"經濟櫃":同性婚姻的商業案例

Three hundred sixty-three thousand and fifty-three dollars was the amount that Edith Windsor was assessed in federal estate taxes when her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. Zero dollars, everyone agrees, would have been the amount she owed if the federal government had recognized their marriage, as the state of New York already did. There are other numbers that are more relevant to their story—like forty-four, the number of years they spent with each other; or twenty-two, the share of those years during which Spyer lived with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, the disease that eventually killed her—and that Windsor gave up her own job to nurse her through. There were the numbers Windsor worked while getting a graduate degree in mathematics in the nineteen-fifties, and those in the early computer codes that she wrote for the Atomic Energy Commission’s UNIVAC and at I.B.M., where she was, at the time, one of very few women programmers. But the difference between zero and three hundred sixty-three thousand andfifty-three is what gives Windsor standing to bring a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act. The Supreme Court will hear her case on March 27th, and, the day before, it will hear another one challenging Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

36萬3053美元——這是伊迪斯·溫莎在其伴侶西婭·斯拜爾去世以後應當繳納的聯邦遺產稅。不過所有人都一致同意，如果聯邦政府能像紐約州那樣承認她們的婚姻，那麼她將支付的稅額則爲：0美元。還有些數字和她們聯繫更爲緊密——例如“44”，她們陪伴彼此44年；或者“22”，斯拜爾與多發性硬化症鬥爭了22年，而溫莎也辭去工作照顧了她22年，並一直陪着她走到了生命的終點。還有的數字伴隨溫莎於20世紀50年代拿到了數學研究生學位，有的蘊含在她爲原子能委員會的通用自動計算機編寫的代碼裏，抑或是在美國國際商用機器公司（IBM）工作的時候，那時她可是極爲少有的女性程序員之一。雖然數字衆多，但正是0和363053之間的差距成爲了溫莎上訴，挑戰《婚姻保護法》權威的立足點。最高法院將於3月27日審理她的案件，而在26日，法院會審理另外一宗叫板加利福尼亞州禁止同性婚姻8號提案的案件。

How much does money matter when thinking about same-sex marriage, or about marriage at all? The essence of the debate—and certainly its emotional heart—lies with words like family and respect, honor and honesty, and, above all, love. But those words, and even more so others—security, protection, sickness and health, home and career—are not divorced from finances. This is particularly true when any one of them is used in the same sentence as “children.” Another number to add to the equation: eleven hundred and thirty-eight, which is the number of federal laws that rely on a definition of marriage. Many more of them are about money, in one way or the other, than about love. Nor is the concern simply that of the family involved: companies have an interest, too, as does the larger business world, in not having families live in what might be called an economic closet.

當談及同性婚姻或者乾脆只談婚姻的時候，錢到底有多重要呢？這場辯論的實質——當然還有它的情感內涵——是“家庭和尊重”、“榮譽和誠信”、以及最重要的“愛”等詞彙。但是這些詞彙，甚至是其他的一些諸如“安全”、“保護“、”疾病“、”健康“、“家庭”、“事業“等都和財產有着緊密的聯繫。尤其是它們和”孩子“一詞出現在同一個句子裏的時候。在這個等式當中還能加進一個數字：1138，這是給”婚姻“下一個定義所需要的聯邦法律的數目。這些法律當中，更多的是和金錢有着千絲萬縷的聯繫，而並非是和愛有關。而似乎和家庭本身也並沒有多大關係：因爲只要能讓同性家庭出”經濟櫃“，公司和企業界都能從中獲利。

That there is a business case for marriage equality was confirmed this week with the news that at least sixty major corporations will file an amicus curiae brief in support of overturning Prop. 8—a move, depending on how the Court writes the decision, that could establish a right to same-sex marriage not only in California but in the country as a whole. (Some leading Republicans are also submitting a brief.) More may sign on before the filing deadline on Thursday. The companies range from Apple to Xerox, with everyone from Levi Strauss, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, Nike, and Panasonic in between. Fortune got a draft of the brief, which reads in part

這周有一起關於婚姻平等的案子，據說該案件周至少有60家企業會作爲法庭之友進行案件陳述，以此來支持推翻8號提案——這一舉動很可能會在加利福尼亞州乃至全國範圍內爲同性婚姻建立一項合法權益，當然也要依賴於法院的最終判決。（一些共和黨領導人也提交了案件陳述。）週四提出議案之前可能還會有更多成員簽字。這些公司範圍從蘋果到施樂，其間還包括李維斯、思科、摩根斯坦利、耐克、松下等公司。《財富》雜誌拿到了一份案件陳述的草稿，該陳述在某種程度上是爲一些受到不公正待遇的人羣辯護，因爲8號提案阻止了商業進行市場理想的高效運作——尤其是在招新、僱傭以及維持狀態最佳且最能勝任工作的人才方面。埃米希公司正與來自美國內外的公司競爭，他們支持不管是不是同性的所有情侶都享有平等的婚姻權利。

If one believes that protecting children is a priority, then so is same-sex marriage. A third of lesbian couples and a fifth of gay couples who live together already have children, according to the Census, and a lack of access to marriage takes both social and economic security away from them. A widow or widower with a minor child whose income falls below a certain level can get social-security benefits based on the deceased spouse’s earnings—but not if the spouse is of the same sex. The same is true of tax laws, like the one affecting Windsor, that might cost families their homes. Some opponents of same-sex marriage have turned this on its head and wondered if it will cost the government too much money. The answer, according to a Congressional Budget Office study, is that it most likely will not, both because the amounts, though large in the life of, say, a widow with a child, are not so large in terms of the federal budget. The government will also make money from things like imposing the income-tax marriage penalty on more couples, and from some people losing eligibility for benefits when their combined income is calculated. (There are harder-to-answer questions, like how much it might save Medicare if, earlier in life, a person had access to preventive care through a spouse’s insurance.) Marriage equality does not inflate budgets; it removes irrational distortions from them.

