Exodus board member Phil Burress is the president of Ohio’s misnamed Citizens for Community Values, which identifies itself as “Officially Associated with Focus on the Family and Family Research Council as a Family Policy Council in Ohio.”
According to the Dayton Daily News (Oct. 15), Burress’ organization is seeking to overturn Ohio’s 27-year-old law against domestic violence, claiming that it conflicts with the state’s new gay-marriage ban.
The Ohio Supreme Court will hear State v. Carswell in December. If the court strikes down part of the domestic-violence law, it could wipe out longstanding legal protections for unmarried Ohioans in abusive relationships.
According to the Dayton Daily News,
In the past two years, more than 60 men accused of domestic violence against their girlfriends have argued that Ohio’s domestic-violence law conflicts with the ban:
• The constitutional amendment bars state or local governments from granting a legal status to relationships that approximate marriage.
• The domestic-violence law protects people “living as a spouse.”
CCV filed an amicus brief against part of the domestic-violence law. According to the Dayton Daily News,
CCV argued that while the group deplores domestic violence, the marriage amendment should be broadly applied and part of the law ruled unconstitutional.
“CCV believes a case such as this could lead to an inadvertent narrowing of the scope of the amendment by the court, as the motivation is great to preserve an understandably popular statute in its present form,” CCV attorney David Langdon wrote. … [snip]
CCV, Carswell’s attorney and the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers argue that the part of the domestic violence law that includes people “living as a spouse” conflicts with the constitution because it grants a legal status to relationships that approximate marriage.
In other words, CCV’s opposition to any social recognition of unmarried couples trumps society’s need to reduce violent crime, and the needs of abused partners.
Previous XGW coverage of Exodus board member Phil Burress and CCV.
This is getting nutz…. if the government cannot set up a law to protect people who live together in a relationships. Governments are supposed to be reationary towards societal trends. Protection from a someone in a spouse-like relationship does not create the legal narrowing of the amendment. If it does, then the amendment is complete travesty – and I am sure it is.
These people are dangerous, they don’t care who they hurt or how much as long as they can push their abstract concept of marriage on as many people as possible. The only thing that’s missing is for them to call this action Christian ‘love’.
You guys just don’t understand. To some of them, beating your wife is a traditional family value ™.
Just ask Westboro Baptist.
I think they would say (privately of course) that if you want protection from abuse, you shouldn’t be shacking up. If you want the advantages of marriage, you should get married. If you don’t follow the rules, well then you can’t complain about a black eye or a broken rib.
And this argument could possibly have some merit (though it’s hard to see how not getting beat up is a marital right) if they weren’t simultaneously restricting who can get married. I could actually support the idea that some rights and priveleges are and should be restricted only for married persons – if all persons were allowed to marry (and let’s not do the bs about “anyone can marry if they marry who I say they can”).
Taken as a whole, their argument comes down to: gay people should never have the protections offered to straight people.
That’s a pretty callous position, claiming that gay people should never be able to qualify for protections.
While it does too often seem that being free to beat one’s female spouse is a traditional family falue in way too many places, the point in Ohio would seem to be to scare shiftless heterosexuals into marriage (conducted by the sacred offices of one’s local county or municipality if they can’t be bothered to find some church, synagog, mosque, or temple) while giving everyone whose sexuality the terminally nice folks at CCV find problematical an extended opportunity to beat each other up at home.
While it does too often seem that being free to beat one’s female spouse is a traditional family value in way too many places, the point in Ohio would seem to be to scare shiftless heterosexuals into marriage (conducted by the sacred offices of one’s local county or municipality if they can’t be bothered to find some church, synagog, mosque, or temple) while giving everyone whose sexuality the terminally nice folks at CCV find problematical an extended opportunity to beat each other up at home.
Or, you could do the simple thing and change the wording in the law from “persons living as a spouse” to any number of things — “persons living in the same residence”, for example. Heck, you could even change the law so that assault allows one to get a protective order against another individual.
