Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
tax resistance for same-sex marriage →
John Bisceglia
More than thirty protesters were arrested while trying to storm the barricades surrounding the front entrance to the IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“Just as military recruiters supply bodies for the war, the IRS supplies the funding,” stated New York City WRL organizer Ed Hedemann.
“So, I’m doing my part in disrupting that relentless flow of money by standing in front of the IRS entrance and by refusing to send my taxes to the IRS.”
Among the organizations sponsoring this part of the protests commemorating were NWTRCC, War Resisters League, United for Peace & Justice, and Code Pink.
And speaking of Code Pink, they continue to draw new tax resisters to sign up for their Don’t Buy Bush’s War campaign.
Some of the latest signers gave the following “signing statements:”
Thank you Code Pink for organizing this media communication. Our politicians don’t have to listen to our votes when we keep paying our taxes. Bravo!
anonymous, Burlington, Vermont
If the idiot Republicans and their minions want this war, they can pay for it. And no soldiers ‘died for me’; they died because they volunteered to enter an immoral war.
John Bisceglia, Bellingham, Washington
I’ve refused to pay taxes for over 20 years now, and I doubt our inept government and the IRS will ever be able to find all of us tax resisters. There are simply too many ways to make money and keep it out of banks, and many ways to live without personally owning any property.
Scott Johnston, Cincinnati, Ohio
War. Murder. Destruction. Illegal occupation of a sovereign nation. Extraordinary rendition. Secret Prisons. Torture. Illegal wiretapping. More spending on military than all other countries combined. And I’m helping to pay for it. Not any more!
Patrick West, Boulder, Colorado
I am a Conscientious Objector to all war, and I have been openly refusing federal war taxes every year since ! IRS never succeeded in collecting a dime from me until I began receiving Social Security checks in ! Now they take 15% from each check, but I continue each year to refuse to pay for war and weapons.
Robin Harper, Wallingford, Pennsylvania
I’m going to withhold $100 anyway; get enough signatures and I’m in for the full whatever-godawful-number-it-is percent of my taxes.
Friend Reynolds, Chicago, Illinois
Thank you. Every penny I have ever given to support the things that are meaningful and positive in the world is utterly negated — and then some — every time I pay my taxes.
Gregory Dicum, San Francisco, California
If you’ve been following the Charles Merrill case, you might also be
interested in a new blog by John Bisceglia called
Gay Tax
Protest. Bisceglia has experienced first-hand the harm caused by
lack of government respect for same-sex marriage contracts, and he concludes:
“It is immoral and unjust to expect gay and lesbian families to pay taxes to a
government that denies us the legal protections of civil marriage.”
John Bisceglia, of Gay Tax Protest, has issued a press release:
Gay Marriage Tax Protest Gains Momentum
John Bisceglia has reached his limit.
He’s refused to file his taxes since , and will continue to do so until the federal government grants all LGBT Americans and their children the 1,400+ legal rights and protections civil marriage affords.
His new blog Gay Tax Protest shares how marriage inequality wrecked havoc on his life, property, and career, as well as negatively affected many loved ones around him.
Bisceglia in an interview recently said, “While it is crucial for Americans to know specifically how marriage inequality hurts LGBT families and their children, the details are irrelevant when it comes to law.
The myriad of horror stories are not the reason for civil marriage — it’s about equality.
The federal government’s discrimination against LGBT families is an abomination; it is cruel to deny our families a marriage certificate while simultaneously doling them out like candy to heterosexuals.”
He asks all Americans to consider these injustices:
A police woman loses her life in the line of duty; her wife of 13 years is denied all pension benefits.
A rancher loses his husband of 22 years; his inlaws evict him and try to take the home he built and lived in with his beloved.
A detective spends 25 years risking her own life while protecting society; she has to spend her remaining days on this earth worrying whether her earned pension will be transferred to her wife (while living with terminal cancer).
Mr. Bisceglia was a highly-respected teacher of young children in Kirkland, WA from , and wants to remind others how the LGBT community is interconnected to society as a whole.
He emphasized, “Every LGBT person’s life is interwoven into their local communities, businesses, hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, and churches.
