Just when you thought she couldn’t waste any more of the taxpayers’ money, she’s baaaaaaaack!
That’s right, folks: Marie Parente, perhaps the least-lamented of last year’s ousted legislators, wants a bigger pension. She thinks that, in light of the Billy Bulger pension case in which the SJC said Bulger was entitled to credit for his cash housing allowance, she ought to get credit for the value of her parking space.
Her parking space, for God’s sake.
Fortunately, the SJC’s opinion makes it pretty clear that Parente’s argument will fail (or, at least, it should). The SJC noted that Bulger’s “housing allowance was never intended to be used for housing,” but was instead “an important enhancement of his compensation package that would motivate his interest in the presidency for an additional five-year term.” It was, in other words, a way for the UMass board of trustees to pay Bulger a higher salary than they otherwise could — they “were fully aware that Bulger would continue to live in his South Boston home throughout his tenure as president of the university.” Query whether this was such a terrific practice on the part of the UMass trustees, but that’s water under the bridge.
Parente’s parking space, and the other freebies that legislators get (like per diems, which I assume she’s also trying to use to bump up her pension), do not meet that description. Seems to me that the SJC’s decision in the Bulger case is tied to its unusual facts — a cash “housing allowance” that was really salary by another name — and does not represent any kind of broad principle that state legislators get to bump up their pension based on every little perk that they vote themselves (remember, even Bulger wasn’t entirely successful — the SJC refused to give him credit for UMass’s payments into his annuity account).
Here’s Parente’s explanation of why she deserves more of your and my hard-earned money:
“Don’t I sound like I’m a piker when that Japanese pitcher gets $50 million and I get $55,000?” she said, referring to newly acquired Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.
“Piker,” Ms. Parente, doesn’t begin to describe it.
Not too much of a threadgrab, I hope:
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This exchange during Southbridge Subcommittee meeting to discuss Southbridge Town Manager employment contract (Southbridge Evening News, 1/25/07)
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“…In addition to a debate over the wage increase, the subcommittee [to consider the Southbridge Town Manager Clayton Carlisle’s salary] also discussed Carlisle’s request for the council’s support of a special act of legislation that would allow him to receive retirement credit for five years of work completed in Ohio.
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[Counselman] Chernisky said asking for this type of credit was ‘wrong.’ This type of request would not be feasible in the private sector, he said, if an amployee switched companies. ‘Only in government would you see something like this,’ he said. ‘It’s just how to beat the system 101. The fact that other people are doing it doesn’t make it right.”
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Carlisle responded, saying that retirement laws have been built to accommodate this request. This is an opportunity for me. It’s a simple one, and I’d like to take advantage of it,” he said.
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Eh? Legislation to further boost defined benefit payouts? Any info on the bill being advanced?
Boston area legislators get $10 per day for transportation.
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The T is $1.70 each way. A monthly link pass is $59. I say the lege should nix the $10 (or whatever it happens to be) per diem and instead provide those legislators with Link Passes.
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If more legislators rode the T, they might be more sympathetic to the cause of The T Rider’s Union
The SJC’s reasoning is silly. Bulger did have a house and housing costs, and he was paid cash supposedly to pay for his housing costs that he would have had to pay for out of pocket. Parente had a parking space allowance (cash?) that she would have had to pay for out of pocket (unless it was not an allowance, but a state owned space that she got use of, like her office and desk, in which case she’s crazy, and might as well be adding in the value of the toilet she used). Everything they are paid in cash should be added up and counted toward the pension.
There’s no parking “allowance.” It’s a space either in the garage across from the State House or on one of the sidestreets behind it.
…unless…Do any reps sell their space for cash? If she had any choice about whether to have a space or increase her pay, and other reps were able to increase their pay by giving up the space, then it was part of her pay. I doubt any reps have ever sold their right to use the toilet.
there’s no option to boost your cash compensation in exchange for giving up your right to park on Beacon Hill.
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Cash, paycheck, free parking, exclusive toilet…appears to be “regular compensation” under the WILLIAM M. BULGER vs. CONTRIBUTORY RETIREMENT APPEAL BOARD
447 Mass. 651; 856 N.E.2d 799.
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p.s. Notice in that photo, she looks like Ted Kennedy in drag.
