Tax Hairy Lesbians: An Explanation

Tax, or the Real Marriage Penalty: Get this, all of you who complain about the marriage penalty, or even taxes in general: Mama and I discovered that our tax refund is 1/4 of what it would be if we were legally married. See, in doing our state taxes--in a state where we are legally married--we had to calculate our federal taxes as if we were legally married--though gay marriage is not recognized on the federal level. And then we compared it to what the tax fund really is in our "unmarried" state. And it looks like this: we would get four times as much money back if one of us were a man and we were married. That's thousands of dollars, folks, over the courses of our lifetimes, that we won't get back, that we essentially "overpay" in taxes. Maybe the Tea Party would like to take up our cause??

Hairy: I got another haircut, from the same woman who messed up my hair last time, and, when told I was unhappy with it, she said, "Oh, you didn't want layers?" My goodness, I haven't asked for layers in years, always "keep it one length." But no problems, she cut it all one length. And then finished it curly. The kids . . . and I . . . liked it much better!

Lesbians--"Can you say that? I knew that you could." The kids have a new vocabulary word. Yep, they know what lesbians are. Sure, they know they have two mommies, but didn't know that this made us lesbians. It came up while we were talking about our friend Miss M in Chicago and we said, "She had a girlfriend. She was a lesbian." With their new word alarms going off, they asked immediately and so we said that lesbians are women who want to marry other women (okay, it's a very simple definition, and not exactly true in that "marry" part, 'cos not everyone wants to get married. I mean, really, since there is a lesbian marriage penalty!). Immediately, Sis wanted to know what women who want to marry men are called. And Mama and I looked at each other. "Heterosexual" is a big word (and we really don't like to use "homosexual" with all the scientific, old DSM/psychiatric overtones). So we settled for "straight." Which confused them because well, hair (though not mine) and rulers are straight. Oh, well, English is an imperfect language. We told them they could marry (or not!) whomever they want--and we didn't even warn them about the taxes!!