Conservative Culture

Photo: BBC

Let the games begin. Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry? Why should anyone be limited to a single partner in a marriage relationship. That is the sentiment of one lesbian just sentenced according to the BBC.

woman who entered into a civil partnership with her lesbian partner while she was still married has been ordered to carry out community service.

Suzanne Mitchell, of Wingfield Gardens, Shrewsbury, pleaded guilty to breaching the 2004 Civil Partnerships Act.

The 30-year-old admitted making a false statement at her union with Caroline Beddows before her marriage to Charles Mitchell had been annulled.

Suzanne Mitchell was also given a suspended prison sentence on Monday.

Some say that gay marriage won’t lead to polygamous marriages being codified in the law. The Star examines that line of thought and points out that few are willing to pursue polygamous marriages. While the article deals with Canada the same questions apply to the United States. Already there is a reluctance to apply the law in regards to traditional marriage… in fact have worked to overturn and change them. Currently little is done, as in Canada, to prosecute polygamy.

Legal authorities are chopping that argument off at the neck.

Same-sex marriage and the practice of taking multiple wives share little basis in law, they say.

Why then has British Columbia has been so reluctant to take action against a radical Mormon sect where the men take many wives as their ticket to heaven?

“I always find it baffling when people see the two as so closely linked,” said Robert Leckey, a law professor at McGill University.

“Over the years, many things about marriage have changed. It used to be for life, now we have divorce. It used to be the man had all the rights, now men and women have equal rights. It is weird to me that same-sex marriage is seen as being the first change dramatic enough to make people think it is polygamy next.”

The existence of polygamous marriage has been a thorn in the side of B.C. legislators for more than 20 years.

Tucked in the southeast corner of the province sits a colony of a breakaway fundamentalist Mormon sect whose faith dictates that to reach heaven, a man must marry as often as possible.

And they do. The head of the colony in Bountiful, Winston Blackmore, is estimated to have more than 20 wives.

Their marriages are illegal but the government has never taken action, fearful that the law against polygamy would be overturned by an argument that the law against it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Several government and police investigations into the colony have yielded differing opinions on whether to proceed with criminal charges. The appointment of a special prosecutor to review the case one more time was another such effort.

Some legal experts apparently aren’t concerned and are baffled at the link between gay marriage and polygamy. But the point is that once the standard is…. there are no standards…. then it isn’t hard to argue that any preferred form of marriage should be legalized. Only time will tell but I predict it will continue to burn in the background until gay marriage is secured.

Tags: Marriage Expansion

THANKS to a sharp observer…. comes this correction.

A partner of a man named Atkins for the past 25 years is now making the moves to extract his partners  children from Atkins parents. I know that I would prefer to care for my son rather than turn them over to another person… who isn’t the spouse of my child. I don’t care if they were a heterosexual couple or homosexual.

At first I thought it was about the children of Atkins. But the custody fight is over a grown man. At his point I am not sure why it is a custody fight. I would think that it would be about power of attorney to make decisions about the care of the man. As I understand it when a person is of age they can have legal papers drawn up to designate these matters ahead of time. This should have been done when Atkins was able to do it when he first became sick. Of course it doesn’t say what illness has beset the man but I’m sure I can guess. There certainly isn’t any reason for gay activists to use this case as a push for marriage expansion. There are already legal remedies for such a situation without changing the marriage laws. (thanks to my readers for correcting my error).

Brett Conrad spent more than half his life as Patrick Atkins’ partner. For 25 years, the men shared bank accounts, apartments and eventually a home in Fishers.

But when Atkins, 47, fell seriously ill in 2005, Conrad faced what many gay Hoosiers consider a travesty: no law guaranteeing them the same rights as married couples to participate in care decisions for their ill partners.

Conrad, 47, spent much of the past two years trying to win guardianship of Atkins from Atkins’ parents, Thomas and Jeanne of Carmel. Jeanne Atkins is quoted in court documents as saying she believes homosexuality is a sin and that she disapproves of the men’s relationship. The parents have barred Conrad from visiting their now-disabled son in their home where he lives.

In June, Conrad won visitation rights from the Indiana Court of Appeals, but the court upheld an earlier Hamilton County ruling that left control of Atkins’ care to his parents. ( Read the appeals court decision.)

Tags: Marriage Expansion

Cross Post: Stop the ACLU

The new and improved warantless surveillance program is now approved by the Democratic led House and Senate and signed into law. Naturally, the ACLU are quite upset:

The American Civil Liberties Union today condemned the House and Senate for bowing to pressure from the Bush administration and rushing to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The administration lobbied heavily to alter the legislation before Congress recessed. The White House pushed for sweeping changes to the spy law after a FISA court judge recently rejected its use of wide-scale, untargeted surveillance. The bill was passed in the Senate by a vote of 60 to 28, and the House is poised to take up the same legislation late tonight.

“We are deeply disappointed that the president’s tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “That a Democratically-controlled Senate would be strong-armed by the Bush administration is astonishing. This Congress may prove to be as spineless in standing up to the Bush Administration as the one that enacted the Patriot Act or the Military Commissions Act.”

There are many good points to make about political pressure when you have the majority, know what you’ve molded your believers to believe, and then approve of the opposite. There is a lot to be said about standing on principle there. The left are quickly whipping their representatives in the blogosphere today though. Check out Glenn Greenwald and memeorandum for all that.

The Washington Post words things in a very interesting manner.

THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law — or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.

Tigerhawk has a good response to the Washington Post reaction:

I was unaware that President Bush — who has less political influence than half the bloggers at YearlyKos — was in a position to strong-arm the Democratic leadership of the United States Congress. The very idea is as absurd as it is intellectually dishonest. The Post simply prefers to denounce the strawman “strongarm” tactics of the administration than admit to the more likely explanation that most Americans believe that if you phone somebody named Mohammad inside a Muslim police state known to fund, harbor, or suffer to exist terrorists the NSA should listen to your conversation. Apparently more than a few Democrats in Congress agree with that position, or are unwilling to be caught arguing the other side of it.

I’m glad the important legislation got passed in the long of it all. However, the main point to note here is that of principle. Agree or disagree on whether the original principle was right or wrong, once you take a side people expect you to be steadfast. In this case, as stubborn as they are, the ACLU beats out the Democrats hands down.

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