As for the Bulger annuity payments, Chapter 32, Section stated that “regular compensation” didn’t not extend to payments made into an annuity fund unless it was authorized by chpater. 15, Section 18A or Chapter 71, Section 37B.
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Since those exceptions weren’t met with respect to the annuity fund, it was not considered ‘regular comp’. Everything else was.
“from beyond the grave” is a rude metaphor. And was she particularly wasteful compared to other reps, or are you just saying that cause she was pro-marriage?
She was anti-marriage.
Actually, seeing as same-sex conception is not illegal, I agree with you, it would be anti-marriage to allow people to conceive together but not allow them to marry. It harms marriage because it severs conception rights from marriage.
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It would also sever conception rights from marriage to prohibit same-sex conception while still allowing same-sex couples to marry. That would also be anti-marriage.
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And it harms marriage to deny that conception rights have anything to do with it, even if today the combination of both allowing marriage and allowing conception happens to be consistent and doesn’t sever conception rights from marraige.
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Pro-marriage would be to affirm that marriage grants conception rights, and Marie never did that, in spite of my many visits to her office. As with everyone else in that building, I have no idea if they ever took the time to try and understand what I was talking about.
….I am honor bound to point out that there is no legal justification for your contention that marriage grants a right to conception.
there’s boatloads of legal justification. the reason we don’t find explicit mentions of a “right to conceive” is because the word “marriage” is used instead.
…that is the absolute worst legal argument I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Thank you.
that backs up what you’re saying the true meaning of the word “marriage” is, I’m sure we’d all be interested in seeing it.
Pick a Supreme Court case that uses the word marriage and you’ll see that they aren’t using it to mean ‘loving couple’, they are using it to mean ‘couple that has a right to have sex and conceive children together.’ Loving, Zablocki, Skinner, all based on the fact that marriage grants procreation rights.
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Fornication and Adultery laws here in Massachusetts are meaningless without an understanding that marriage makes sex legal.
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Find me one married couple that is not allowed to conceive children. They do not exist, because the couples that do not have a right to conceive are not allowed to marry.
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And remember those cases in the news a few years ago when the judge told the irresponsible man and woman not to have any more children? Without exception, those couples were not married. If they had been, the judge wouldn’t have been able to say that.
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This is important, because someday soon we may have a situation where a couple is being denied the right to use IVF because of a genetic predisposition to some disease, or perhaps poor parenting. As long as that couple was eligible for marriage and has married, we should not be able to take away their right to conceive children. But if we start having marriages that are prohibited from conceiving (as same-sex marriages would be if we prohibit genetic engineering) then that couple won’t be able to point to their marriage license for protection anymore, because marriage will have changed, legally. It will no longer protect conception rights, because you anti-marriage people will have gutted it of its most important and most central right.
…that you reference are based, even obliquely, on procreation rights. If family and children are mentioned as relationships that are legally protected by marriage, that is one thing. To conflate that protection with a right to procreation implies that an unmarried couple’s procreation (and just so we’re clear procreation means to conceive and birth a child, nothing more) rights are somehow different, and they are not. For you to prove your point you need to demonstrate how the law views the right of two people to simply bring a child into the world differently based on marital status. The only thing that I can even remotely think of if the legal presumtion of paternity of a man if his wife has a baby, but that is a presumption that is made post procreation so it doesn’t really apply. Any people who are capable can procreate regardless of their marital status and the law is silent as to their right to do so.
Skinner v Oklahoma is entirely about procreation rights. It is procreation that is found to be a “basic civil right of man.” Why does it mention marriage at all? Because individuals don’t have procreation rights, they have a right to not be sterilized, and to marry and procreate.
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The court found the Lovings had a right to marry based on their right to procreate as declared in Skinner. If they’d had a right to procreate outside of marriage, then they wouldn’t have been denied the basic civil right to procreate, so no need to look to Skinner. Just look at how antimiscegenation laws worked – the point was to take away the couple’s right to conceive, so that the to races didn’t mix and there was no miscegenation (mixing-genes), and they did it by prohibiting marriage. That was so explicitly understood to mean they couldn’t have sex that it went without saying. They were arrested in their bed at 2:30 in the morning, not for trying to visit each other in the hospital. You aren’t having difficulty seeing this, are you? “You may kiss the bride” is a nice way of saying “you may fuck the bride” – it makes it legal. Everyone knows this, even today.
