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Chuck Asay by Chuck Asay
Donna Barstow by Donna BarstowAbout Tony Auth
Jules Feiffer has described Tony Auth best, "His perspective is that of a bemused and often angry comic historian. Irony, never a favorite form with Americans, is his meat and potatoes. He is not smug, and though he can be mean, he is never mean-spirited. Auth is a moralist and an optimist. He insists, even in this day and age, that hope is more than the name of a right-wing comedian or the shtick of a reactionary president."
© 2009 Universal Press Syndicate - All Rights Reserved.
Comments (31) Jump to Comments Form
comYics said, 1 day ago
Im thinking, how can a present day “judge” throw a stone unless he’s not guilty. Oh wait, he cant.
scottfreitas
said,
1 day ago
I will never be stupid enough to try and pretend the institution of marriage has any logical connection with same-sex couples. Only unthinking morons who have never even studied the PURPOSE of marriage, or its role in human society for all the eons Man has existed, could start to pewl and whine support for “gay marriage”.
Humanity needs to defend itself from these insane non-thinkers who embrace such destructive madness before it is too late for all of us. No human society can possibly endure for long with such illogic at its forefront.
comYics said, 1 day ago
I think actual Christians should have special rights also, shouldnt have to be around wickedness since actual Christians choose goodness.
toasteroven said, 1 day ago
Anyone here ever see the movie A Midwife’s Tale? Man, is that an excellent movie. Depressing as all get out*, but also fascinating as hell.
I bring this up, because it has a very edifying section on the institution of marriage, as it was practiced in the late 18th century. Check it out. You may find yourself surprised.
*You know what people did 200 years ago? They died of tuberculosis. That’s what they did.
HUMPHRIES
said,
1 day ago
Seems to be some cramped thinkers visiting here to day.
sjc14850 said, 1 day ago
Did the bigot asylum let its inmates out early for the weekend?
motivemagus said, 1 day ago
Why is gay marriage – or indeed, any kind of marriage – the government’s business at all? Let alone some of the posters here? If the government can forbid one kind of marriage, it can forbid others – as indeed it did forbid “miscegenation” in times past, or the Nazis forbade Jews to marry non-Jews, etc., etc., etc.
Marriage is a religious matter. Legal rights to designate a partner in your will, etc., is as far as it needs to go. Civil unions need to be established, and then the rest is up to the couples.
Jase99 said, 1 day ago
The problem with today’s comic is that some of the people in the groups who have allegedly obtained full equality are also against equality for gays.
While Coretta Scott King has campaigned for full equality for gays, her own daughter Bernice campaigns against it. Some blacks may not be specifically anti-gay, but still resent the idea of tying gay rights to larger civil rights movement.
comYics, see some of my previous posts on the subject. If you’re going to use the Bible to justify denouncing the gays, you must follow /all/ the Bibles demands and prohibitions. No exceptions! If the gays are going to Hell based on Biblical pronouncments, we ALL are.
Kevin said, 1 day ago
The Federal and Most State Governments offer special treatment for Married couples: Taxes, Health Care (because they give companies special tax breaks for providing health care to families), recongition of family status when it comes to decisions about a loved one, etc. Those are the rights and benefits they seek and I think they should have them. I think a lot of the people bashing gays and gay marriage now would have been bashing integration of blacks into the military or allowing women to vote in previous times. I believe, eventually, we will reach the point of equality for all but this country isn’t quite there yet.
rikoshayrabbit said, 1 day ago
What motivemagus said above is the absolute truth. People married since they were invented, but the “government sanctioned” marriage, which is a binding contract between you, your loved one, and the government, is something that has only existed perhaps a hundred years. DO NOT GET MARRIED!! To anyone!! Here is a big warning from Virgil Cooper on the subject. I apologize for posting the entire article, but there isn’t a live link to this anywhere anymore……
Marriage Licenses: The Real Truth
by Virgil Cooper ultrac21@whitemtns.com
Enlightening Conversation with a Marriage License Bureau… .
About 15 years ago, my former wife of 26½ years, filed for divorce. We had seven (7) children: five (5) daughters and two (2) sons. Our youngest at the time, our second son, was five years old. At the time, I prepared a counterclaim to the Petition for Dissolution her attorney filed in Domestic Relations (DR) court.
I met one afternoon with the head of the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage License Bureau, in downtown Phoenix. The marriage license bureau was headed by a young woman of about age 25. I asked her to explain to me the general and statutory implications of the marriage license. She was very cooperative, and called in an Assistant, a tall Black man who at the time was working on an Operations Manual for internal departmental use.
She deferred for most technical explanations to her Assistant. He walked through the technicalities of the marriage license as it operates in Arizona. He mentioned that marriage licensing is pretty much the same in the other states – but there are differences. One significant difference he mentioned was that Arizona is one of eight western states that are Community Property states. The other states are Common Law states, including Utah, with the exception of Louisiana which is a Napoleonic Code state.
