Living in Sin

"Boy, I'd like to see the state come and try and split us up." -Helen Vetter, an 82 year old woman who lives with her 87 year old boyfriend.

No need to worry anymore, Mrs Vetter.  North Dakota has repealed its co-habitation law.  Normally this would be a story about getting a stupid outdated law off the books.  What makes it bloggable is that it took three sucessive legislative sessions to do it.  The two sessions previous to this one, organizations like North Dakota Family Alliance managed to convince the legislature to let the law stand.

While the law, which equated living with someone you're not married to with incest, rape and adultery, was not often enforced, it occasionally was.  Allow me to share the story of Debora Hobbs, who was a 911 operator forced to quit her job in 2004 because she was living with her boyfriend at the time.  She had lived with her boyfriend for 3 years prior to that, but was told by the sherrif that to keep her job, she would have to move out, quit, or get married.  She quit, and then sued the county.  According to this article from the Washington Post, in January of 2005, the legislature voted to keep cohabitation as a class 2 misdemeanor with a vote of 52 to 37, so I guess her suit was not successful.

This month the legislature again took up the measure.  The State Senate passed the law 35 to 10, and the House passed it with the much more narrow vote of 48 to 41.  The opponents claim that while they don't actually care if the law is enforced they want to keep it on the books to set a moral standard.

North Dakota apparently felt that the correct moral standard to set is the walk of shame.  Why live with a man when you can just slink out of his house with last night's mascara still clinging to your eyelid?  Why live with a woman when the state encourages you to fuck and leave?

Okay, so they don't specifically advocate that, but I didn't find a law that says it's illegal to fuck someone you're not married to (assuming they're not married to anyone else), so how else do you get your jollies?

New License Plate--North Dakota---The Walk of Moral Victory State

I've had some nightmare roommates in my time.  I was always grateful to escape their cleaning product closet of doom (he turned our pantry into his cleaning product storage area-no potato chips, only rows and rows of everything from Lysol to Tide to shit I'd never seen before or since), or waist high pile of dirty clothes (that I was worried would one day fall on my cat and kill her), or stupid questions (how do you get the shell off the egg now that I've boiled it?) to the relative peace and calm of my room.  As a married woman, I can tell you that escaping to the office for peace and quiet only allows you to confront your husbands massive mountains of opened mail mixed with computer drives with a few unlabelled cd's thrown in for good measure.  There is no escape from one another.

Living with someone forces you to confront, in glaring technicolor, just what kind of a slob your snugglebunny truly is.  Does he even own a mop?  Has he ever used the broom his mom bought for him?  How long does it take until he actually puts his dirty dishes away?  Can you hold out against the socks on the floor next to the hamper?  Do her tampons sitting right there in plain sight freak you out?  Does the assortment of unidentifiable paraphenalia she uses to apply her makeup make you want to grow a beard and pound your chest to re-establish your manhood?  For that matter, does the way that they want sex at 2 am (usually so cute on the weekend) piss you off on Wednesdays?

Marriage is an institute of the state.  If you want to understand exactly how it evolved as such in this country, the best resource I can provide you with is Public Vows by Nancy Cott, a surprisingly readable history of American marriage.  If you don't feel that the state needs to sanction your relationship and you're not particularly interested in religion, what reason do you have to get married?  Or, if you're Helen Vetter, you're in your 80's and need your deceased husband's pension?  Perhaps you've taken your own moral stance, like the  Rev. Robert Hirschfeld, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, Massachusetts, who decided to perform no straight marriages until your church accepts gay marriages.

Roadtesting your spouse is hardly the first sign of the apocalypse.  I'm glad to see that North Dakota has finally figured that out.  However, I have bad news for those of you in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia--it's still illegal there.

Comments

[Gorgeousmoments]

What can I say? I'm stunned.

[Mandy Muse]

Ahhh...the party of "small government" strikes again. Nothing says small government like the regulation of personal behavior between consenting adults! You can tell our country has handled all the truly big problems already, we have so much time available to police morality!