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And Zablocki is even more explicit. “if appellee’s right to procreate means anything at all, it must imply some right to enter the only relationship in which the State of Wisconsin allows sexual relations legally to take place.” But the law never – even back then – explicitly said that marriage allows sexual relations to take place, because it has been understood that that is what it means since the beginning of time, pre-language. even. There has never been a marriage that did not have this right, not once, ever.
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You are right that we have repealed lots of laws about illegitamacy, and we have stopped prosecuting fornication, but the important thing to note is that those changes didn’t change anything about marriage. Marriage continued to make sex legal, it continued to allow conception, even if you didn’t need it anymore. Just like if we stopped caring if people had drivers licenses in order to drive, it wouldn’t change the fact that a driver’s license makes it legal to drive.
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Here is the challenge for you: Find me one marriage that is prohibited from conceiving together. OK? That is the point. You can’t do it. You’ll find plenty of couples that are prohibited from procreating together, but none of them will be married. It has nothing to do with what people can do outside of marriage these days, it is all about what people are allowed to do inside marriage. That is what we need to protect, to be pro-marriage.
you couldn’t be more wrong. Nowhere in the skinner decision does it state that marriage grants the right of procreation. The fact that the two words appear in the same sentence is not relevant.
when it was plainly understood? They don’t state that sterilization means making it impossible to conceive children either, nor do they state what any of the words they use mean. They just use words that have meaning. What is your theory about why they mention marriage in Skinner? Did they have to meet a word count before they could hand the decision in? And if they thought that using donor gametes from outside the marriage was a fine substitute for using your own gametes, then what was the problem with sterilizing people?
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And there was more to my post than Skinner anyhow. But take your time, I’m gonna go watch the C’s. Read Zablocki (1978, five years after Eisenstadt, btw, which notably doesn’t say that individuals have a right to conceive or have sex, only that they have a right to make decisions about conceiving, specifically, to take steps to ensure that they do not conceive.)
…you have failed to give one example of a legal decision that states explicitly the view that you express and further you have not given one example of a decision applying your precedent examples in the manner in which you (and only you) interpret them. You can strain logic and reason all day long to try and make your point but until you actually name a legal decision that expresses in its holding these views they exist nowhere but in the dark recesses of you imagination. Have you considered that you might suffer from delusional dicta disorder?
….it does not hold to your reasoning.
It explicitly says that marriage means sexual relations are allowed to take place, as there is nothing in the law saying that it does. It proves that it is inherent in the meaning.
“It is not surprising that the decision to marry has been placed on the same level of importance as decisions relating to procreation, childbirth, child rearing, and family relationships. As the facts of this case illustrate, it would make little sense to recognize a right of privacy with respect to other matters of family life and not with respect to the decision to enter the relationship that is the foundation of the family in our society. The woman whom appellee desired to marry had a fundamental right to seek an abortion of their expected child, or to bring the child into life to suffer the myriad social, if not economic, disabilities that the status of illegitimacy brings. Surely, a decision to marry and raise the child in a traditional family setting must receive equivalent protection. And, if appellee’s right to procreate means anything at all, it must imply some right to enter the only relationship in which the State of Wisconsin allows sexual relations legally to take place.”
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This means that since procreation, child rearing and family relationships are protected outside of the the bonds of marriage then it is untenable under the equal protection clause to deny people the right to marry where wisconsin law legally allows sexual relations to take place, i.e. even if the sexual relations themselves are considered illegal, the right to procreation is untouched therefore allowing people to procreate without allowing them to marry does not provide equal protection. This case holds as to the fundamental right to marry, not the right to procreate, but the dicta in this case completely refutes your position and states explicitly that the law recognizes the right to procreation outside of marriage.
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Again, respectfully, you are wrong.
It says it makes little sense that recognize a fundamental right to seek an abortion or to bring the child into the world illegitimately (true!), but it notably doesn’t say she has a right to conceive outside of marriage. They completely accept the law that says that marriage is the only relatioship that can legally conceive. The case turns on that. If Wisconsin let them conceive outside of marriage, it wouldn’t have found that they must have a right to marry, or that marriage was the foundation of family.
