John Bisceglia Talks about Tax Resistance for Same-Sex Marriage

John Bisceglia of Gay Tax Protest was on the internet talk radio show Strictly Confidential last week to talk up his tax resistance campaign to protest the government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages.

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The Bisceglia segment of the show starts at about 29:00. He talks about how he discovered in the wake of his divorce that he had no recourse to defend in the legal system his rights to a portion of the joint property held in the marriage, or to defend himself against the machinations of his ex-husband. This convinced him that to the extent that his tax dollars were the dues we pay for citizenship, his dollars were only buying him a second-class citizenship. So he decided to stop paying.

Taxpatriate Jeff Knaebel has another article up on LewRockwell.com: “Toward a Society of Love and Reason” — excerpts:

The Buddha taught that sila (morality) in respect of non-killing is on three levels:

  • Abstain yourself from killing
  • Do not support others engaged in killing
  • Do not approve of others engaged in killing

It is clear to me that paying taxes to any government on this earth in present times amounts to direct finance of murder. It violates directly and implicitly the Buddha’s precepts. Paying taxes makes of one a material accomplice to murder.

How can I escape my derivative responsibility as an accomplice in finance of war when the whole economy is geared to war? Simply to participate voluntarily as an “upwardly mobile” member of a mindlessly destructive culture is, at the least, acquiescence to mass murder.

I live on savings and try to contribute to society as a one-way flow. I am aware of how fortunate I have been to enable this manner of living. I was a moderately successful rat in the race who took his chance to jump off the treadmill. I am not a highly evolved moral being. Along with moderate success has come immense failure, primarily caused by my own flaws of character.

I am a learner. I take solace in the perception that all of life is an experiment, and that there can be no failed experiment — only collection of more data.