Given that the amendment has been in place for almost two YEARS and that lawsuits concerning it have been going on for nearly as long, it is incomprehensible to me that the Ohio Legislature hasn’t amended or changed the domestic-violence statute to make it appropriate.
It makes me wonder if the people whining about this are genuinely interested in protecting the victims of domestic abuse — or if they’re just looking for a reason to complain.
Face facts, people. The amendment won, we lost — by an overwhelming margin. As it stands, the law is unconstitutional and will likely be vacated, leaving people unprotected.
Why is the gay and liberal response to whine about the amendment, rather than changing the law so that it won’t be a problem? Is the thought that we can exploit this conflict to try to get the amendment removed, even though it means playing roulette with the lives of domestic-violence victims?
NDT,
If you are familiar with the history of domestic violence legislation, then you are aware that such legislation parallels laws against assault among unrelated persons.
Domestic-violence laws came into effect because previously, family members (especially abusive husbands) were assumed to be exempt from existing antiviolence laws. Religious conservatives, in particular, argued that it was a husband’s prerogative to beat his wife if he wished.
Your suggested change to the legislation would remove the explicit family tie. That, in turn, raises the question of why have domestic violence laws for unrelated persons at all? Is that your real point?
Secondly, do you really think religious social conservatives would tolerate for very long a law that recognizes unrelated persons sharing living quarters, even if it did not refer to them as spouse-like? Speaking as a former religious conservative, I believe you are being incredibly naive.
Third, do you really believe that those who are trying to overturn the entire Ohio law are willing to tolerate a revised domestic violence law that only protects married partners?
Finally, domestic-violence laws are not a “gay” or “liberal” cause, they are a law-and-order concern. They punish violence.
If your actual objection to domestic violence laws is a conservative libertarian one — that we simply have too many overlapping and overly specific crime laws — then please be honest about that.
NDT,
In your ongoing quest to find fault in all those around you, you overlook what the rest of us see as obvious: we aren’t legislators in Ohio.
We can’t “change the law”. What we can do is raise the issue, draw attention to the problem, and encourage those who have voting power to do so.
What we also can do is point to this situation when other state such as Virginia claim that their hugely expansive ban on anything remotely resembling a relationship won’t have any unexpected impact.
We can also point out that the attitudes and actions of people like Phil Buress are so biased by their anti-gay zeal that they are willing to have people beaten or otherwise harmed. This sort of rabid anti-gay sentiment needs to be exposed.
Which is what we are doing.
WHat are you doing?
Sorry about the double post
Your suggested change to the legislation would remove the explicit family tie. That, in turn, raises the question of why have domestic violence laws for unrelated persons at all?
The legislation as it exists NOW removes the explicit family tie, since it does not require that the person actually BE a spouse — only that they be “persons living as a spouse”.
Furthermore, my modification expands the law so that it could cover situations between roommates, elder abuse by caretakers, and other similar situation in which shared living quarters or spaces preclude a person from leaving or escaping the situation easily — which is the basis for domestic violence laws in the first place.
Secondly, do you really think religious social conservatives would tolerate for very long a law that recognizes unrelated persons sharing living quarters, even if it did not refer to them as spouse-like? Speaking as a former religious conservative, I believe you are being incredibly naive.
My concern is not with whether or not they will tolerate it, but how I can best provide legal and enforceable protections to victims of domestic violence without running afoul of the passed amendment.
If my change were made, their argument would have to go from “this law violates the amendment” to “this law is against our religious beliefs”. They’re free to make that argument; however, unlike the first, a judge is not compelled to agree with them.
In short, why should I care whether or not an unpopular minority would tolerate a law when it is endorsed by the majority of the population and within the bounds of the state Constitution?
Third, do you really believe that those who are trying to overturn the entire Ohio law are willing to tolerate a revised domestic violence law that only protects married partners?
