ACLU Suing Black Jack, Missouri

Did read that right, that the man's last name is Loving? Isn't that the same last name of the man in the Virginia case back in the '60's where blacks and whites were denied the right to marry? I wonder if they're related.

"Mayor Norman McCourt said the zoning regulation is to prevent crowding in single-family homes."

What does this have to do with it?

Nothing I have read about this story even hints that overcrowing in the issue.

Dave-

Yes, ironically, the case that did away with laws against interracial marriage was Loving v Virginia and the couple's last name was Loving, just like this man.

Thank you ACLU! I think Mayor McCheese, I mean Mayor McCourt should also be named?

And for what? What have they achieved out of this other than to show their bigotry?

I believe I saw somewhere a definition of prejudice that was remarkably simple -- and entirely apt for the situation:

"Prejudice is whatever you're willing to pay an unjustified economic premium for."

And thus the government of the town is apparently willing to pay. (I'm sure glad I don't live there, though...)

I've googled several different variants of this quote, but I can't find it anywhere. It has a Marginal-Revolutionish feel to it, but even narrowing the search to their site didn't yield a result. Have you seen it anywhere?

I think what they gain is yet more fodder for people who want to keep screaming "help help I'm being oppressed!" when "those evil liberals" won't let them transfer their bigotry into law.

I think that one of the math blogs pointed this out:
The fummy thing is there are not three unrelated peop;e living in that house. The children are related to the parents. Only the two parents are unrelated.

I think that one of the math blogs pointed this out:
The fummy thing is there are not three unrelated peop;e living in that house. The children are related to the parents. Only the two parents are unrelated.

I too have wondered about that. . .

I am so sick of all these controversies surrounding marriage I could scream. Just another reason to abolish all state interest in marriage. It would solve a lot of obnoxious problems. It was more than six months after my son was born before my name was on the birth certificate. Never mind that he got my family name right off the bat, his mom was technicaly still married (her ex couldn't be found to sign the divorce papers) and some asshole at the hospital decided her "husband's" name should be on the birth certificate instead of mine. It was several visits to court and required affidavits from both me and her ex saying that I was in fact teh father. Mind you before my son was born I had already signed an affidavit saying I was the father so we could avoid this hassle. It just didn't happen to be illegal for the clerk in the hospital to express her displeasure at our extramarital procreation. Never mind that this could potentialy have led to serious legal ramifications had her ex decided to make things difficult, it was totaly legal for the hospital clerk to do this, even though we had done everything could within the legal system tio avoid just this situation. It subsequently took a couple of court visits to get the friend of the court to stop persuing her ex for child support and then another to get them to leave us alone when the birth certificate was finaly ammended to name me as the father.

It is just so plain and simple to me, state interest should be removed entirely from the idea of marriage - traditionaly a religious insitution.

In Mississippi a woman who is pregnant cannot obtain a divorce -- and the husband is automatically assumed the father (and it requires a judicial order to change).

Treban said:
"It is just so plain and simple to me, state interest should be removed entirely from the idea of marriage - traditionaly a religious insitution."

(I hate to quibble with you since you liked my previous comment, but)
Where would your idea leave me - an atheist? How could I get married?
I think you have it backwards and I think that most jurisdictions agree with me - marriage is a civil institution. It can be administered by a religious person who has been granted that right by the civil authority.
I think the problem is that the civil authorities should not be able to impose their religious views onto it.

Karl writes:

The fummy thing is there are not three unrelated peop;e living in that house. The children are related to the parents. Only the two parents are unrelated.

Depends how you figure it Karl. This is the setup as reported:

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving were denied a permit of occupancy after buying a house in the city. Shelltrack and Loving, who are not married, have two children, and Shelltrack has a daughter from a previous relationship.

Now the man and woman count as 1 unrelated coupling. The second unrelated coupling is the man and the woman's daugther from her previous relationship. Now compare the two children from Mr. Loving and Miss. Shelltrack with her other daughter. Each of those children are half-siblings to that daughter, so they are half-related (which means they are half not related). Since there are 2 such half-not-relateds, they add up to a whole, and adding that to the other 2 unrelated couplings mentioned above and voila, you get 3 unrelationships. Stupid yes...but perhaps something like this entered into the minds of Black Jack city council.

On another note, this is apparently not the first time the city of Black Jack tried to legislate family values.

Where would your idea leave me - an atheist? How could I get married?

I would argue that it leaves you in no worse a position for getting married than your in now. It would simply mean that said marriage would have no legal authority.

I think you have it backwards and I think that most jurisdictions agree with me - marriage is a civil institution. It can be administered by a religious person who has been granted that right by the civil authority.

