Gay man sues IRS for $36k tax deduction for cost of IVF, surrogate: IRS rejects
Is
the procreative impossibility of homosexual activity the same as heterosexuals
being biologically infertile? Stetson
University law professor Joseph Morrissey is suing for a tax deduction of
$36,538 for in vitro fertilization treatments and the cost of a surrogate to
carry twin boys for himself and his male partner.
In
denying Morrissey's claim, the IRS explained that for tax deductions, the
medical services must be provided to the taxpayer, his spouse, or his
dependent. Therefore, a surrogate does not qualify, and neither does IVF for
someone other than the filer, his spouse, or his dependent.
What
Morrissey is focusing on, however, is the words of the IRS agent who turned
down his IVF tax deduction. The IRS agent noted that Morrissey's sexual
orientation is a "choice."
Morrissey's
lawsuit states, "Despite the IRS's backward and archaic thinking,
plaintiff is not homosexual by 'choice.'" Morrissey claims that the
procedures "took nearly four years, seven IVF procedures, three
surrogates, three egg donors, two clinics and more than $100,000."
LGBTQ
activists are trying to get a legal ruling that homosexuality is genetic,
innate, natural, and not a choice.
Catherine Sakimura, deputy director of the
National Center for Lesbian Rights, stated, "A gay male couple cannot
conceive a child without the assistance of a woman." Therefore, according
to Sakimura, two men going outside their homosexual relationship to contract a
womb "should be treated the same, in terms of infertility."
Significantly,
Morrissey says gay men are "effectively" infertile. His lawsuit
claims that he "cannot engage in heterosexual intercourse to conceive
children, and cannot do that with his chosen life partner," because doing
so would require him "to violate his monogamous relationship and marriage
[sic] engagement."
Sakimura
argues that the government gives tax deductions to heterosexual couples that
can't conceive children, thus it is unconstitutionally discriminatory to deny
the same benefit to homosexuals.
Tessa
Davis, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, says the
tax code should be changed to allow deductions for surrogacy "if the
couple can demonstrate medical infertility." Davis argues that, "like
a kidney donor, the surrogate provides a substitute for normal functioning of
the reproductive systems of the couple."
Davis
told The Tampa Tribune that Morrissey's lawsuit makes the unique legal
argument that being homosexual is the same as being medically infertile. She
describes the issue as follows: "Look, I may not be infertile as defined
by your standards historically, or even as defined by medical textbooks, but
the bare reality is that I can't have a child without some type of costs that
derive from the opposite gender."
"It
is indeed tragic for the state to treat homosexual couples like infertile
heterosexual couples," Americans for Truth's Peter LaBarbera told
LifeSiteNews. "The latter create a family, with a mother and a father,
like all other natural families the world over – whereas homosexual couples
create unnatural, experimental families, that are motherless or fatherless by
design."
LaBarbera
continued, "Homosexual-led households model immoral same-sex behavior to
an innocent child, which itself is wrong and certainly not in the child's best
interests."
Morrissey's
partner became a Pinellas County middle school mathematics teacher after
Morrissey began teaching at Stetson in 2004. The two initially considered
adopting a child, but at the time it was still illegal in Florida for gays to
adopt. The Florida homosexual adoption ban was ruled unconstitutional in 2010.
After
July's Supreme Court's Obergefell decision, the two men announced their
intention to call their relationship a marriage.
