Wednesday letters
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Sunday hunting and birth control in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Marriage is still sacred to some
Re: “Decriminalize cohabitation in Virginia,” Feb. 2 editorial “Short takes”:
I am aware that the 1877 law making “lewd and lascivious cohabitation” illegal has been flouted through the years, to the extent that such conduct has become practically the rule rather than the exception in the eyes of many people.
Regardless of the case, I am saddened by your flippant treatment of the institution of marriage, implying that those who support it are “puritanical” and living in the Victorian “eponymous age of sexual repression.” Your attitude is an affront to those who regard marriage as a sacred union with both religious and civil elements.
For centuries, marriage has been the basis of family life for many people of various religions and cultures. As a legal contract, it grants certain privileges and imposes certain responsibilities on the part of those involved.
Unfortunately, since it involves imperfect people, marriage is not a perfect institution, and many unions thus end in failure. But despite its shortcomings, marriage is not some relic from the past, but should be promoted as part of our present and future.
LOUIS M. NEWTON
ROANOKE
February 6, 2013 - 6:10 AM
Two competent, consenting adults should be able to establish a domestic partnership regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, income, literacy, etc. These partnerships should have full legal standing in all matters such as tax filing, insurance, and all other routine benefits presently associated only with marriage. The term “marriage” should be removed from laws. At this point “marriage” would become something that is recognized only privately, for example, by churches.
I’d get rid of competent clause, too. After all lets not descriminate. Who are we to determine that someone else is not “competent.”
Competent is already well defined — legally capable of making their own decisions. That way someone cannot form a domestic partnership with someone who is completely senile for the purpose of taking their money.
It’s important to note that those events that depend on a legal, arbitrary definition of marriage are driven – directly or indirectly – by the ones making that legal, arbitrary definition. The state. The solution, then, is to get the state out of that business. Why should two people who want to get married want or need the blessings of anyone in Washington or Richmond?
Hoo, it’s about the legal recognition of a marriage by government agencies because those agencies allow certain economic “privileges and immunities” for married couples (tax laws, inheritance, power-of-attorney, adoption…)
5 – that’s my point. It’s a means for the state (those agencies) to regulate things states have no business regulating (in addition to marriages). Get the state out of the picture; why does anyone think the state is more qualified than anyone else to determine who can or cannot adopt kids, inherit property, etc? Get the state out.
With regards to tax laws, tax married and unmarried folks the same rate and the problem goes away. Saying, in essence, “I need the state to bless my marriage so I can pay a married person’s taxes” is circular reasoning at its worst.
More pie in the sky? This nation, nor any other, is going to get out of the business of marriage, or anything else. The purpose of structure is to create the society we value. It does benefit the nation as a whole to have legal, defined marriage and the legal defined privileges and responsibilities for that marriage. It is stabilizing and productive. It is moralizing and humanizing.
Spiritual Marriage is a choice between a couple and their church. Legal marriage is between a couple and the law (society). It should be open to all sentient adults capable of making their own choices. It should not discriminate based on any race, religion, creed, culture or sexual orientation “qualifiers”. The job of laws (society) is to protect and value what makes us stronger. Marriage does. Legal vows and oaths carry the same reverence and commitment that religious vows and oaths do.
I do not think cohabitation should be criminal, but it should not be treated the same as the marriage commitment either.
7 – yes, you’re right. Let’s all bend in obeisance to the great overlords in Richmond and Washington, beg for more abuse, and then wonder why our rights are more and more eroded. Individual liberties are so yesterday, so pie in the sky.
I don’t think any married couples are being abused. And the “obeisance to the great overlords” is totally voluntary. As it should be.
If you do not believe government has a role to play, that is your choice. No need to get nasty and insinuate it enslaves those who do believe the government has a role.
You still maintain the “individual liberty” to remain single or enjoy “lewd and lascivious cohabitation”.
The trouble with applying your mantra to everything is that it does not work. Not for you, not for society and not for the sake of this discussion.
The notion that we can have a mixed economy, society and political apparatus may be hard for you to accept, but it works best for us all. There is no movement to “Get the state out of the picture” for a reason.