….yes it does. Sorry, right to privacy = right to conception and procreation.
How can you privately conceive and procreate?
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Won’t someone notice the little baby eventually? Isn’t the baby itself a member of the public, and aware of its own conception?
…in the Constitutional sense is a term of art that you cannot defeat with a common usage argument. Sorry, wrong again.
No, it is pretty much based on privacy, anthony. wrong still.
…its pretty much based on a priciple attributed to the constitution (albeit not without controversy) that certain issues of personal autonomy are so intimate that the govt. has no right to intervene. You were using a pedestrian definition of privacy (able to be kept secret) in your rebuttal that is not on point for the constitutional discussion.
They use the words “personal autonomy” when they want to refer to “personal autonomy”. Privacy means stuff you can expect to keep secret, safe from search and seizure, and you’ll see that every time it is used in a SCOTUS case, that’s what it means. A big point was made in Lawrence that plaintifs were in their own private home. They could much easier have found plaintifs that had been caught exercising their personal autonomy in some public bathroom. Lawrence still didn’t make public sodomy legal, only secret sodomy. Yes, perhaps they should have used to word “secret”. But in this case, unlike “autonomy”, they aren’t using “secret” to mean “secret”, because privacy is bigger than secrecy and encompasses it. We want to be able to be secure in our privacy, even if we have nothing to hide or keep secret.
another thing anthony. “Family and children” are not legally protected by marriage. Unmarried people can have parental rights, and being divorced or having your marriage anulled doesn’t take away a parent’s parental rights. Nor does marrying a parent automatically give you parental rights. Nor does marriage protect parenting right, children can be removed from a home and parental rights terminated regardless of the parent’s marital status. Parental are unrelated to marriage. On the other hand, as soon as a marriage is ended or declared void, conception rights are taken away. It’s true that husbands are given the presumption of paternity, but that doesn’t translate directly to parental rights, which can be taken away from the husband. Concepton rights cannot be taken away from the husband, as long as the marriage is valid (this is why there used to be no such thing as marital rape, back when rape was defined not as a sexual assault but as taking of conception rights without consent.) It just means that the husband was the one with the right to conceive children with the mother, and all her children are presumed to be his and he consented to being their parent.
Beyond that, anthony’s right.
you haven’t stated your position on allowing same-sex conception. Do you think we should prohibit genetic engineering by enacting a law that limits attempts at conception to natural meiosis, ie, combining a man’s unadulterated sperm with a woman’s unadultereated egg?
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If you think same-sex conception should be legal, then you would be pro-marriage to want same-sex marriage also. And I agree with that – if we allow same-sex conception, as we do, then we should allow marriage. We are both pro-marriage in that regard. I just don’t think we should give conception rights to same-sex couples because it is unsafe and unethical and wasteful and would open the door to genetic engineering.
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Aren’t you a lawyer? You can’t seriously think anthony is right, can you? Where’d you go to law school?
Is this is new term of the debate?
I learned about it in 9th grade.
you didn’t learn how to read a legal opinion properly.
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There aren’t any married couples who are not legally allowed to conceive children. Now, find me one not-married [adult] couple who are not legally allowed to conceive children.
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If you can’t, it establishes that all adult couples are legally allowed to conceive children — which establishes that marriage has absolutely nothing to do with so-called conception rights.
A brother and sister. First cousins. Legally, according to what state you are in, they are banned from marrying because of the potential birth defects of too close a relation.
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Since incest is a crime, he can argue that these non-married adult couples cannot legally concieve children. And it is the degree of relation, not age, that determines incest, so the consenting adult thing doesn’t work.
And also, we are not allowed to conceive with children (statutory rape) or with people married to someone else (adultery) and that’s why we aren’t allowed to marry those people either. If we are allowed to marry someone, we are allowed to have sex and conceive children.
Is that why you think it is important that we move quickly to make reproduction through genetic engineering cheap, safe and legal?
i assume that’s a joke? feel free to explain, or not, whatever.
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It’s not a joke to lots of people though, who do want to move quickly to make it cheap and safe (it is currently legal).
