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EU Court Denies UK Sisters Tax Benefits Granted to Homosexual Couples

By Gudrun Schultz
STRASBOURG, December 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a claim by two elderly British sisters that they should receive the same inheritance tax benefits enjoyed by lesbian couples.

Joyce and Sybil Burden argued that their claim to legal recognition was equally as convincing as lesbian couples, since they had lived together all of their lives--Joyce is 88 and Sybil is 80.

Under the UK Civil Partnership Act introduced in 2004, same-sex couples registered as civil partners enjoy freedom from taxes on inheritance, on the death of one partner. The sisters wanted the same protection--their family home will have to be sold to pay the inheritance tax bill when one sister dies.

"This government is always going out of its way to give rights to people who have done nothing to deserve them," Joyce, 88, told the Daily Mail.
 
"If we were lesbians, we would have all the rights in the world. But we are sisters, and it seems we have no rights at all. It is disgusting that we are being treated like this. It is an insult."

The EU Court, in a 4-3 ruling, said the sisters were not entitled to the same rights as homosexuals because they had not chosen to enter into a legal commitment--their relationship was simply the result of birth.

That argument was hypocritical, attorney Gwen Landolt, national vice-president of REAL Women of Canada, told LifeSiteNews.com, saying the court had forced itself to give preferential treatment to homosexual couples over familial relationships.

"Same-sex couples are entitled to get special benefits because of their relationship, but the family relationships are of equally important value. [Relatives] don't have to live together either, but they choose to, and the fact that they were born into a relationship is totally irrelevant.

"It is simply hypocrisy. Aren't family relationships as important as same-sex relationships? [The court] was really searching for a response," Landolt said.

"Two sisters, or any sort of family relationship, is of enormous value to society. The family is the best health, education and welfare system we've got going. And yet to ignore that as being less than the homosexual or lesbian relationship is very offensive."

Jill Kirby of the Centre for Policy Studies, told the Daily Mail, "Once the decision was taken to extend rights beyond those who are married, it is only reasonable it should be offered to couples in situations like this."

"In a case like this, where their lives have been intertwined for many years, it seems very unfair they are not afforded the same protection as a couple who have registered a civil partnership but whose lives have not been shared to anything like the same extent."

Ms. Landolt agreed, saying, "Logically and consistently, once you've opened the door to relationships beyond heterosexual married couples--because of companionship and other benefits--you have to grant the same rights to everybody. You've changed the whole dynamic and purpose of legal marriage, which is procreation.

"We know that lesbian and homosexual couples are not equal to heterosexual married couples, because the purpose of the heterosexual union is of course procreation. That's the only relationship the State has a basic interest in--to promote and encourage the birth of children."

Kirby pointed out that relatives who live together are now the only living-partners who are left out of protection from inheritance tax--non-related couples who live together at least have the option of getting married (or entering into civil partnerships.)

The two sisters, who never married, live on their family farm near Marlborough, in Wiltshire. Valued at £875,000, inheritance tax on the property would cost the surviving sister £61,000, a sum she would not be able to pay without selling her home and the land she has lived on for most of her life.

Read Daily Mail coverage:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.htm...

See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:

UK Sisters Petition for Same Tax Exemption Rights as Lesbian Couples
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/sep/06091301.html ;

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