Yet another reason to abolish the legality of marriage

I found this story via Radley Balko's "The Agitator." It is about an unmarried couple who have been together for thirteen years raising three children. They recently moved from Minniapolis to Black Jack MO and were denied an occupency permit because of an ordinance prohibiting more than three people to live together without ties of marriage, blood or adoption. They were subsequently questioned for an hour about their personal relationship by the city council who then denied their appeal - their next stop is in court.

This is just another example of the inherent discrimination of marriage as a legal institution. I have spoken briefly before about my feelings on marriage. It is a religious institution and should have no legal bearing. People who wish to share in the legal benifits, currently afforded married couples, with their domestic partner should be able to regardless of there gender, religious preferences or desire to be "married." These civil unions should be the only such unions recognized by the state or any court of law. Those who wish to be married are free to do so in accordence with their beliefs but the state has absolutey no reason to recognize or provide any legal standing to said union. If the married couple wishes to enjoy the legal benifits of their relationship they should also have to get a civil union for said recognition.

If one looks at this idea objectively it is not nearly as radical as it sounds. The ability to gain legal benifits for a domestic partnership from a civil union rather than marriage would signifigantly reduce the divorce rate and go a long ways toward truly protecting or I would call it renewing the sanctity of marriage. With the sharp increase in the divorce rate of the 70s and the 80s a lot of people in my generation lost all respect and confidence in marriage as an institution. It has been merely a legal ploy for many people in the last few decades, rather than a sacred and beautiful union. With so many folks crying about "saving" marriage it really seems to be for the best. Removing the legal need for marriage would go a long ways toward renewing it as a sacrement, as an expression of love and sacred trust rather than a tax advantage or legal ploy.

I am back online

I am back but there are going to be a changes. I am going to be focusing on issues effecting single parents more than anything else. I am developing a ministry within my church specificly for single parents. Being one myself I noticed a big lack of anything for us in my church and in fact in most churches. There are a lot of important ways the church can and should be reaching non-traditional families and that is what I am going to be spending a lot of time working on. I am therefore going to focus my blogging here as much as possible to on single parent and other non-traditional family issues.

I will be allowing myself once a week to post on anything else that has me irked. I am going to stick to this the best I can and see what happens. There are so many things happening that directly effect non-traditional families that I likely won't have a hard time finding things to write about. Healthcare will be a big one coming up soon. I have a lot of things to get done before I get back to posting regularly but I will be back into the swing in a couple of days.

I am temporarily offline

I won't hae the oppertunity to post for a little while as the internet was shut off at my house. It is a long story as to why but suffice to say that while I get along with my roomie famously, life with room mates is not always perfect. I will be back asap - probably in a week or so.