He then explained some of the technicalities of the marriage license. He said, first of all, the marriage license is Secular Contract between the parties and the State. The State is the principal party in that Secular Contract. The husband and wife are secondary or inferior parties. The Secular Contract is a three-way contract between the State, as Principal, and the husband and wife as the other two legs of the Contract.
He said, in the traditional sense a marriage is a covenant between the husband and wife and God. But in the Secular Contract with the state, reference to God is a dotted line, and NOT officially considered included in the Secular Contract at all.
He said, if the husband and wife wish to include God as a party in their marriage, that is a “dotted line” they will have to add in their own minds. The state’s marriage license is “strictly secular,” he said. He said further, that what he meant by the relationship to God being a “dotted line” meant that the State regards any mention of God as irrelevant, even meaningless.
In his description of the marriage license contract, the related one other “dotted line.” He said in the traditional religious context, marriage was a covenant between the husband and wife and God with husband and wife joined as one. This is not the case in the secular realm of the state’s marriage license contract. The State is the Principal or dominant party. The husband and wife are merely contractually “joined” as business partners, not in any religious union. They may even be considered, he said, connected to each other by another “dotted line.”
The picture he was trying to “paint” was that of a triangle with the State at the top and a solid line extending from the apex, the State, down the left side to the husband, and a separate solid line extending down the right side to the wife, a “dotted line” merely showing that they consider themselves to have entered into a religious union of some sort that is irrelevant to the State.
Marriage License
Secular Contract Diagram
STATE
(primary party)
HUSBAND WIFE .
(secondary party) (secondary party) .
GOD
He further mentioned that this “religious overtone” is recognized by the State by requiring that the marriage must be solemnized either by a state official or by a minister of religion that has been “deputized” by the State to perform the marriage ceremony and make a return of the signed and executed marriage license to the State.
Again, he emphasized that marriage is a strictly secular relationship so far as the State is concerned and because it is looked upon as a “privileged business enterprise” various tax advantages and other political privileges have become attached to the marriage license contract that have nothing at all to do with marriage as a religious covenant or bond between God and a man and a woman.
By way of reference, if you would like to read a legal treatise on marriage, one of the best is “Principles of Community Property,” by William Defuniak. At the outset, he explains that Community Property law descends from Roman Civil Law through the Spanish Codes, 600 A.D., written by the Spanish juris consults.
In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a for-profit venture or profit-making venture (even though it may never actually produce a profit in operation) and as the wife goes out to the local market to purchase food stuffs and other supplies for the marriage household, she is replenishing the stocks of the business. To restate: In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture. Moreover, as children come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have “borne fruit.”
Now, back to the explanation by the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage Bureau’s administrative Assistant. He went on to explain that every contract must have consideration. The State offers consideration in the form of the actual license itself - the piece of paper, the Certificate of Marriage. The other part of consideration by the State is “the privilege to be regulated by statute.” He added that this privilege to be regulated by statute includes all related statutes, and all court cases as they are ruled on by the courts, and all statutes and regulations into the future in the years following the commencement of the
marriage. He said in a way the marriage license contract is a dynamic or flexible, ever-changing contract as time goes along - even though the husband and wife didn’t realize that.
My thought on this is can it really be considered a true contract as one becomes aware of the failure by the State to make full disclosure of the terms and conditions. A contract must be entered into knowingly, intelligently, intentionally, and with fully informed consent. Otherwise, technically there is no contract.
Another way to look as the marriage license contract with the State is as a contract of adhesion, a contract between two disparate, unequal parties. Again, a flawed “contract.” Such a contract with the State is said to be a “specific performance” contract as to the privileges, duties and responsibilities that attach.
Consideration on the part of the husband and wife is the actual fee paid and the implied agreement to be subject to the state’s statutes, rules, and regulations and all court cases ruled on related to marriage law, family law, children, and property. He emphasized that this contractual consideration by the bride and groom places them in a definite and defined-by-law position inferior and subject to the State. He commented that very few people realize this.
He also said that it is very important to understand that children born to the marriage are considered by law as “the contract bearing fruit” - meaning the children primarily belong to the State, even though the law never comes out and says so in so many words.
In this regard, children born to the contract regarded as “the contract bearing fruit,” he said it is vitally important for parents to understand two doctrines that became established in the United States during the 1930s. The first is the Doctrine of Parens Patriae. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis.
Parens Patriae means literally “the parent of the country” or to state it more bluntly - the State is the undisclosed true parent. Along this line, a 1930s Arizona Supreme Court case states that parents have no property right in their children, and have custody of their children during good behavior at the sufferance of the State. This means that parents may raise their children and maintain custody of their children as long as they don’t offend the State, but if they in some manner displease the State, the State can step in at any time and exercise its superior status and take custody and control of its children - the parents are only conditional caretakers. [Thus the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis.]