Our families and children deserve the 1,400+ legal rights and protections civil marriage affords — period.
My hope is that those in the LGBT community with substantial income demand their long overdue rights by taking a stand for justice, for society, and for equality for all Americans.”
John Bisceglia’s tax resistance in support of government recognition of same-sex marriage seems to have struck a chord.
He writes:
I thought I heard from a lot of LGBT couples beforemy press release was issued Wednesday; the response during the last 24 hours has been overwhelming to say the least!
The vast majority are afraid to step forward publicly (natch), but it has been heartening to hear from the variety of families and the breadth of their stories and experiences… and I’m still in the “skimming” stage as far as reading goes.
We really are a diverse community with amazing resolve and creativity!
It seems many have learned how to earn a comfortable living through cash transactions, some creative “ownership” of property and funds, and the sheer will to not financially-enable a government that excludes their families from Civil Marriage.
The New York-based Gay City News has printed a letter-to-the-editor from John Bisceglia who is resisting taxes to protest the government’s refusal to give legal recognition to same-sex marriages.
“For many in the LGBT community, we have lost all patience with both voters and politicians when it comes to justice and common decency concerning our families, so we are doing what we can do — withholding tax until we are treated equally.”
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.
You can download the archive or, if your browser supports FlashHTML5 just use the app embedded here:
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.
Well, this is interesting.
None other than Melissa Etheridge has jumped on the gay marriage tax resistance bandwagon:
Okay.
So Prop 8 passed.
Alright, I get it.
51% of you think that I am a second class citizen.
Alright then.
So my wife, uh I mean, roommate?
Girlfriend?
Special lady friend?
You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now.
Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen.
Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen.
I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.
Okay, cool I don’t mean to get too personal here but there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California.
Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes too.
Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash this year.
What recession?
We’re gay!
I am sure there will be a little box on the tax forms now single, married, divorced, gay, check here if you are gay, yeah, that’s not so bad.
Of course all of the waiters and hairdressers and UPS workers and gym teachers and such, they won’t have to pay their taxes either.
Oh and too bad California, I know you were looking forward to the revenue from all of those extra marriages.
I guess you will have to find some other way to get out of the budget trouble you are in.
Gay marriage rights tax resisting pioneers Charles Merrill and John Bisceglia were quick to praise the action and urge others to join in.
Melissa Etheridge’s pledge to stop paying California state taxes in the wake of California voters’ decision to outlaw same-sex marriages like hers struck me as a sort of heat-of-anger decision — not necessarily well thought through as far as its ramifications, but with the sort of appealing righteous logic that makes you think “damn the torpedoes” and just forge ahead.
In that way it reminded me a lot of my own decision to become a tax resister, in which refusing to pay taxes seemed to have become a moral imperative for me well before I’d figured out how I was going to do it.
Now Etheridge is on to stage two: figuring out the messy details.
Etheridge and her wife were on ’s Oprah Winfrey Show, talking about their reaction to the California election results.
I didn’t see the show, but here’s an excerpt from the show’s summary on oprah.com:
In a recent blog posting about the passage of Proposition 8, Melissa vented her frustration by saying she would stop paying taxes.
“I tell people I have until to make true on that blog,” she says.
“That was [me] letting off a lot of steam.
What I wanted to do was show the absurdity of a populace thinking they can take a right away or deny someone a right … and yet feel completely fine taking 100 percent of our taxes.
It doesn’t make sense.”
Meanwhile, same-sex marriage tax resistance pioneer Charles Merrill was on The Ron Reagan Show .
There’s some discussion of the Etheridge tax resistance pledge and general pro-same-sex-marriage talk throughout the show, but the Merrill segment itself starts about 19½ minutes in and lasts about 10 minutes.
Merrill has been resisting , and expects to finally be able to make his case in court .
And it hasn’t escaped my notice that John Bisceglia has refashioned his “Gay Tax Protest” site into one that is promoting a National Equality Tax Prote$t for .
Today, I’m tracking these three tax resisters for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, but it feels like it won’t be long now before I’ll be able to write about the “movement.”