#6, I understand your point. I’m not sure I agree with it’s premise, but I understand what you’re saying.
For good or ill, society, through the leaders in the community, church, government and nation has ALWAYS set the laws and mores. Even the Bible, from the beginning, had laws and mores. It is how we mold our society for the way we want it to be, reward what is good and punish what is bad for the whole. Thinking that can or should be “re-evaluated” on something like marriage, at this point, is just pie in the sky.
9 – Sandi, mores and norms are established, or evolve, in populations with common backgrounds, racial characteristics, religions, etc. While there are many mores and norms that are common to multiple populations (murder as a forbidden and illegal act, for example), there are many others that are conflict with one another (some religions allow polygamy, for example, others forbid it).
The most supremely unqualified institution to establish mores and norms is a government, especially in a heterogeneous society that seeks to peacefully integrate multiple religions, ethnic backgrounds, etc. because it tries to please everyone, and inevitably causes strife or worse, as some population or other is ostracized, forced to go against their mores, what have you.
What a government can do is establish laws and maintain order based on the common principles that the populations hold, and keep people from fighting over the differences. When it establishes, as a necessity to exist, conditions on the people – married folks must pay taxes at a rate different from single folks – it violates that principle.
Why must a government be involved in who can marry whom (aside from the tax code (a circular argument))? Make sure everyone pays his/her share of taxes and be satisfied with that.
Why must a government be involved in who can adopt a kid? Make sure adopted kids are not abused, abandoned, etc. and be satisfied with that.
Why must a government be involved in who inherits property? Make sure whoever receives the inheritance pays the death tax and be satisfied with that.
If the answer to those questions is “Because that’s the way it is”, then yes, it’s an abuse of government power, and we should demand change.
It’s not that long ago that lascivious cohabitatation with one’s own spouse was illegal.
And what’s this about obese overlords? I resemble that remark!
13-The sodomy law has been struck down by the courts, but is still in the Code of Virginia.
15 – that’s what that means….
14 – who said anything about the overlords being obese? The skinny ones scare me more.
Caesar:
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 190–195
If our government were not a representative republic backed by a strong Constitution and over 230 years of democratic laws, I would agree that “The most supremely unqualified institution to establish mores and norms is a government”. However that is not the case, we do have a representative republic backed by a strong Constitution and over 230 years of democratic laws. We ARE the government and we are more than qualified and responsible enough to make our laws. It is what societies do.
I have to laugh at the notion that the government, any government, “tries to please everyone”. I do not think there is a case anywhere to establish that.
Do you think the lack of laws, regulation, codes, restrictions and systems would not “inevitably causes strife or worse”? That just defies logic and any knowledge of how societies behave.
Again, no government “establishes, as a necessity to exist” any marriage. You can “live in sin” as you like and the government is not involved and establishes nothing on you except you cannot have the privileges that legal marriage offers. That principle is for the good of society (for now) and has been since Biblical time. The tax difference is merely the carrot to coerce couples into doing the right thing (as society sees it). No stick, just a carrot.
“Why must a government be involved in who can marry whom”
So that people are not defining marriage as they see fit and marrying their siblings, parents, children or animals. And do not try to say no one would.
“Why must a government be involved in who can adopt a kid“? Again, to protect, as best an imperfect system can, the family unit and keep folks from stealing other people’s children or bribing, or forcing someone to give them their child.
“Why must a government be involved in who inherits property“? To assure that the legally documented wishes of the deceased are respected and not usurped by someone else claiming an interest or control.
You really should stop now. You want to see our government as nothing but the bad guy, but you forget the many, many bad guys in our society just waiting to pounce on the rest of us.
18 – 230 years of democracy is irrelevant. No government is qualified to legislate morality.
We have a Constitution that is explicitly intended to limit the scope of that government. The framers intentionally tried to limit the tendency of the government to be driven by the Quakers, or the southern plantation owners, or the northern merchants, or the New England Puritans, or the Calvinists, or….
And I would argue the leviathan we have today, driven by special interests, and venal representatives trying to please everyone, is even less qualified than the one the framers tried to establish.