Press release headline: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force study finds that Social Security privatization will disproportionately harm lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans . Yes, allowing gay people to bequeath their life-long retirement savings to a partner (or anyone else they choose) sure would be a bad thing, and allowing all people of modest means to access the wealth-generating power of the equity markets, if they so choose, is a sure threat to gay equality.
Oh, and the study also finds that "LGBT people of color, in particular, face an income disadvantage that leads to lower Social Security benefits." Well, yes, which is why capital accumulation via low-expense asset-class index funds would give them a fighting chance at a comfortable retirement.
Update: Reader "David" comments:
This is a dishonest study, done by leftists to advance the left's agenda rather than by actual gay activists with an interest in the actual lives of gay people.
Social Security choice is inherently pro-gay. If people put their retirement in private accounts, those accounts belong to them. They can leave their assets to their partner or to anyone else. If gays could get married, then this provision would not matter to us more than to anyone else - but we can't.
The study says: "If we earn less, we receive a lower Social Security payment in retirement." Well, duh. But that's a fact - or a complaint - about the current system. A large-accounts privatization plan would allow lower-income people to accumulate assets the way upper-middle-class people now do. If indeed gays are more likely to have lower incomes, then they would be disproportionately benefited by privatization.
I think the study notes, for instance, that money you leave to your partner is taxable, while assets left to your spouse are not. That's discrimination, and we should support ending it - but it's a comment on current law, not Social Security reform. In fact, we might even be able to quietly get a provision into the reform law that says that private Social Security benefits could be inherited tax-free. (And besides, left-liberals are always telling us that only the very rich pay the estate tax, so the taxability of retirement assets is hardly an issue for "low-income LGBTs.")
If you'd like to leave the money you've saved all your life to your partner - or to HRC - you should support Social Security choice.