Posted on 07/20/2006 10:13:56 AM PDT by SmithL
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Actually, I think they are better termed "conservatives". Those are the ones who foolishly think the rights of individuals are paramount and should not be trampled on by the state. Leftists generally view the state as supreme and it is the state that grants rights to its citizens. I'll go with the former.
The fact that this law was on the books for 200 years AS WELL AS SIMILAR laws all over the nation, indicates that the Founding Fathers who WROTE our Constitution had no problem with them.
200 years ago, we had slavery and Women had few if any rights. Religious tests though unconstitutional were the law in many states. The founding fathers gave us a Constitution that allowed for continued improvement of our Nation and society.
But our radical liberal courts, with some help from the anti-western ACLU, suddenly "discvovered" a new right - the right to live like swine.
The 6 million couples living together outside of marriage hardly compare with the 2 1/2 to 3 million divorces annually, which directly and negatively impact over a million children annually. So the definition of swine may have to be greatly expanded.
Idiotic decisions by Federal Courts like this one are indeed contributing to the collapse of western civilization.
Perhaps they understand that true liberty means free choices, which at times will be the wrong choices. But that is the basis of freedom...the freedom to make a bad choice.
It's not the lack of marriage that is the problem, it's the lack of dedication and commitment to one's partner and offspring that creates the problem for society. A piece of paper from the church and government doesn't mean a thing without the commitment.
Hey sweety!
It's also called recognizing rights of individuals, something that many here want no part of.
One of the reasons socialists push sexual libertinism, homosexuality, etc., is that they tend to lead to bigger government in the long run. That's why Europe has seen such an expansion of government power as it's become more sexually "tolerant". Note that sexually "tolerant" Sweden has astronomical tax levels, a massive bureaucracy, government that intrudes into people's lives at a level unheard of here.
People tend to forget about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, property rights, gun rights, and so on when liberty becomes defined around sex. To express it symbolically, while people are out having an orgy to celebrate their sexual liberation, government takes over everything else.
Hubby and I lived together 6 years before we got married at bike week. (And we were in a nice quiet rural area.)
But one right he didn't give me, or you, is the right to stand in his stead and decide for others what he means, or what he wants.
'Actually, I think they are better termed "conservatives". Those are the ones who foolishly think the rights of individuals are paramount and should not be trampled on by the state. Leftists generally view the state as supreme and it is the state that grants rights to its citizens. I'll go with the former.'
People who believe that the rights of individuals are always paramount are not libertarians, they are anarchists.
In any civilized society, the state has a right to establish certain social norms and standards.
Libertarians oppose a military draft and oppose immigration laws. The Founding Fathers had no problem with military conscription, and I doubt if they would have approved of the incremental invasion of America by Mexico.
"200 years ago, we had slavery and Women had few if any rights. Religious tests though unconstitutional were the law in many states. The founding fathers gave us a Constitution that allowed for continued improvement of our Nation and society."
200 years ago slavery was legal and constitutional, although certainly inconsistent with the founding principles of America which is why it was ulimately eliminated. Women had no rights as it was a male dominated world. Progess advances incrementally - as does decay.
The Founding Fathers did give us a Constitution which contains within itself a mechanism for improvement, but that same mechanism can be abused in the wrong hands.
"The 6 million couples living together outside of marriage hardly compare with the 2 1/2 to 3 million divorces annually, which directly and negatively impact over a million children annually. So the definition of swine may have to be greatly expanded."
At least the 2.5 million people who divorced made an attempt at marriage. And of those 6 million people who live together and produce offspring, their partnerships are far more likely to frgament than those of people who are married. Individuals who are given to instant gratification lack the dedication and self-discipline which is necessary to make a successful marriage work. And they produce the offspring which create the societal problems we see all about us as these children have no role models, no direction, no sense of family honor, no self-discipline or self respect, and become a burden rather than an asset to society.
"Perhaps they understand that true liberty means free choices, which at times will be the wrong choices. But that is the basis of freedom...the freedom to make a bad choice."
True liberty does mean the freedom to make bad choices - as long as the consequences of those bad choices are born by the indidivuals who make the bad choices. When people choose to live together outside marriage the ultimate consequences are children and society ulitmately bears the burden of dealing with the problems these children generate.
Hey sugar....!
Well, I guess I don't specifically have a God-given right to play chess either, but then in the God-given privacy of my home, neither you nor the state has a God given right to prevent me from doing so. Same for other activities between consenting adults.
"Theres also a law on the books that makes it illegal to beat your wife with any object wider that you thumb. And you cannot beat your wife on the courthouse steps on Sunday."
That analogy is absurd.
"Where you see swine, I see a very expensive (I won't say how much) brand new house in a gated community with marble accents, all the tech playthings inside, a two car garage and a well manicured lawn."
If you mean you are shacking up with somebody and not married to them, I hope I don't have to pay the costs of feeding, medicating, and caring for your kids when you ultimately split and they are left without support. And I hope I don't have to pay the costs of apprehending, trying and incarcerating them becasue they haven't learned to live like responsible people because they were raised in an environment without appropriate role models. And I hope I don;t have to worry about your offspring generating violent crimes in my neighborhood and threatening my right to keep and bear arms because they are in the business of stealing them or abusing them.
And I'm not impressed by a gated community with marble fixtures, "playthings" and a well-manicured lawn. Children need loving devoted parents of both sexes who are good moral role models, not successful entrepeneurs, in order to grow up straight. God doesn't judge things by superficialities and I try not to either.
"This decision was made because the judges ruled that whatever my living arrangements may be is nobody's business."
When the consequences of your "living arrangements" impact me or my family or nation adversely, it IS my business.
They made these decisions so that they wouldn't have to round up hundreds of thousands of couples who are hard working, taxpaying, law abiding Americans and throw them in jail. If what i am doing is morally wrong, (Morals that have obviously been established by the almighty doer-of-no-wrong, you.) then it is between me and me God. Not me and my government or my neighbor or you.
"They made these decisions so that they wouldn't have to round up hundreds of thousands of couples who are hard working, taxpaying, law abiding Americans and throw them in jail."
You aren't law-abiding if you are breaking a law and I'm not aware of any organized pogroms to round up fornicators or adulterers in America.
"(Morals that have obviously been established by the almighty doer-of-no-wrong,you.)"
Wrong. GENERATIONS of other people going back very many years established these moral codes and they have worked fairly well. Your free and easy lifestyle doesn't have such a successful track record.
"then it is between me and me God. Not me and my government or my neighbor or you."
If what you are doing doesn't impact me or my community or country, you are correct. When it does, it no longer is between you and God alone.
I can't speak for God, but I sure feel sorry for any kids you bring into what is inherently an unstable family situation.
Family instability creates a ghetto--that is, a situation in which children end up raising themselves, and quite often, trying to raise their parents as well. People who put their own immediate and selfish desires above the welfare of children end up harming society, whatever their intentions when they decide that traditional values about marriage and family do not apply to them.
The analogy is PERFECT! And the analysis that follows from it is exactly right. I would venture, though, that somewhat less than half of FReepers agree. Real conservatives (i.e., those who would preserve our social fabric) are a distinct minority, even here.
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