有人覺得對於兒童的保護應該擺在首位，而實際上同性婚姻也是如此。據人口普查，三分之一的女同伴侶和五分之一的男同伴侶已育有子女，可是由於婚姻不能合法化，子女的社會和經濟安全都無法得到保障。喪偶的寡婦或鰥夫如果育有未成年子女，且收入未能達到一定水平，則有權利獲得社會保障金——但如果配偶是同性則無權獲得。而稅法，比如影響溫莎的稅法，卻對於同性婚姻具有同等效力，這很有可能讓家庭支離破碎，以至於讓很多人無家可歸。一些同性婚姻的反對者卻將此歸罪與同性婚姻本身，並懷疑這會給政府帶來很大的經濟負擔。不過，據國會預算辦公室的調查顯示，這種情況並不會發生，因爲儘管現實生活當中，一個寡婦帶着孩子的情況很多見，但實際上聯邦政府的預算並不多，政府可以從向更多的夫妻徵收婚姻罰款所得稅以及向因計算累計收入而失去獲利資格的人那兒把錢掙回來。（還有一些更難回答的問題，例如如果早先一方從配偶的保險當中獲得了預防護理的話，那麼承認同性婚姻可能會省下多少醫療保險的錢等等。）婚姻平等並不會擴大政府預算，反而會去除預算當中的非理性因素。

And that is why, if one believes in protecting free markets, then same-sex marriage should be a priority, too. This is the point that the amicus brief made with regard to recruiting. It hurts companies and the economy when the choice in taking a job at one firm or the other is not based on its salary offer or a belief in its prospects, but by whether it is based in a state the recognizes the employee’s marriage. It hurts, too, when a spouse who is a foreign citizen is not welcome here. And—something the corporate brief also mentions—there is the wedding business to consider, too. Last summer, New York City estimated that it gained two hundred and fifty-nine million dollars from same-sex marriages in the first year that they were legal in the state. “Marriage equality has made our city more open, inclusive, and free—and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

這也就是爲什麼支持保護自由市場的人也將同性婚姻合法化視作是首要任務。這也是法庭之友的書面陳述所要表達的關於公司招聘的觀點。如果人才在選擇工作的時候不是看公司所開出的薪資待遇也不看公司的發展前景，而是看公司所處的州是否認同員工婚姻的話，那麼這將危及到公司以及經濟的發展。如果因配偶不是本國公民而不被接納，這也會帶來一定損害。在公司的案件陳述當中還提到，婚姻產業也是需要考慮的一個因素。去年夏天，紐約市估計，在紐約州同性婚姻合法化之後第一年，同性婚姻爲其帶來了2億5900萬美元的收益。紐約市長彭博說：“婚姻平等讓我們的城市變得更加開放、包容和自由——而且也幫助我們創造更多的工作機會，並支持我們的經濟向前發展。“

But there are less obvious ways that a failure to recognize same-sex marriage can reduce the transparency that helps the private sector thrive. For example, the Windsor brief notes that DOMA has the effect of exempting same-sex spouses of politicians and public officials from financial-disclosure requirements. It also denies them the protection of laws that, for example, make threatening the spouse of a federal agent a crime.

但是，不任何同性婚姻還會以一些不太明顯的方式減弱有利於私營部門發展的透明度。例如，在溫莎的案件陳述中指出，《婚姻保護法案》具有免除同性戀政府官員及公職官員披露財務的效力，而同時也否認他們受到例如認爲威脅政府機構配偶爲犯罪的法律保護。

I.B.M. didn’t know it at the time, but it came close to losing Edith Windsor when, as her brief recounts, it “unwittingly ran afoul” of an executive order that forbade companies with federal contracts from having gay or lesbian employees—the order was issued in 1953, the year before the computer pioneer Alan Turing, who had faced similar barriers in Great Britain, killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. Luckily, the F.B.I. didn’t ask Windsor about the women in her life when interviewing her for a security clearance (to work on that UNIVAC), and I.B.M. didn’t find out, either; she wore a diamond pin, rather than a ring, as a symbol of her long engagement to Spyer. And then she left the company to care for a woman who, for many years, she could only say was a friend.

IBM公司起先並不知道她是同性戀，而在溫莎快要離開的時候，（據溫莎陳述）公司與一項行政命令“無意間發生衝突“——這一命令是在1953年簽發的，禁止和政府簽約的公司僱傭同性戀員工，而在前一年，計算機工程師阿蘭·圖靈也在英國面臨同樣的障礙，最終他選擇了服毒自殺。所幸的是，聯邦調查局在對溫莎進行（通用自動計算機）安全調查的時候，並沒有問及她另一半的情況，而IMB公司也並沒有察覺。她當時戴着一枚鑽石胸針而並非傳統的鑽石戒指來象徵着她和斯拜爾的婚姻。接着，她便離開了公司，去照顧那個多少年來，她只能以”朋友“相稱的女人。