I pulled some stuff from today's USA Today. I'm a news junkie and read/watch the news daily, usually morning, at dinner, and before bed.
The city council of Eureka Springs, Arkansas has agreed to create a domestic partner registry. Effective next month, same-sex and unmarried couples can pay a $35.00 fee for a document proving their domestic partnership. Opponents of the measure say it violates the state’s ban on gay marriage.
What the fuck? No one’s talking gay marriage, you ignorant backwoods Bible-thumping cretins. It’s a simple domestic partnership arrangement. Are you saying the unmarried heterosexual couples who are documented under this measure are married too? Last I knew, marriages were ceremonies performed by the clergy or by a justice of the peace. This is a registration document.
I may be mistaken, not being a Biblical scholar and all, but Adam & Eve didn’t have a preacher to perform a ceremony with witnesses, so were they married? And if they spawned the human race out of wedlock, then they were in the wrong for doing so, the vile sinners.
In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a criminal simple assault charge was dropped against a woman accused of driving her daughter, who was serving a suspension from school, to the local middle school so she could fight another classmate. The classmate’s mother also became involved in the fight, according to police. The other mother refused to testify against the first mother, so charges had to be dropped. Perhaps it was the embarrassment of looking like a complete dumb ass that prompted the reticence to testify? This just proves that trailer trash don’t just come from the South.
And noted dickhead Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana says an FBI raid last year on his office was unconstitutional and wants his seized material returned. His lawyer claims that while agents looked for documents related to a 16-month long international bribery investigation for allegedly accepting $100,000.00 from a telecommunications businessman, they also examined records related to Jefferson’s work as a legislator.
Sorry, pal. If the warrant was written correctly, then the agents could look anywhere that evidence could reasonably be ensconced. If I’m looking for papers that implicate someone, those papers could very well be hidden inside of other, more innocuous records and not in a bright red folder marked INCRIMINATING FILES.
You may recall that Representative Jefferson was the douchebag who commandeered a National Guard convoy to during the Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts to run him to his house so he could retrieve $90,000.00 hidden in his freezer.
1 comment:
This whole "gay marriage" thing... the solution is so obvious.
Funny...
Seriously.
Start from the beginning. Why do same-sex couples want to be "married" in the first place? The biggest reason is almost always that they want to live their lives together- and there is currently nothing stopping them from doing this. How many people do you know who have "roommates", people who are not married but who live in the same house or apartment? WHO CARES if they have separate bedrooms, share a bedroom, or if they curl up into a little ball on the kitchen floor together at night? Their sleeping and/or sexual arrangements are THEIR BUSINESS, nobody else's.
And that's an idea which these religious types are just going to have to get used to- they need to worry about themselves and their children, instead of worrying about what everybody else is doing. Think about it- the gays are not out there trying to actively put you down for being straight. They're willing to leave you alone, why can't you show them the same respect?
So why else do these couples want to be "married"? They usually want to share each others' health insurance, they want to be able to file joint tax returns, if one of them has children they usually want the other to have full parental rights if something happens to the biological parent, and in general they want to be legally recognized as a "couple"... in other words, all for NON-RELIGIOUS reasons. (I know several same-sex couples, of both genders, and this pretty much sums up their reasons for wanting to be "married" versus just "living together".)
Think about it- these are all LEGAL or CIVIL reasons- and it's almost the same list of reasons that a group of people might get together and form an LLC, a legal partnership, a corporation, or some other kind of "artificial entity which is recognized as a legal person".
So why not just create an artificial entity which represents the legal partnership between two people who wish to have these kinds of benefits and protections? A "divorce" would become the dissolution of a corporate entity, something which happens all the time.
Remember that the idea of "marriage" is a purely religious one. If two people want to be "married", they do it in a church, synagogue, mosque, the beach, their backyard, or wherever they want to, in front of a priest, minister, rabbi, mullah, or whatever kind of religious leader they feel is appropriate for their idea of a supernatural entity or entities, if any, from whom they seek approval for the union.
And this "marriage", this religious ceremony, has no legal bearing whatsoever, unless accompanied by the formation of a legal partnership.
The process could be streamlined- right now a traditional religious leader fills out and signs some kind of state form AS WELL AS whatever record is required within their church. The formation of a legal partnership would require the same legal endorsement as the formation of an LLC, an S-Corp, or any other kind of corporation- the signatures of the principals (the people forming the union) and a notary, which can be (but does not have to be) the religious figure who performs the ceremony.
The idea is that "legal partnership" and "marriage" become two totally different concepts. The Gummint™ doesn't care if two people are married in some church or not, and the religious types don't have to get their panties all bunched up over "gay marriage", because a "marriage" would have to be done by a church, while the legal benefits come from the legal partnership. Same-sex couples would be able to fill out the legal partnership papers and have them notarized anywhere- they each get a copy, and a third copy gets sent off to the state's division of corporations, just like the formation of any other legal partnership.
Remember that originally, the Gummint™ was not involved in marriages at all- there were no state-issued marriage certificates until the end of the civil war, and the whole idea came from the southern states who didn't want the newly-freed black slaves marrying their white women. The states passed laws requiring a marriage certificate before the preacher man was legally allowed to declare you husband and wife, and the idea just kinda stuck- one of the first clear examples of the Gummint™ just TAKING authority which was never given to it in the Constitution.
The biggest stumbling block that I can see to this working is the fact that, right now, the partners in a marriage cannot legally be compelled to testify against each other. The Gummint™ doesn't give this kind of protection to the principals in any other kind of corporate entity, so I can't see them WANTING to allow this kind of protection for a "civil union" partnership either.
And you KNOW the Gummint™ is going to want to charge periodic fees to renew the partnerships, just as they do with normal corporations, and if a couple forgets to pay their marriage fee, they are no longer legally considered to be one entity, and all of their legal rights and protections disappear, regardless of any religious status.
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