Day: March 30, 2005

Suit Would Drag NC Law into the 20th Century

Jon Ponder

AP/Durham Herald-Sun – (via Pam’s House Blend):

A former sheriff’s dispatcher who quit her job after her boss found out she lived with her boyfriend is challenging North Carolina’s law against cohabitation. Debora Hobbs said she was told to get married, move out, or find another job after her boss found out about her living situation. The legal arm of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed the lawsuit Monday on her behalf.

The lawsuit seeks to abolish the nearly 200-year-old — and rarely enforced — law that prohibits unmarried, unrelated adults of the opposite sex from living together. North Carolina is one of seven states with such a law.

Convicted offenders face a fine and up to 60 days in jail. “The government has no business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults,” said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation.

Hobbs had been living with her boyfriend for about three years when she was hired as a Pender County 911 dispatcher in February 2004. The couple decided they didn’t want to marry; Hobbs quit last May rather than be fired.

Sheriff Carson Smith said last year that Hobbs’ employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. He said he tries to avoid hiring people who openly live together, but that he doesn’t send out deputies to enforce the law.

Just Shoot Me

Jon Ponder

From Daily Kos:

It’s been really quite interesting how the rightwingosphere has just about completely ignored Tom DeLay’s corruption and utter perversion of the very values that brought the GOP to power.

Now that the WSJ has greenlighted attacks on DeLay, that might change, but the silence over DeLay’s perversions of democracy has been deafening.

Now everyone knows that I have never been afraid to take on Democrats when I think they are doing the wrong thing. But then again, this is a different place than the mindless automatons taking their talking cues from Limbaugh and company.

But I need a favor: when Democrats take power and become the majority party, and some of them start acting like DeLay (which is inevitable — power corrupts), please make sure I’m speaking out against such corruption. And if I don’t, line me up against the metaphorical wall and shoot me.

I don’t ever want to become what they are.

It’s Only Bad If One of Us Does It

Trish

Have you noticed how these Chicken Little sanctimonious hypocrites shriek that being homosexual and showing religious tolerance are signs of the apocalypse but pedophilia and internet porn are no big deal – at least when they’re the ones with their pants down.

From CNN:

A former top official of the Boy Scouts of America [Note: he only stepped down in February, once the investigation was public knowledge] faces federal Internet child pornography charges and is expected to plead guilty Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office said…

The U.S. attorney’s office in Fort Worth, Texas, filed the charges after federal investigators found images of children engaging in sex acts on Smith’s computer.

Whew. Sounds pretty bad, huh? Aw, not really. No biggie.

Smith’s lawyer, Jack Strickland, told The Associated Press that his client is “not taking this well. I’ve got to tell you, this is a good man, and I would hate to see the entirety of his life and the good things he’s done defined by one incident.”

Yeah, you know, it’s just one little part of his life and he’s a good man. Cut him a break, will ya? His real life is all about children. Scouts, that is.

And how about the national spokesman for the BSA, the guy who defended their right to kick gay butt all the way to the Supreme Court? In 1999, when the BSA was seeing one departure after another from Unitarian-sponsored troops and others (even some Mormon troops!), Gregg Shields pursed his lips and made this pronouncement :

“Since 1910 the Boy Scouts have taught basic traditional family values and continue to do so. We feel that an avowed homosexual does not fit these values and is not an appropriate person to be in a leadership position.”

No, a gay adult who maintains a stable, consenting relationship with another gay adult is beyond the pale but some mouth-breathing, child porn consuming nut case is A-OK.

Well, not completely. Being arrested is pretty racy stuff, evidently.

Shields said the Boy Scouts are “shocked and dismayed” by Smith’s arrest, but the group has cooperated with investigators in the case.

“We surrendered his work computer to authorities,” he said.

Notice, Shields isn’t concerned about Smith’s conduct, just his arrest. But the BSA is “cooperating” so what else can they possibly do?

Climb down from the judgmental high horse and stop trying to make decent people feel ashamed while they put closet cases in charge? I don’t know, but it would be a start.