I am not generaly one of those who argues semantics - they usually annoy m to no end. But in this case I was very specific with and meant exactly what I said. It is true that now marriage is a civil institution - but traditionaly it has been a religious institution.

I would like to frame my argument this way; You ask where that leaves you an atheist if you want to get married? I would ask, where does the status quo leave me, a Crhistian, who is disgusted by the instution of marriage and the way it is used by most for simple legal benifit? Where does that leave me who has no interest in calling my relationship a marriage? Why shouldn't I have the same benifits afforded a married couple simply because I do not wish to enjoin the shallow, broken intitution of marriage? Should I have to fight in court to have legal rights as teh father of my child? Should I not be allowed to take him to visit his mom in the hospital? Should I just be dis-allowed any tax benifits enjoyed by maried couples because I refuse to participate in an institution I do not believe in? Should many of my friends be kept from enjoying the same legal recognition of their relationships as anybody else because they happen to be gay?

I ask you this; Can you justify a state interest in marriage? How would you go about doing so? It is very easy to say the status quo should remain the same, putting the burden of proof on me to justify change (I am not arguing you shouldn't). But if this argument was reversed, if my scenario was the legal standard, how would you argue that marriage should be given legal standing?

Ultimately, marriage is an institution that is inherently discrimanatory with it's legal standing. If the state should give legal standing to any relationships, in this country, it should only be able to do so without discriminating. In regards to marriage there are many who suffer the tyranny of the majority, glbts, those who don't wish to be married, polygimists and even those who are platonic, domestic partners.

Sorry I missed this yesterday, just didn't look close enough.

It can be administered by a religious person who has been granted that right by the civil authority.

Actually, the "church" that grants the person clergy status provides them the right to perform marriages. The civil authority simply recognizes that right. Once a person is ordained they have the authority to marry.

The problem with proposals to "get the state out of the marriage business" is that the only way to accomplish that would be to remove the concepts of kinship and family from both statute and common law. And those concepts have been part of just about every legal code that's ever existed anywhere. Every society distinguishes between family members and strangers, and that necessitates that the two be treated differently by law. Marriage is the only existing legal institution that allows a person to expand his kinship; to make someone who was previously a stranger a family member (while adoption creates new family ties, it also breaks old ones, for no net gain in kinship).

Why not just let everyone claim whoever they want to be as family members, with no state involvement? Well, it's inevitable that there will be times that such claims come into serious conflict with each other. If you can't use the legal system to settle such claims, you're going to have to resort to street justice, and that's a Bad Thing. And if you are going to use the legal system, there has to be some formalized way of recording the kinship claims people make, one that can provide objective evidence of them. And that's what civil marriage provides, along with a system of rules and precedents for deciding how competing claims should be resolved. "Getting the government out of marriage" is essentially a pure anarchist position. Family relations are predictable enough that it's grossly inefficient, and in fact unjust, to treat each such incidence as something completely novel. Marriage law keeps people from having to spend all their time reinventing the wheel. When certain aspects of it become inequitable, the right answer is to modify it (as has been done successfully many times in the past) rather than scrap it.

The city of Black Jack is entirely within its rights to enforce its housing laws. The state has a vested interest in marriage, because it is the environment in which children are raised and first enter into society. The moral chaos of the family today has been proven to be the root cause of the increase in violent crime, juvenile delinquency, and general unhappiness in society today. The fact is that unmarried families are fundamentally unstable, and contribute to the decay in society because it is not a healthy supportive environment for children, who need the security of one father, and one mother in one home.

Marriage is a civil institution that precedes all religious institutions. It is a covenant contracted between a man and a woman to live in union and to beget and raise children. To start from an anthropological perspective, early records of contracting marriages, were done between families: Isaac's father talks to his cousin Laban about Isaac marrying his daughter Rebecca. Laban considers, talks to Mrs. Laban, has a drink, negotiates the matter, and its a done deal. It's not a religious ceremony in itself, its a civic one. The religious aspect comes in only to ask the blessings of God (or the gods if that is your religious understanding) upon them and their issue, i.e. children. It is not religious. Roman marriage ceremonies were civic, and non-religious in nature. Even in modern Christian theology, (upon which western culture was fundamentally based), the man and the woman are the ones who make the marriage since they give the vows. The church is merely the witness that asks God to bless the marriage. So, even an atheist may contract a marriage since it is civic in its nature.
But marriage is about procreation and children, not tax benefits, visiting rights, and lower housing costs. The state recognizes taht its survival is intimately linked with the survival of the family, which is best guarenteed by marriage. Marriage is the state where children are raised in a mini-society, learn respect and discipline, and learn to behave in the civilized world. Children learn their identity, and obligations in society through the family. Is it any wonder that the loss of marriage in this country is concommitant with the skyrocketing crime rate since the 60's, when the sexual revolution began.

