Takei Supports Social Security Bill
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Star Trek‘s George Takei appeared in Washington, D.C. yesterday in support of The Social Security Equality Act bill (H.R. 4609), introduced by California Representative Linda Sánchez.
H.R. 4609 would eliminate the Social Security Administration policy which denies certain benefits to same-sex couples.
Four types of benefits are currently denied to same-sex couples: spousal retirement benefits after the retirement of one spouse, disability benefits if one spouse becomes disabled, survivor’s benefits for surviving spouses, and the death benefit.
“The gay and lesbian population will not be told by their government that they are second-class citizens,” said Sánchez. “Same-sex couples pay into Social Security; they should receive the full benefits they have earned.”
Takei and husband Brad Altman appeared to support the bill. “There are same-sex couples who are denied equality often when misfortune befalls same-sex couples,” said Takei. “One falls ill, or tragically one might pass away. A survivor is left not only grieving, but financially insecure, and often the home they’ve built together, shared together is lost.”
The bill is expected to run into trouble in the Republican-controlled house. Talks are said to be underway about a Senate version of the bill.
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What I’d like to see is a Social Security bill that would ensure that the young people paying Mr. Takei’s benefits today might have a prayer of seeing a few pennies of the money they’re now putting into the system when they themselves reach 65 — by which time the entire system will have collapsed under its own weight, even after the Feds have raised the retirement age to 108.
That would be some real Equality, Mr. Takei. Unless you want to cut me in for a piece of the revenue from your convention appearances, then I’d be willing to call it even.
After all, we don’t all get to be the chance to be swollen-egoed ex-television supporting players with martyr complexes who go around jumping in front of every microphone available to talk people’s heads off about being gay and about being herded into internment camps in Arkansas as a kid and about how mean old Bill Shatner stepped on a few of our lines in ’82.
I would prefer that we gay people do not have to pay the Social Security Tax since we are not equal partners in it. To be able to check a box that I am “Gay” to exempt me for paying a tax that mainly supports heterosexual bigots. They will be taken care of by their children, if their children don’t put them in “Dementia care facilities”, and we gay people will be able to keep the money that social security confiscates, and put it in places for our own personal retirements.
Hi, George.
I am very much against the homosexual life style and sick of how often gay news gets mixed in with Star Trek news ever since Mr. Takie came out of the closet. But, that said, I actually have to support his position on this. Any person, regardless of their lifestyle, if they put money into SS, they should get money out of it. To do otherwise actually is discrimination.
Thank you for thinking it through rationally.
George would be a lot more decorous and a lot less catty.
So true. All that internment bullshit, it’s ancient history. Get over it already! And tell those Jews to stop whining about that final solution crap, it’s so 1940’s. And all those Christians! I’ts been two thousand freakin’ years already, come on!
Mr. Takei is attempting to use his visibility as a celebrity to get attention for causes that he thinks are important. A lot of people in the public eye do this, and if it is alright for say, Sally Struthers to talk about orphans or Bono to go on all the time about human rights, then it is fine for George Takei to advocate about gay rights. I for one had not heard of this bill before, and because George, and Trek Today, brought it to my attention, I’m going to look it up.
Sally Struthers, who in those commercials looked as though she’d actually eaten an orphan or two before the cameras rolled, and Bono, who is simply one of the most hypocritical douchebags alive, are not particularly good examples to cite in defense of George Takei and his rather vocal martyr complex.
Mr. Takei has every right to put out a new statement every five minutes in which he uses his sexual orientation as a bludgeon to establish some kind of moral authority in the furtherance of some pet political cause. It’s obnoxious, and it got old a real long time ago, but he’s perfectly free to do it. But if he’s going to whine about being a “second-class citizen” for some inequality in the type of Social Security benefits he gets, I think it’s perfectly fair to wonder how far down the citizenship totem pole that puts those of us who are paying his benefits today but are going to receive JACK-all for ourselves tomorrow, and probably aren’t going to be able to claim Gayness as an exemption from reality.
Oh well, we ought to be getting a new pronouncement from Mr. Takei on some matter of social or political policy any moment now, and then we’ll be on to the next thing.
George is talking about being a second-class citizen because as a gay man, he is denied many things that would be handed to him if he were straight, for no other reason than because he is gay. This is systemic discrimination, which pretty much defines second-class citizen. Right now, homosexuals are having the same struggle that women and blacks and others have gone through.
By your logic, elderly straight people should also be penalized if they made any money in their lives, and their spouses and families likewise, regardless of their having paid into the system. Yet you single out one man.
If you’re upset about how your society is treating you, feel free to do something about it, preferably something more productive than flapping your fingers on a message board. A lot of people are being and are going to be screwed out of the money that they have paid into the Social Security pot, and it’s damn unfair. Now go put your outrage to good use.
===”A lot of people are being and are going to be screwed out of the money that they have paid into the Social Security pot, and it’s damn unfair.”====
And yet, the “second-class citizen” is a former television actor with narcissistic personality disorder who probably enjoys a higher standard of living than either of us.
Poor, poor, put-upon George.
George is catty every time he opens his mouth.
But he’s raising awareness about everyone who hasn’t been in Star Trek. Which is a lot.
Ooh! Rowr, tiger!
It’s America, golden land of opportunity. We’ve had a retarded president, so why not?