Marriage & Family
Ed Fitzpatrick highlights the reasoning that state Representative Michael Chippendale (R, Foster) offered for voting in favor of the recently passed civil unions bill, and that reasoning seems to me to be incomplete. I’ll note, first, that I come to much the same conclusion as Chippendale, although I favor civil unions that build a slate…
Ian Donnis broke the story that House Speaker Gordon Fox is throwing his weight behind Civil Union legislation in lieu of a gay marriage bill: Based on your input, along with the fact that it is now clear to me that there is no realistic chance for passage of the bill in the Senate, I…
It appears already to be doomed, but this bill is precisely how state governments should go about addressing hardship experienced by couples that cannot marry: Sponsored by Rep. Peter Petrarca, D-Lincoln, the bill would allow “any two … unmarried persons who are excluded” from marrying under state law to establish “reciprocal beneficiary agreements” that allow…
Most people probably have an idealized image of the legislative process as one in which legislators draft bills that they desire, other legislators sign on as they’re interested, and everybody votes according to their understanding of the consequences. It seems somehow foreign to everyday life to trade votes on unrelated issues and such, but in…
If one’s stand on a political or social issue is principled, then it ought to be maintained even when it is emotionally difficult to do so, and in the case of Pat Baker, it is certainly difficult. Baker was recently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and she is now spending her days advocating for a…
A recent iteration of First Things‘ “While We’re at It” feature mentioned the Wall Street Journal lament of feminist Erica Jong that breeding and raising children is a fad that just won’t die. From the lament: Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you know that we have endured an orgy of motherphilia for at…
One can only be grateful for the first word in Stephen Fortunato Jr.’s title of “retired Rhode Island Superior Court judge,” given his recent equation of voters in voting booths to clansmen in sheets and, implicitly, voting to lynching. (It would seem that fears of a judicial oligarchy are hardly misplaced when the institution is…
An interesting article in Sunday’s Providence Journal paints delays in marriage and increases in cohabitation among young adults in an almost Rockwellian light: For starters, young adults today aren’t just delaying marriage, but other milestones as well, Settersten says. Many of us are leaving our childhood bedrooms later, taking time to see the world, pursue…
We hear a lot of the rights-based arguments being made in favor of same-sex marriage hereabouts, including the call to RI Founder Roger Williams and the “separation of church and state”. The arguments for religious liberty have seemed muted in the coverage of the debate. In today’s ProJo, Professor Robin Wilson (co-editor of the book…
By now, I think we’re all familiar with the arguments. The ProJo covered the story and GoLocalProv’s Stephen Beale has a piece regarding a potential compromise being floated that would have all Rhode Island marriages be called civil unions. The details: “There seems to be an issue with a word and I want to make…