The state has an obligation to preserve, and support marriage, and give it special status over other unions since it is the bedrock of order and stability in society. Laws such as Black Jack's should be promoted and supported, since the state is demanding marriage for the common good. One family is not as good as another, and the moral relativism and equivocation has just ignored reality, and created more victims, which are the confused children that issue from broken confused homes. Just compare the general happiness and culture of 60 years ago, before the revolution in the family began, and tell me: is it today or then that families and children were healthier and happier?

Veritas-

Your argument is as illogical as the argument against gay marriage, which uses the same premise. Yes, marriage is a good thing for society. It does not follow, however, that therefore government may do anything it wants in that regard. Marriage is good, but government has no authority to force people to get married against their will. Marriage is good, but government may not force people to either get married or leave town, as Black Jack has done. Just because something is good doesn't mean government has unlimited authority to make sure people participate in it.

Well, if my argument is illogical, your use of didactic is certainly lacking. We have not proven the premise as false, so it thus cannot follow that the consequents are likewise false.

Governments are entrusted with authority to promote the common good. Marriage is not just a "good thing for society", it is essential. No society can survive and maintain itself without it. This is an irrefutable fact. Gay "marriage" is an absurdity since it does absolutely nothing to further the common good, and in fact works against it by demanding that the state award the same rights and priviledges that are reserved for married persons and families who contribute to the general welfare of society by the proper raising and upbringing of children. Not all relationships are equal, and government has long realized that marriage is essential for healthy families, and communities, which both contribute to the stability of the social order.

In the same wise, married families are preferred over unmarried families, because of that great word: commitment. The parents have committed themselves to love each other, and raise children in a stable familial environment where they are prepared to enter into society. Besides that, the marriage bond creates a union not only between the man and woman, but between their families, meaning that a localized support structure is generated by their union. Each family gains a son or a daughter in marriage, and becomes related in this way. Marriage proliferates the number of relationships between persons and groups, and provides a local support structure that brings society closer together.

Now, many municipalities have had to deal with the effects of the traditional family's absence in people's lives, esp. children's lives. Crime rates have skyrocketed, and the number and degree of violent crimes have proliferated, because mothers are alone, fathers are absent, parents are divorced, and ultimately children are abandoned. This is the very gem in the crown of the sexual revolution: the demise of the family as the institution where children learned how to behave and felt loved. Oddly enough, we are in a day and age where school children as young as eight gang rape little 7 year old girls, as was the case a while back in St. Louis Missouri. Not all relationships are equal, and the fact is that we have abandoned and redefined the best for the worst, the pinnacle of which is barren homosexual unions which ape the married ones.

So why have we stipulated that an individual may do anything that he wants, but a government may not? We have exalted the individual's demands over the common good, and that has disasterous results for in doing so, we have corrupted the rule of Law and unleashed Anarchy. Anarchy is where everyone sets his own rules because the individual constitutes the summum bonum for himself, rather than bends his desires to the common good. Where is such justification rooted?

Governments may set laws that guide men toward the common good of that society. The law defends the common good, and maintains public morality standards for the maintenance of that society. Government has the authority to do this for the public good. As potential residents of the town, Loving and Shelltrack are bound to respect the laws and ordinances of their new home town. Marriage is a good thing, most importantly an essential thing, and governments have the right to create incentive and restrictive laws that favor it, since the health of marriage in society is the best indicator of the health and survival of the society itself. The laws are an expression of the People's Will, la volonte general, and ought to be respected as such whether you are a legal positivist or are based in the traditional natural law. The people's will must be respected over the demands of the individual, eitherwise this means the end of the democratic experiment, which requires the assent of all to abide by the laws of the land.

Marriage is nothing but a legally binding form of relational commitment. Doesn't mean they pay their mortgage, their rent, doesn't mean they raise their kids in a decent way. It's certainly one of the most overrated forms of legal commitment we're now witnessing to rightfully come of age. Advertising marriage as "the" solution to commitment is one thing - but believing in advertising something else. - Here is this smalltown America best learned about by watching Lars Trier's "Dogville", where media headlines painfully (!) omit the word "interracial", and "generating income". If that couple was not generating income, if they were not interracial, it can be doubted some small town city council would even have cared one iota about these people. - So what we are dealing with is, simply put, a family, who uses up too many liberties for their own good - because, as also this example shows, America is not at all the "land of the free". If it was, the city council would have sent them a postcard, a bunch of flowers, and a nice letter saying "Thank you for choosing Black Jack; we're happy to have you here. We have some blue laws from 100 years ago that we'll get rid off at the next council meeting". America, the land of the free. Ha, ha, ha.