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Asinine “Pro-Marriage” Law Ruins Lives
Posted by KTK

Yes, the “defense of traditional marriage” is certainly doing lots of good for lots of people.

Recently in the news is the case of a North Carolina Sherriff’s dispatcher who was fired when the Sherriff discovered she was living with a man without being married to him. His claim was that this was technically illegal under an 1805 law still on the books in that state - notwithstanding that over 140,000 couples are currently violating that law and the state proscecutes about 4 of them a year (and doesn’t even know how many were convicted). The ACLU is representing her in a bid to get the law overturned, on grounds that, since recent Supreme Court rulings have held that the state cannot criminalize private sexual relations, the state has no business dictating marriage relations either.

This case alone underscores how intrusive and abusive these bluenose laws can be, especially when wielded arbitrarily by prudes with a yen for ruining other people’s lives. The Sherriff here, though relying on his “strict enforcement of the law” stance to justify firing fornicators, admits he makes no effort to enforce that law under most circumstances, and was motivated by his personal disapproval of his employee’s living arrangements to invoke the law in her case:

The sheriff told the Star-News of Wilmington last year that Hobbs’ employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. He said that he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together, but he doesn’t send out deputies to enforce the law.

He’s not the only yahoo with unchecked power and a tendency to use it to intrude his personal peeves into other people’s most intimate issues:

In his court in Charlotte, U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn III is known for routinely asking defendants, no matter what their charge, whether they are living with unmarried partners. If the answer is yes, Horn insists that they agree to change their situation — by marrying or moving — before he will release them from the courtroom.

And it goes on from there. Although this law seems quaint and, in the words of Justice Stewart regarding anti-contraception laws, “uncommonly silly,” its effects are far more harmful than it would seem. Already we see one person losing a job, and others unable to obtain justice in court cases, or even physically leave the room, until they agree to allow the judge to personally and arbitrarily dictate their marital arrangements. But there’s more:

[Melissa] Sheridan, 24, and her boyfriend, John Finger, 34, decided to leave New York’s Catskills region for the South, where both of their families had migrated. Sheridan still had two years of probation to serve from a conviction for welfare fraud, and had cleared the move with her New York probation officers. When she reported to North Carolina’s Department of Community Corrections, she was told that because she and Finger were not married, the state would likely refuse to monitor her probation.

If she cannot transfer her probation, she will be in violation of the terms set for her in New York, and New York could issue a warrant for her arrest. . . .

“They told me I had three choices: They can send my kids back to New York, or we can get married, or we can get separate houses,” Sheridan said. “I wasn’t happy at all. It’s breaking up my family.” . . .

In Hanover County alone, where Carolina Beach is located, 3,434 unmarried couples live together as a household, according to the Census Bureau.

Partly for that reason, prosecutors seldom pursue cohabitation cases. They brought just six prosecutions last year, according to court records. . . .

The law crops up regularly, though, most often when an individual is already involved with the criminal justice system. Three years ago, the law got attention because unmarried couples were being denied funds from the state Victims Compensation Fund.

They’re going to destroy this woman’s family, or send her to jail, to impose their petty harassments regarding her disapproved sex life. (Notice, too, that “sending her kids back to New York” has nothing to do with whether she’s in violation of the anti-sex law; they’re just using the law to hurt her family.) Other people are denied assistance after becoming crime victims, because the state refuses to help any of its citizens who have disapproved sex.

We hardly need more examples of right-wing sex panic, but if we did, is there one clearer than this? They are deliberately harming people - firing them, threatening to jail them, breaking up families, withholding aid for crime victimes, and dictating people’s marital and sex lives - simply because those people have disapproved sex. And it is entirely arbitrary and persecutorial - only a tiny fraction of “violators” get punished, invariably those who somehow fall afoul of the system in some other way, or who come under the thumbs of certain, particularly creepy and invasive, panty-sniffers with the power and the inclination to ooze their way into other people’s sex lives and do harm.

Obviously these laws need to be gone. Better, we need to be free of the sex-panic right wing and their perverse, malicious fascinations with what they fear so much.

By the way:

North Carolina is one of seven states that still have laws on the books prohibiting cohabitation of unmarried couples. The others are Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota.

May 10th, 2005 General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Health, Privacy | 3 comments