To: Valpal1
I am however, all for ending child support for illegitimate children.Here's the rub with your standpoint: If a woman, unbeknownst to her husband, conceives a child with another man, and the husband (upon discovering the affair) terminates the marriage, the husband is still required to pay support for the child.
Just being married gives the patina of legitimacy to a child, but this patina is currently construed to mean that the child is the husband's responsibility. Given that child support is often used as a punitive measure (even when the wife leaves the husband), how is making one man pay for another's proclivities - in defiance of the moral (if not legal) contract between the husband and wife?
I agree that no-fault divorce is an abomination. But so is enforcing legal obligations on a man as a direct result of his wife's breakage of their wedding vows.
11 posted on
10/03/2002 8:03:06 AM PDT by
MortMan
To: MortMan
It is not the patina of legitimacy, the child is legitimate, because that is based in law, not biology.
Yes, it is tragic and enraging, but if you allow biology to take precedence over law, then you weaken marriage and destabilize the family bonds of all legal children.
To paraphrase Spock from whichever movie "It is better that the one should suffer, than the many"
This isn't just a problem of individuals, marriage is a social institution and the basic building block of the family, the foundation of society, culture and nations.
If we keep diluting the the legal protections and priviledges of marriage, we will completely dissolve the foundation of traditional legal families.
This will usher in the liberal dream of defining the family as "persons of any gender or sexual orientation, related or unrelated, living together in love and commitment to themselves and each other".
Please, I don't want to live there. This Paternity Fraud Movement seeks to undermine marriage and legitimate children in the name of biology and fairness. They are wrong.
16 posted on
10/03/2002 8:26:45 AM PDT by
Valpal1
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