Tax the Permanently Single

This seems to be a point of surprise to some, but I think this is really just the enfranchisement of a new group in an existing process (Gregg Easterbrook, via Cathy Young, via Volokh)

If significant numbers of gays and lesbians begin to wed, the 100 million single people may become more dismayed that still more people wearing rings get special deals while they do not. Equally important, for every gay or lesbian pair who weds, winning benefits, a couple of single people must be taxed more to fund these benefits. Benefits can't just be demanded; someone must provide them. Marriage benefits for gays and lesbians will not come from the pockets of those in traditional one-man-one-woman unions. The benefits will come from the pockets of the single.
You chortle now, but as same-gender unions gain acceptance, prejudice against the single may become the final frontier. Marriage definitely isn't for everyone; some people were made by God to be single, and why should society punish them for that? Millions of people wish to marry but cannot find suitable partners; why should society punish them for that? The single makes substantial contributions to society, including often assisting in the all-important raising of children. Many single people form long-term or even life-long bonds to each other based not on eros but Platonic friendship; why shouldn't such people be able to pool their credit, inherit each other's property without taxation, and so on? ... At any rate, complaints from the single seem the next logical progression of this debate, and complaints from the single are going to be hard to rebut.

There are a couple of small problems with this argument but mostly just in magnitude, e.g. a number of gay people are already married to opposite sexed spouses, they just aren't happy, so in detail-balance this is a much smaller increase than it might look; the number of gays is statistically small (about 4% of the general population in the US) and the number of those who would marry is even smaller, so I'm not sure the magnitude of the problem would be detectable in the noise of the current data; 80% of gays are reproductively successful at some point in their lives so, to within a good approximation of non-gays, they are producing single folks to take up the burden, etc.

But, it's still a good point, one I'm surprised no one is really making on the other side. My solution, as always, is to get government out of the marriage business. Stop subsidies/penalties for doing it and make it a purely religious institution.

Also, take the time to ready Cathy Young's article. It's excellent, and makes the points Maggie Gallagher tried but really failed to make.