….any illegal or repugnant acts that would result in procreation, but technically, there is nothing illegal about the procreation that results form this illegal activity. There have even been cases where a rapist has been granted visitation for the progeny that resulted from the rape. Abhorrent? Yes, but it tends to prove that procreation is not considered illegal activity. And you can have sex with married people all you want, and do it with impunity.
but close to it, yes. You aren’t exempt from punishment, there are indeed fornication and adultery laws still on the books, they just have not been enforced on anyone lately. (And note that fornication is not defined anywhere, nor is it explained how to avoid fornication by getting married. It is just understood that’s what it means, just like “murder” is not defined anywhere as killing someone).
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And Anthony (and the BMG community that I just know is reading this whole thing with intense interest) – nothing I am saying depends on sex or conception outside of marriage being illegal! The point is that sex inside marriage is legal. A marriage is guaranteed the right to conceive children together. That’s the important point, and that is why we can’t just give marriage rights to same-sex couples without either opening the door to same-sex conception or changing marriage so that it no longer does guarantee a right to conceive children together.
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Do you want either of those things? Maybe you do, some people do think that people with bad genes should not have a right to conceive, and some people do think that scientists should be allowed to create children however they want to. But don’t just go forward in ignorance as to what your position is leading to, and if those are things you want, be open about that and admit that. Don’t foist this on the ignorant public by pretending it isn’t a serious question.
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…capable of doing so are guaranteed the right to procreate. Marriage has nothing to do with it. Certain sexual behavior may be proscribed by law, but the underlying right to procreation has not been made illegal regardless of marital status. Your supposition is inaccurate on its face.
No, Loving explained that there has to be a supportable basis to not allow two people to marry, and by marry, they meant to conceive together. Maintaining a system of white supremacy was an “insupportable basis”, but allowing siblings to grow up without sexual tensions and avoiding inbreeding is supportable, and, I contend, maintaining a system of natural, equal conception for everyone and preventing unsafe experiments in genetic engineering is a supportable basis.
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Before we go any further, we should state our position on whether or not someone should have a right to attempt to procreate with someone of the same sex. I suspect you feel that scientists should be allowed to use genetic engineering to enable same-sex couples to procreate, in which case, your protestations on marriage’s conception rights are just obfuscation of your extreme radical transhumanist views. Only if we do not allow genetic engineering does it matter what marriage has to do with conception rights. So, do you support an egg and sperm law or do you insist on a right to use genetic engineering to enable same-sex conception?
….you insert your own meaning:
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“and by marry, they meant to conceive together”
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that does not exist organically in the decision. You do this every time you try to quote precedent that holds to your reasoning. It is wrong.
ok, pretend i left that out. There are supportable basis to prohibit certain relations from marrying. Avoiding birth defects is supportable.
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And, please state your position on same-sex conception rights. If you are for it, that’s what we need to be talking about.
…as same sex conception. And again, respectfully, you are interpreting legal precedent incorrectly.
There is such a thing as same-sex conception. It has been done in mice and could be legally attempted in humans today. It should be prohibited though, because it is too risky and unethical for other reasons as well.
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Are you refusing to state your position on whether or not it should be allowed? My position is that all genetic engineering should be illegal, that people should only be allowed to conceive by joining a man’s unadulterated sperm with a woman’s unadulterated egg. What is your position?
…about humans, not mice. It doen’t exist as it would relate to human law, ergo I have no position to state, and even if it did exist it would not be viewed in a legal sense in the way that you propose.
There is no law against doing what was done in mice in humans, right now, and it is unsafe. It, and all genetic engineering, should be illegal now until we decide it is safe and acceptable enough to allow people to try it in humans. It should only be legal to do in humans if we think it is safe. And yes, there are people that plan on doing it, and epeople that claim it is a right. You are undoubtably one of these people yourself, no?
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And heck, it shouldn’t be legal to do it in mice, either. It is unethical treatment of animals for some people’s amusement, profit and control. It doesn’t cure any diseases or alleviate any suffering, in fact it is likely to cause diseases and suffering.
….to see genetic human engineering in my lifetime. But to conflate your irrational fear of what is to become with the human race with the meaning of marriage and to rest the burden of preventing your fears on glbt people who want marriage equality is indefensible as well as just a little bit nuts.
and it is very divisive and distracting issue that we could resolve in a way that makes great sense, indeed is the only good way to resolve it. We can enact the egg and sperm law as part of a deal to also give equal benefits and protections to same-sex couples. We should not give conception rights to same-sex couples right now. We might still give them the right later, but we should not right now. And we should make sure that every marriage is allowed to conceive, we shouldn’t put everyone’s conception rights at risk just to give the name marriage to same-sex couples that don’t even want conception rights right now. (but some crazy ones do, and we shouldn’t give it to them).
