry anyway. If she has so little drive to marry, why the drive to marry? What reason does she give?
It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for
and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.
Like what? You can rent houses, hold jobs, and almost everything else if you're cohabiting. It's true that you would not have legal rights regarding your partner if some tragedy were to occur. If your boyfriend were hospitalized you wouldn't have any rights regarding his care. But McArdle calls the rights that piece of heterosexual paper endows "useless." Why won't she mention the obvious reason, the one given by so many homosexual couples who want to be able to care for sick partners? Why won't she discuss health care--god knows she's been yapping about it endlessly; surely it's on her mind?
Suderman just received an 11-month Koch fellowship at McArdle's former employer, Reason. Based on a quick look at other Reason intern jobs, it appears that interns are paid a stipend only--no benefits. No health insurance. If Suderman wants to be covered, in case he is shot while bar-hopping or hit while riding a bike, he has to marry someone with heath insurance or buy ruinously expensive policies on his own.
Decisions to marry are based on love, but decisions on when to marry are often based on more practical reasons. If McArdle doesn't care one way or the other, something tipped the scales and there's a very good chance that health insurance was a factor, as it is for every uninsured person in the US.
7 comments:
Kind of fun watching jmo3's mild attmpt at humor clanging off the ears of the Megandroids.
Not as funny as Megan's quest to justify herself while in deep denial, natch.
Looking at her comments in that post, it seems that benefits were on their minds. She can't come out and say so, of course.
God, it's pathetic.
MM's commenters who (like MM) believe in "commitment for life" are either touchingly young in their naivete, or libertarians, for whom an imaginary existence in an idealized theoretical world is no different from an actual life in the real world. Even when it's their life, with all its manifest evidence.
Isn't it romantic?
So is this A Mouse for All Seasons character actually Megan?
I think she's Megan's mom.
Mousey is the best.
Health care may be the main reason Peter wants to get married, but Megan is looking forward to their pending nuptials with the hope that Ross Douthat will stop referring to her as "that filthy slut who lives in sin with Suderman."
I think Mouse is Suderman.
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