New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | April 28, 2005

Cato's David Boaz is no fan of Virginia's hostility to gay couples, but at least he doesn't feel singled out: Turns out the state has a rich history of interfering in people's personal relationships.

Comments

fyodor|4.28.05 @ 3:37PM|#

Julian, thanks to Kerry Howley referring to Virginia Postrel by her first name only in the post immediately below yours, I thought you were talking about Ms. Postrel for a few seconds there!!

|4.28.05 @ 4:09PM|#

Heathens! Those activist judges will surely rule that a box turtle is a "member of the household".

|4.28.05 @ 4:14PM|#

So this is Virginia... tolerant Virginia!

|4.28.05 @ 4:18PM|#

"Carrie Buck was sterilized. And thanks to the case of Buck v. Bell, so were another 8,000 Virginians and more than 60,000 other Americans. They were forcibly deprived of the chance to have children based on flimsy evidence of their low intelligence."

You know, to me, it seems as if many people, especially backwards-ass politicos in this hallowed commonwealth, are stuck in mental middle school. Shit like the above eugenics sounds like me and my buddies joking around after school. "Damn, Joey's such a fuckin retard! He should be castrated, so he doesn't spread any more of his retard seed!" Of course, we were adolescent punks, talkin shit, as always...and none of us were really serious about such things. But, it seems, there is a precedent for our harsh tongue-in-cheek suggestions. This, no less, from grown men, from political leaders.

This culture scares the shit outta me sometimes. Buncha savages in this town...

|4.28.05 @ 4:34PM|#

What's sad is that Virginia was the first state to pass a law that set up a wall between church and state. So much for their Revolutionary War tolerance.

|4.28.05 @ 4:37PM|#

Now, now, Virginia is just protecting sacred institutions from activist judges. I mean, if a private company is allowed to voluntarily offer benefits to whoever they want in order to lure talented employees, it's only a matter of time before Senator Santorum is burying his dick in a dog's ass!

|4.28.05 @ 4:52PM|#

I could understand the argument if that bill had required companies to cover everyone. But it didn't, it simply allowed it. You gotta be a special breed of asshole to oppose that.

|4.28.05 @ 4:53PM|#

Articles like these never fail to blow my mind. I'm writing this from Alexandria VA which is an intensely over-educated and substantially liberal place. You'd never know that there were so many cro-mags running this state (excuse me, commonwealth) from where I'm standing.

|4.28.05 @ 4:55PM|#

My inner conspiracy theorist sees laws being passed so they can be stricken by "activist" courts. Sort of a legal straw man.

Either way, the fundamentalists win. The get the Law they want, or they get evidence of an out of control judiciary biased against "people of faith".

|4.28.05 @ 4:59PM|#

Should read: They get the law they want. I need an editor

|4.28.05 @ 5:25PM|#

maybe those intolerant S.O.B.s should be forcibly sterilized

|4.28.05 @ 5:53PM|#

Let me get this straight: they opposed a bill allowing private companies their own discretion in extending health insurance?

So much for conservatives being in favor of free markets...

|4.28.05 @ 6:06PM|#

What I don't understand is why the Virginia Legislature had to vote to allow private companies to give insurance to anyone. This just amazes me.

|4.28.05 @ 6:51PM|#

Bash virginia all you want, but my college (Virginia Commonwealth University. Gwar formed here. Rock) has indoor smoking areas on the upper floors of some buildings.

Plus I mean, we elected the first black govenor.

And that baggy pants bill came close, but didn't pass. Now that's "live and let live".

|4.28.05 @ 9:13PM|#

"You'd never know that there were so many cro-mags running this state..."

That would be an insult to our noble hominid progenitors. To truly gauge the intellegence of your average bigot, you need to go back much further. Say... Trilobites.

|4.29.05 @ 1:21AM|#

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Damn that Columbus! ...Again.

|4.29.05 @ 4:18AM|#

What's the big deal about Virginia "being unhospitable to gay couples" anyway? You can't get gay quasi-marriage in Faifax or McLean, and that stinks, so you move to greener pastures, in, say, Chevy Chase or someplace in Anne Arundel
County. One Beltway-bedroom-burb is quite like the other, so why the fuss?

|4.29.05 @ 8:29AM|#

One Beltway-bedroom-burb is quite like the other, so why the fuss?

While this is a good argument for federalism in principle, the fact is, if you're gay, and you love the place you're in, then you're screwed. The "big deal" is that, while, in theory, you can just leave, there are alot of people (myself included) who love this state not for its political character but for its culture, its people, its beautiful geography and history. Now, yeah, of course, if you're renting an apartment in Fairfax and working in DC, then, yeah, it's relatively easy to just leave your apartment and get a new one. But, if you live in, say, Charlottesville, like me, then, what do you do? What if you own a house? It's not all that easy to just jump up and leave. If I were gay, I'd be pretty furious. Hell, I'm furious anyway...just because of this sickening intolerance. "You can just leave if you don't like it" is not a good excuse for tyranny and oppression.

|4.29.05 @ 10:07AM|#

It's not like gays were flocking to Virginia before. Levels of tolerance seem to be pretty constant over time, and people are quite aware of how the various states fall on this topic. I have a suspicion that gays have been leaving Virginia for a long time - which I guess makes everyone happy.

|4.29.05 @ 11:14AM|#

I think most reasonable modern people would find the language in the Virginia forced sterilization bill repugnant. Things like this give me faith that as a society becomes more technologically advanced, educated, and prosperous they also become more tolerant, moral, and just plain nicer. It gives me hope for all those oppressed, poor and mean nations in the world.

|4.29.05 @ 12:00PM|#

So Virginia, in justifying the eugenics law, found that: "These people belong to the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South."


Yet to justify the anti-miscegenation law, they were influenced by the fact that:

"...a Gallup Poll indicated in 1965 that 42 percent of Northern whites supported bans on inter-racial marriage, as did 72 percent of Southern whites."

Hmmmm.... when it suits one purpose you're "shiftless, ignorant and worthless", but when it suits another purpose, your opinion is the expression of the "will of the people."

We all knew this of course, I just thought this was funny.

|4.29.05 @ 12:00PM|#

The classic Virginia interracial marriage case was Loving versus Virginia. The ok-to-ban-sodomy Supreme Court case was Bowers versus Hardwicke. Now we read here of a gay adoption case, and the person was named Sharon Bottoms.

This is just too much. We could call it onomatopeia but even that may start someone a-giggling.

|4.29.05 @ 4:00PM|#

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

And some people wonder why there is an effort to keep Bush-nominated "judges of faith" off the Federal bench. It's too easy to dismiss logic with talk of "sin" and "God meant it to be so" poppycock. Did God change his mind about miscegenation in the last 40 years? I guess the Bible is a "living" document just like the Constitution. What a bunch of bullshit.