N.C. Law Banning Cohabitation Struck Down

AP ^ | 7/20/6 | STEVE HARTSOE

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Raleigh, N.C. -- A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last year to overturn the rarely enforced law on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend.

Deborah Hobbs, 40, says her boss, Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, near Wilmington, told her to get married, move out or find another job after he found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did not want to get married, so Hobbs quit in 2004.

State Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford issued the ruling late Wednesday, saying the law violated Hobbs' constitutional right to liberty. He cited the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case titled Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a Texas sodomy law.

"The Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas stands for the proposition that the government has no business regulating relationships between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home," Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a statement.

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"Once something is defined as a right, a hue and cry soon goes up to prohibit "discrimination" against its practitioners. Why should people be "discriminated" against for exercising their rights? Or so the argument goes."

You may be correct. However, saying someone has a right to do something SHOULD not equate to being compelled to accept that behavior as the norm. Just as with the homosexuals, one may not prohibit their perversity; however, there is no requirement to condone or accept it. Or SHOULD BE NO requirement. "Freedom of association" also means freedom to NOT associate, if desired.