(no subject)

[mamadeb]

Go to penknife's journal. If you haven't read it elsewhere.

Your views on gay marriage rights may differ from mine, but this is not about gay marriage rights.

This is about taking away rights that already exist. This is about a government telling a not inconsiderable group of its citizens (and taxpayers) that they do not have the right to decide who should raise their children, who should own their property with them, who should have the right to take care of them in sickness or old age or who should receive their property after they die. This does not protect heterosexual marriage, which needs no protection.

This is a government telling a group of its citizens "convert or leave."

And doesn't that sound familiar? Is the next step, I wonder, registration or simply confiscating the property of those who choose to leave?

And does Virginia know what happens to states that practise expulsion? What happens when a large group of professionals and artists and just plain people who contribute economically to the state leave? This is not just horrible and wrong, it's *stupid*.

Comments

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

LJ claims there is no user penlight.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

You're right. Corrected to "penknife".

That'll teach me to post without previewing.

[fairestcat]

I really hate my adopted State right now.

I never thought I'd say it, but I wish I was back in Washington state where things are at least somewhat more sane.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

My mother's family is from Virginia. I will never see them at home, then, because I will not spend money in that state for any reason, now. And I will write to various and sundry folks and tell them that.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*stares numbly at screen*

*swears*

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this means that all contracts between unrelated men or unrelated women involving real property, medical oversight, and similar issues will be banned.

If not, then I'd love to see one or more of same that is clearly a simple business transaction challenged under this rule.

IANAL. But I truly wonder to what extent the Commonwealth is entitled to discriminate based on its perception of the intent of contracts.

And so forth.

Scratch Virginia from the list of livable places.

[cyprinella]

Ditto. Less the Washington part because I'm from Michigan and really? Not much better.

[cellio]

I wondered the same thing. I mean, a single straight person is, so far as I know, allowed to write a will naming anyone he likes as beneficiary; how is this different? Married couples have an automatic inheritance if one dies and there's no will, and Virginia is obviously trying to prevent that for gay couples, but how can they invalidate an existing will? And similarly, is it currently illegal for people to buy property jointly if they're not married? And can you really not give medical power of attorney to a non-relative?

Mind, I'm not trying to dismiss the real problems with this legislation; there are plenty, and it is harmful as well as offensive. If I were in Virginia I'd be chastising my representatives now, that's for sure. I will do my best to not spend money in Virginia until they repeal this. This...filth... is nothing more than mean-spirited persecution.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

I was pondering the expulsion question myself. Not only for Virginia, but for the country as a whole. It makes me wonder if years from now Canada or Sweden or what have you is going to look upon this time in the same way we look back in history and ponder the advantages we got from people like Einstein moving over here.

[ohevet-likro.livejournal.com]

I am mortified that I live in a country where such practices can even be considered.

And doesn't that sound familiar? Is the next step, I wonder, registration or simply confiscating the property of those who choose to leave?
Wasn't Yom Hashoah a few weeks ago? (the day adopted in Israel to commemorate the Holocaust) And wasn't a large group that was persecuted the gay community? It is scary to think that we haven't learned anything in the past 75 years (since the mid-30s).

Although it seems that Virginia is not taking away the right to contract so that contracts dealing with passage of property, Power of Attorney etc. can still be created and upheld.

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<ljuser="trixiesfic">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

I am mortified that I live in a country where such practices can even be considered.

<i>And doesn't that sound familiar? Is the next step, I wonder, registration or simply confiscating the property of those who choose to leave?</i>
Wasn't Yom Hashoah a few weeks ago? (the day adopted in Israel to commemorate the Holocaust) And wasn't a large group that was persecuted the gay community? It is scary to think that we haven't learned anything in the past 75 years (since the mid-30s).

Although it seems that Virginia is not taking away the right to contract so that contracts dealing with passage of property, Power of Attorney etc. can still be created and upheld. <ljuser="trixiesfic"> explains the law better than I can.

This is not to say that VA is right to disallow civil unions or the things that they do make illegal, but it isn't a total wash.

Don't Support Virginia

[rebakiva.livejournal.com]

If you smoke cigarettes, then you better quit. Because, almost all of the tabacco for sale in the USA is processed in VA. Most of it is grown in the states surrounding VA - a lot is grown in MD, but it is shipped to VA for processing. You can buy foreign cigarettes, but some of them are actually processed and packaged here. You will need to got to a tobacco shop and verify where your cigarettes are being "built".

I think that this legislation will fuel enough controversy so that the US Supreme court will have to view it. That may be a good thing, but then again it may not. It is quite possible that the US supreme court will side with VA and do even more harm to inclusive politically correct thought. I mean the United States of America WAS founded by very narrow-minded Christians.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

illegal for people to buy property jointly if they're not married?

You know, I am amused/appalled by this, in the light of popular culture. You see, I enjoy watching Monster House (http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/monsterhouse/monsterhouse.html), in which a home is given a makeover to a theme specified by the owners. In one episode, the owners are a pair of men who had been friends and who each needed more space. One had the means but not the credit rating; the other, the complementary assets, so they bought jointly.

The fact that each was raising kids (IIRC) and at least one was dating (a woman) suggest strongly that they're not in a mutual relationship. (And I wouldn't care -- but it is relevant to the topic at hand.) But under this debacle down Southish, they never could have been homeowners, unless the law looked the other way.

Feh.

not just stupid, but blatantly unconstitutional

[sethg]

IANAL, but ... Colorado's Amendment 2, a state constitutional amendment that forbade gay-rights laws and policies, was ruled unconstitutional in Romer v. Evans, 517 US 620. This Virginia law seems to be even more clearly unconstitutional. In Romer, "[t]he State's principal argument in defense of Amendment 2 is that it put gays and lesbians in the same position as all other persons" (ibid, at 4), and the majority found this argument unconvincing. "A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws" (ibid, at 13).

Even Justice Scalia, in his dissent, argued that since a gay Coloradan would still be protected by "general laws and policies that prohibit arbitrary discrimination" (ibid, Scalia, J. [dissenting], at 3), Amendment 2 did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. I think even he would have a hard time accepting this Virginia law, which excludes a class of people from the protection of general laws.

But I'm glad I have no plans to travel to Virginia in the near future.

Re: Don't Support Virginia

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

the United States of America WAS founded by very narrow-minded Christians.

Um, no. Two ways.

Many of those now held to be Founding Fathers were nominally Christian, but expressed significantly more liberal views and were commonly considered to be Deist.

And there were plenty of Christians, per se, who had themselves fled from intolerance and learned from the experience. (Sure, there were some who fled and learned only the lesson of Might Makes Right; fortunately, until the installation of the current so-called President, they didn't have the power and the will and the mass of sheep citizenry to do much about it.)

Not to mention the altogether non-Christians -- Jews, for example (in Rhode Island and New York, plus I'm sure, other places) -- who were early citizens.

Now, if we COULD blight tobacco, I wouldn't cry too long, either.