| Submit your comments on this article |
| Morals cops bust Mom and Pop for shacking up... |
| 2002-09-25 |
| Glenn Reynolds gleefully points to today's most inspiring item, at least so far... A Malaysian couple who have been married for 22 years plan to sue government officials who burst into their bedroom and arrested them under strict Islamic morality laws. Abdul Halim Zainal Abidin and his wife Nooriah were staying in a rented room when the incident happened two years ago. "Drop the doinker, buddy! Yer under arrest! Getcher burka on, y' brazen hussy!" They were unable to produce their marriage certificate immediately, so the officials detained them for seven hours under a law which forbids unchaperoned close contact between men and unmarried women. The couple, who have three children, are seeking compensation for wrongful arrest and humiliation. They were probably laughing or something. That sort of thing draws religious coppers, 'cause they can tell something sinful's going on... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 Sure, there's an easy explanation for Florida's law. Thanks to biology, the details of pregnancy, birth, and parenting are inherently unequal. The mother always knows that the kid is hers, but has to go through pregnancy. The father can always more easily just leave, but the mother is able to get an abortion, whereas the father has less say in that. Women's groups like NOW have fought to move the playing field to be more advantageous to women. Hence their push for fewer abortion restrictions, requiring men to pay child support, etc. Originally, the playing field was considerably tilted away from women. Now, however, there are men and men's groups who believe that it's now biased against men. They feel that women have complete control over whether a baby is aborted or given up for adoption, yet a man can still be forced to pay child support if the woman wants to have the kid. IOW, the mother completely gets to decide the fate of the child, and the father just has to pay for it. Right or no, this kind of feeling causes backlash. One step is laws allowing the father some say in what happens; for example, if the mother wants to give the child up for adoption but the father doesn't, the father may get custody. This law is a (fatally flawed) attempt to ensure that fathers know about their options-- to prevent fathers from only being informed about their child if the mothers want to tell them. Flawed, yes. Partially because the realities of biology make it very difficult to have complete equality between the sexes in pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Still, it appears in no way to be motivated by similar concerns to the Islamic morality laws, and it not a slippery slope towards them. It's more a case of property rights (over children) than morality. |
| Posted by: John Thacker 2002-09-25 15:09:02 |
| #2 Pathetic, but we're headed that way too. Or perhaps you have another explanation for Florida's Scarlet Letter Law? |
| Posted by: don 2002-09-25 14:36:08 |
| #1 yeah, right! How could a good muslim man settle for only one wife? A likely story.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2002-09-25 13:07:54 |