Absolute, utter bullshit.

[apocalypsos]

The state of Michigan is giving a father a choice: pay the medical cost of his daughter's birth or marry the girl's mother.

This couple is already planning on getting married eventually but can't afford to now. Understandably, the woman wants to plan and choose her own wedding day, and who can blame her? However:

The Michigan Legislature amended the state's paternity act five years ago to waive birthing costs for a father, if he married the child's mother. A year later, Witt gave birth to JaeLyn. The state paid for the hospital costs because Witt was on Medicaid at the time and is now trying to recover the money.

Jack Battles, the Genesee County Friend of the Court, said the law is an incentive to maintain the sanctity of marriage.

FUCK THIS NOISE.

When you're forcing someone to get married, regardless of if they're planning to get married in the future, you don't give a shit about the sanctity of marriage. If you hold a gun to someone's head and say, "You can either pay this large medical bill on an $8-an-hour job or get hitched," you don't give a flying fuck about the sanctity of marriage. If you thought marriage was such a sacred fucking institution, you wouldn't treat the people who want to plan their own damn wedding and marriage in the future with such disrespect.

Comments

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

That is messed up.

[lovedbythesun.livejournal.com]

What the fucking fuck? Hello, seriously screwed up laws. That totally preserves the sanctity of marriage, if by sanctity you mean "will be divorcing two years later."

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I call that slavery, actually. Marriage is a fundamental right, the right to choose where and when you'll enter into a binding (and sacred) contract is part and parcel of being a free individual.

Government compelling or coercing someone into marriage? That's slavery.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

It's that slippery slope, you see, one day they're forbidding same-sex couples to marry, the next they're compelling opposite-sex couples to... {sigh}

[crevette.livejournal.com]

Because it's not about Marriage, it's about controlling those dirty, dirty women who want to have the SEXXORS.

[torificus.livejournal.com]

What the actual fuck.

[bluesteelstars.livejournal.com]

?!?!?!?!

Geez!

[fyrdrakken]

Meanwhile, my sister and her fiance can't afford to get married because of the way Medicaid works in the state of Texas: A single mother qualifies, a married woman won't, despite having the same income either way (since she's unemployed and being supported by her guy and his mother). I can't say I'm really in favor of that (except for the part that impacts on me personally, in that so long as her wedding is postponed indefinitely I don't have any bridesmaid or wedding shower shit to worry about), but holding marriage over men as an option to escape punishment doesn't please me either.

Remember a few years back, this case that made the news in like Nebraska where a twenty-something guy had gotten his thirteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant and married her, and was being prosecuted for statutory rape? And the thing that was causing the public outcry was that it was actually being prosecuted, because so many people figured that it was okay because he'd married the girl.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's not about 'sanctity'. It never is. It's about power and control.

[tviokh.livejournal.com]

Because forced marriages always work out so well.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I know, right? I know they're trying to get their money back but talk about going about it the dipshit way.

[malhablada.livejournal.com]

F-Town WUT!

I just wanted to say that I'm from Flint. Apart from appalling marriage practices, all we're known for is Coney Dogs, crime, and being the city that Michael Moore pretends to be from.

Couldn't get the fuck out of there fast enough, thanks very much.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, that's gonna be a happy marriage.

[lila-blue-b.livejournal.com]

FUCK THIS NOISE.

I second this reaction! Fuck this noise! What bullshit fuckery is this! *grrrrs at Michigan*

[runawaykael.livejournal.com]

Sorry, here by way of many flist jumps, but I just had to say - am I the only one who can now see guys going "well, you either marry me or you pay it, you're the one who had the damn baby, if I have to pay that, you'll never see me again, I'll never see my baby again, I'll be GONE!"

I mean, there's already a certain type who pull that over "if you make me pay child support." (Because obviously it's the mother's fault the baby he made needs to eat.) How much worse would THIS be? And a with a marriage-only-on-paper to escape payment, and the guy wherever, what WILL that mean for child support?

Sanctity of marriage. Sanctified by, you know, NOT crazy manipulative government-inspired coercion. I'm all for that. This? Not helping.

[fyrdrakken]

I don't know how the state of Michigan handles child support and the enforcement of payment thereof, but I think the possibility exists that a marriage-only-on-paper would actually enhance the mother's ability to collect from the guy, in that it might be seen as a legal acknowledgement of paternal responsibility or some such. (Especially for a woman who doesn't have the money or understanding of the legal system to go filing a paternity suit or whatever.) Which would make a paper-only marriage almost a best-case scenario, as compared to a forced marriage in which the two were stuck actually cohabitating.

[runawaykael.livejournal.com]

I'm actually pretty sure that even in Michigan noone is talking about actual force of any kind, either to marry or to cohabitate. *blink* Coercion into the only-on-paper marriage is the only thing this is about legally, although I'm sure it gets more complicated than that in practice.
And I'm pretty sure genetic testing is made extremely available to low income women of any education level if government assistance is filed for their children.

My problem with this, beyond the obvious, is that it creates one more thing a man can blame a woman for, can use to create guilt and harm. Making a man pay for his own Batterer's Intervention or Anger Management classes was a great idea. Except that it was overwhelmingly used by the men as a source of blackmail and resentment toward codependent women, who overwhelmingly ended up paying themselves for the classes their men got sent to for assaulting THEM.

There's a certain kind of man, a certain kind of person, who doesn't need a reason, just an excuse. They'll use anything they can get to avoid responsibility, financial or otherwise. I think this gives men like that one more tool to do it with, rather than solving anything whatsoever. And it puts decent low-income guys in an untenable position.

[fyrdrakken]

(First off, this and the above comment are just me playing devil's advocate. I definitely don't believe that marriage as a cultural institution is to women's overall benefit -- however well certain individual marriages may have worked out for particular women -- not least because by setting up the idea that decent women get married, it tacitly creates a subclass of "indecent" women who by not deserving marriage don't deserve to be treated as worthwhile human beings. And attempting to protect the rights of mothers by pressuring them and their reproductive partners into marriage only plays into that myth.)

Yeah, not actual shotgun marriages sponsored by the state except in the limited theoretical context of men armtwisting women into marriage to save on the hospital bills -- and given that marriage does give women certain known rights in terms of alimony and child support when the guy walks away, far more likely that they'd just demand the money from the woman in question, as you say. (I'm fairly certain that child support arrangements and enforcement vary based on individual states -- I'm not even sure how it works in my own state, beyond thinking we may be one of the ones that'll yank it right out of the guy's paycheck before he even gets it if he refuses to pay voluntarily. I do know that the women most likely to need and qualify for free legal assistance are also most likely not to be aware of this, or have any idea where to go to contact a pro bono lawyer, unless there's a women's shelter or similar organization pointing them where they need to go.)

But, yes. There are enough men out there who've been allowed to get away with taking from women and never having to give back, and the loss of privilege being taken as active oppression, etc., and whatever systems are set up to help protect women from abuses tend to depend on the women in question actively cooperating with their own rescue. And unfortunately the men get away with it because there are so many women out there who've been trained to believe that "love" requires them to give all and demand nothing in return, and that if he just gives periodic lip service to loving them and being sorry for what he did then they're required to forgive him and give him ample opportunity to repeat the offenses. I like stalking laws and restraining orders and battered women's shelters and state enforcement of child support. I don't like that there are men who make all of those things necessary, and that there are women who've been so twisted around and manipulated that they won't make use of any of those things when they need them.

[tigress35.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I really hate Michigan, for oh so many reasons and that was just the icing on the cake right there. Sorry, Michiganites.