Does marriage burden businesses?

Michael Steele, the GOP Chairman, recently announced that his party can reach a larger and more friendly base if they simply recast issues like gay marriage as a pocketbook issue rather than a moral one.  He announced that one possible way to look at gay marriage was to point out that businesses would be forced to offer benefits such as health insurance to  gay spouses of employees  The AP article quoted Steele as saying, “Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have a financial responsibility for.”

Why stop there?  That argument could be applied to all spouses.  Any employee that gets married does that to a business.  Should we discourage marriage because of the financial repercussions it causes for small businesses?  Should employees in a down economy hold off on marriage because it might cause financial hardships to their company?  The argument fails because it isn’t about gay marriage, it is about spousal benefits and how married employees require a greater benefits package than do single employees.  We can take it a step further and say that the ideal employee would be a single male because they aren’t married and they won’t have children - something that also requires coverage.

The argument encourages hiring discrimination and only works if you have some fear about gay people taking your money - when you really boil it down.