He also added a few more technical details. The marriage license is an ongoing contractual relationship with the State. Technically, the marriage license is a business license allowing the husband and wife, in the name of the marriage, to enter into contracts with third parties and contract mortgages and debts. They can get car loans, home mortgages, and installment debts in the name of the marriage because it is not only a secular enterprise, but it is looked upon by the State as a privileged business enterprise as well as a for-profit business enterprise. The marriage contract acquires property through out its existence and over time, it is hoped, increases in value.
Also, the marriage contract “bears fruit” by adding children. If sometime later, the marriage fails, and a “divorce” results the contract continues in existence. The “divorce” is merely a contractual dissolution or amendment of the terms and
conditions of the contract. Jurisdiction of the State over the marriage, over the husband and wife, now separated, continues and continues over all aspects of the marriage, over marital property and over children brought into the marriage.
That is why family law and the Domestic Relations court calls “divorce” a dissolution of the marriage because the contract continues in operation but in amended or modified form. He also pointed out that the marriage license contract is one of the strongest, most binding contractual relationships the State has on people.
At the end of our hour-long meeting, I somewhat humorously asked if other people had come in and asked the questions I was asking? The Assistant replied that in the several years he had worked there, he was not aware of anyone else asking these questions. He added that he was very glad to see someone interested in the legal implications of the marriage license and the contractual relationship it creates with the State.
His boss, the young woman Marriage Bureau department head stated, “You have to understand that people who come in here to get a marriage license are in heat. The last thing they want to know is technical, legal and statutory implications of the marriage license.”
I hope this is helpful information to anyone interested in getting more familiar with the contractual implications of the marriage license. The marriage license as we know it didn’t come into existence until after the Civil War and didn’t become standard practice in all the states until after 1900, becoming firmly established by 1920. In effect, the states or governments appropriated or usurped control of marriages in secular form and in the process declared Common Law applicable to marriages “abrogated.”
Please pass this information along and share it as widely as possible.
Original message from Virgil Cooper: ultrac21@whitemtns.com
Magnaut
said,
about 23 hours ago
gays don’t want equality…they want the rules suspended for them…I can’t marry a man either
olfart said, about 23 hours ago
Yeah, that’s what I need. Another group of parasites that I and other unmarried workers have to support. Motivemagus said it clearly. Marriage is an institution of religion. Does anyone here remember what the constitution says about that? The government has no right to use my tax money to support a religous institution.
annamargaret1866 said, about 21 hours ago
toasteroven, would that movie be based perchance on “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? It’s much easier for me to get ahold of books.
motivemagus, I agree, but what the heck do people who opt for only a civil union call themselves? Unionized? I never thought much about that, but whatever it is, I am.
cjr53 said, about 20 hours ago
How did Civil Rights become just for Blacks, or those of African descent?
Marriage should be defined as something two, unmarried, consenting adults may enter into either through Civil Ceremony or as blessed by their church of choice.
Denying marriage to same sex couples is a violation of their civil rights, tears their family apart and is just plain none of their neighbor’s business.
I’d also like to know when I can vote on your marriage.
Jim said, about 20 hours ago
Last I heard , around 50 % of marriages end in divorce . Why shouldn’t they be equally miserable ?
PUPPYSAURUS
said,
about 20 hours ago
I don’t know if this concerns the toon much. But I posted the following post and I think as many people as I have judged harshly needs to hear it:
The Lord has dealt harshly with me for my judgemental attitude in fact I am guilty of lurid fornications just like sodomy. Please forgive me, whomever I have maligned. I feel he is telling me that I am heaping condemnation where he has forgiven me of the same thing. God bless you all and keep seeking Jesus.
fritzoid said, about 20 hours ago
To the extent that marriage is a religious institution, any particular religion has the right not to recognize same-sex marriages, the same way that the Catholic Church does not recognize second marriages of divorced individuals. Neither American civil law nor our mainstream American religious traditions recognize polygamous marriages, but there are plenty of other civil and religious systems which do. A religious marriage ceremony is not recognized by civil authority unless the individual performing the ceremony is properly invested with that authority. A non-religious marriage ceremony conducted in accordance with civil law gives the civil rights (re taxes, inheritance, etc.) to the couple getting married. There are members of various mainstream clergy in America who can and have performed same-sex religious marriages with or without the sanction of their hierarchies.
The particular civil institutional aspects of marriage may only be a couple hundred years old in our culture, but the particular religious aspects of marriage aren’t much older, considering how long human societies have existed.
The tradionalists’ favorite guy Paul thought that marriage was little more than a necessary evil for those without the fortitude to be celibate anyway.