Yes — because I don’t believe for a minute that their motivation in this is to allow them to beat their spouses.
This is also why I tend to doubt whenever Ex-Gay Watch claims to be against hate and prejudice; it hardly seems to stop one of their authors from claiming that all religious conservatives want to beat their spouses.
Finally, domestic-violence laws are not a “gay” or “liberal” cause, they are a law-and-order concern. They punish violence.
You’re right, they’re not. But you are refusing to make an obvious and simple change in the law that WOULD help it to continue to punish violence and not be abused because, as a gay liberal, you don’t like the situation requiring the law to be changed in the first place.
Again, WHY, if you are so concerned about punishing violence, are you so against making this simple change to the law that would bring it within constitutional reach, expand its protections to MORE people, and leave the religious right grasping for a legal argument?
WHat are you doing?
I am advocating a solution for the problem.
The reason is, Tim, because doing that makes it likely that it will be implemented — and if it is implemented, there will no longer be a problem.
But I’m really not sure that’s what you and Phil Burress want.
What I think you both want is to use this as a political and ideological football with which you can score points against the “other side”; as a result, you have no interest in anything other than perpetuating the injury, and certainly not in solving the actual problem.
As supreme legislative authority for the state of Ohio, it is shameful for exgaywatch to refuse to change the laws of Ohio.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled reality.
Why is the gay and liberal response to whine about the amendment, rather than changing the law so that it won’t be a problem?
That would be because the Ohio legislature and governor’s mansion is firmly in the hands of the GOP, not “gays and liberals.” And while this may change somewhat in November, they will probably still not be in the hands of “gays and liberals”.
NDT spake thusly:
“…I tend to doubt whenever Ex-Gay Watch claims to be against hate and prejudice; it hardly seems to stop one of their authors from claiming that all religious conservatives want to beat their spouses. ”
Classic troll-speak.
I vote in favor of the ban. Don’t really have a vote, but whatever.
NDT,
You haven’t bothered to acknowledge my warning to you or Mike’s subsequent reminder of that warning, nor have you changed your behavior in the posts you have made since. It is obvious that you are not interested in following the rules which guide the vast majority of those who post comments at XGW. Perhaps you are simply accustomed to having the final say on such matters at your own blog, or maybe pointless disruption is more important to you than civil debate. In any case, I’m sure you can find plenty of web sites which tolerate and even encourage such argumentative behavior. Since we do not, kindly do not post here any more.
Note: a copy of this has been sent to your email address used at login. This ban was imposed before Sharon B’s post above.
David Roberts
I am not against Ohioans changing the domestic violence law if they decide it can be amended without harm to people sharing living quarters and without further attempts at erosion by religious conservatives.
As for this comment by NDT:
Yes — because I don’t believe for a minute that their motivation in this is to allow them to beat their spouses.This is also why I tend to doubt whenever Ex-Gay Watch claims to be against hate and prejudice; it hardly seems to stop one of their authors from claiming that all religious conservatives want to beat their spouses.
None of our authors claims that “all” or even “most” religious conservatives want to beat their wives. NDT’s suggestion that we do is a strawman argument — yet another violation of our guidelines.
But a few religious conservatives do explicitly demand such prerogatives. And the fact that religious ultraconservatives are seeking to throw out the domestic-violence law through the courts, rather than amend the law through legislation, indicates at minimum a sentiment among these ultracons that state government should not have any role whatsoever in the life, safety or welfare of people if they happen to be married.
As a longtime anti-rape advocate, I am appalled that most of the challenges to the law seem to have come from violent domestic abusers seeking to wipe out their liability. CCV is signing onto the cause of the abusers, and NDT shows no interest in stopping that perversion of justice and Christian morality.
I’m just pointing out that I linked earlier to Wikipedia, which extensively documents some religious conservatives’ arguments in favor of husbands’ rights and against domestic-violence laws.