And Magnaut, it’s true that under the current laws you as a straight man (I assume you’re a man, because if you were a woman than you COULD marry a man) also cannot marry a man, but if same-sex marriage were recognized you would also gain the right to do so (if you choose). Likewise, gay men also have the right which you enjoy to marry women (if they choose). The inequality of the rights is that heterosexuals are allowed to marry the person with whom they are in love, and homosexuals are not.
senorbullwinkle
said,
about 20 hours ago
RIKOSHAY IS RIGHT ! It’s a legal matter, of legal rights. Property, Legal responsibility’s (bills,insurance,taxes,loans, inheritance,etc.).
It has NOTHING to do with GOD, Love, or Sex. It’s a Legal Contract between two people.
ahab
said,
about 17 hours ago
Great discourse Motive! I enjoy the “mental beef jerky” aspect of this subject. Being a liberal leaning person in Utah is like being the fly in their soup! It is fun to discuss plural marriage when they get their undies in a bunch over gay marriage. Bravo so far Rickoshay for open minder thinkers.
fritzoid said, about 17 hours ago
^^PUP, I hope you find the peace you’re looking for. No hard feelings from me.
churchillwasright said, about 16 hours ago
RIKOSHAY: Thanks for posting that again. It needs to be repeated every now and then so that people will get it into their heads. (Not that everyone will read it and/or understand it. Just look at SENIORBS’s post that blindly asserts a marriage license is a legal contract between two people, and completely leaves out the state.)
That is why it is my contention that the Gay Lobby has done themselves no favors by continually trying to redefine the definition of marriage. They would have been much wiser to argue for the legalization of civil unions on the constitutional grounds of legal protection under the law, and that a civil union was a contract between two people, regardless of sex, and the state. Continuing to throw the term “marriage” into the mix is a losing strategy.
ADDENDUM: I just watched a report that some gay groups are blaming Obama for the loss because he never spoke out in favor of it before the Maine election. Unless I’m wrong, I’ve never heard Obama say he was for gay marriage, and specifically said he was against it during the debates. Do they have the same comprehension level of SENIORBS?
IrishEddieOHara said, about 16 hours ago
Once again MotiveMagnus shows himself to be a typical American Catholic who doesn’t understand AT ALL what human governments are about. Read Romans 13: 1-5 Magnus. It says that government exists for the establishment of God’s rule over mankind. Who ever resists the ordinance of God resists God Himself. It also says that government exists to punish evildoers.
This has been the victory of the sodomites in the world – to redefine sodomy as acceptable and “normal” rather than evil, vile, and wicked.
Magnus, why don’t you just go join the Episcopalians? I’m sure they’d love to have you.
kat827618
said,
about 15 hours ago
Marriage is a right of all citizens, and all citizens means gay citizens too. Your marriage may be an institution; however, that does not mean that mine or anyone else’s marriage IS:
No one has the right to define marriage for anyone else.
Furthermore, to define marriage for the purpose of creating a classification of people for discrimination –is repugnant to the Constitution and to Democracy. In a word, discrimination against gay people is UNAMERICAN.
Anthony 2816
said,
about 14 hours ago
It would be so simple if instead of granting marriage to gays, the government instead stopped giving them to straights.
Just give civil unions to every couple who wants one, and if they want to get married as well, let them go to the nearest church.
And the benefits would go to those who have the civil unions, married or not.
DrCanuck said, about 14 hours ago
Hey, Puppy; forgiven right gladly.
(You’ve always been my favourite nutcase anyway.)
fennec said, about 13 hours ago
I think Anthony may have gotten the best answer…no marriage for anybody in the state. You want marriage, go later to the church of your choice. This is the way it is done in Switzerland, and, for all I know, many other European countries.
toasteroven said, about 12 hours ago
annamargaret: Yes, it is. I mentioned the movie because I’ve watched it; haven’t yet had the chance to read the book.
comYics said, about 10 hours ago
If the wicked ones werent so wicked, the government wouldnt have to be watching over and telling each of you how to run your lives like little immature nimtwits, duh.
comYics said, about 10 hours ago
None should get “special rights” or “Government benefits” for getting married.
HUMPHRIES
said,
about 5 hours ago
fennec, you’ve got a good thought, as well as Anthony. Trouble is too many have the idea “that the church of your choice should be the the church of my choice”
PS Did you catch the Non Sequitur on 29 Oct ?
senorbullwinkle
said,
about 3 hours ago
CHURCH, It must be tough eating cereal for dinner, But please lay off the Carnation instant B!tch.
I meant what I said, A contract is used in a Court, all be it, a state Court, still a Court, and should not be used in a State licensing bureau.
A contract should be filed in a Court as a record. Leave the State Bureau out of it.
As Rikoshay said, “DO NOT GET MARRIED” !
Now, do you want to point out where I got that wrong ?