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What part of that deal do you object to?
…in MA GLBT people have full equality under the law, and by the law, I mean the actual law that exists outside or your idiosyncratic theory of the law.
Their own country considers them legal strangers, they cannot get federal tax benefits or social security survivor benefits, they can be abandoned or skip out on their marriage with impunity by moving to another state. They have some rather insignificant state benefits that don’t much affect their lives, but they do not have security or protections or the most important financial benefits. They do have the official license to conceive, which they should not have and generally don’t want to do, and probably couldn’t do it if they tried.
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They could get what they want and need with federally recognized civil unions, by giving up what they don’t want and shouldn’t have. You could fix that by supporting the egg and sperm compromise here at BMG.
prohibit marriage or procreation?
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I had thought it was the former — which would render incest laws irrelevant. My question is which pairs of adults aren’t legally allowed to conceive, not which pairs of adults aren’t legally allowed to wed.
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So — do the laws prohibit “love” or “marriage”?
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Furthermore, if incest is the best you can do, than doesn’t that imply that all non-incestuous adult couples do have the right to procreate, regardless of marriage status?
The people that one is not allowed to marry is a larger group than the people one would be charged with the crime of incest for having sex with. It’s still not strictly legal to have sex with people you aren’t allowed to marry for reasons of affinity but not consanguinity, but that is covered by the fornication law and is not punished any harsher than someone you would be allowed to marry. All that stuff about “anal opening” was added recently, I think, because doing that stuff to a sibling is abhorrent – but I think the non intercourse assaults should have been given a different law, plus I think is now unconstitional as written after Lawrence.
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CHAPTER 272. CRIMES AGAINST CHASTITY, MORALITY, DECENCY AND GOOD ORDER
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Chapter 272: Section 17. Incestuous marriage or sexual activities
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Section 17. Persons within degrees of consanguinity within which marriages are prohibited or declared by law to be incestuous and void, who intermarry or have sexual intercourse with each other, or who engage in sexual activities with each other, including but not limited to, oral or anal intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus, or other penetration of a part of a person’s body, or insertion of an object into the genital or anal opening of another person’s body, or the manual manipulation of the genitalia of another person’s body, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than 20 years or in the house of correction for not more than 21/2 years.
but you still haven’t established that consenting non-incestuous non-married adults don’t have the right to conception. Show me a law, show me a court decision, show me something.
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Otherwise, there’s no basis for linking marriage and procreation rights, except to say that married couples are one class of people who can procreate (with the aside that non-married non-incestuous adults can too!)
There’s a link here somewhere already. And again, my argument is not that conception cannot be done outside of marriage, obviously, it can! The point is that marriage guarantees a right to conceive together. All marriages can conceive. That is the thing that we need to preserve about marriage.
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Does anyone feel that marraiges should not have conception rights?
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Does anyone feel that same-sex couples should not have conception rights?
not fornicate.
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Aside from the fact that the fornication laws aren’t ever going to be enforced…
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what about non-fornicatin’ procreatin’ between non-married adult non-cousins? Is that illegal?
It is a narrow view of fornication to think it means only p in v intercourse. Unmarried joining of egg and sperm is fornication, by any method or position. It creates illegitimate offspring, though we no longer punish the offspring with that designation.
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Utter nonsense. Absolute, complete, utter crap. You’re claiming that these guys are all lawbreakers? Were it so, why haven’t we seen some crazy-ass fundies fight to shut ’em down?
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The fornication law restricts sex (and probably not legally). It doesn’t restrict reproduction per se. Medical methods to impregnate aren’t illegal for non-married people. You’re claim that artificial insemination is fornication is just plain crap.
There was a time when we still prosecuted fornication and adultery, and yes, it included attempts to use “donated” sperm. There were cases back in the 40’s and 50’s that held it to be adultery. I’m not sure what happened between then and now. Times changed, I guess, along with our attitudes regarding key parties and swingers. We used paternitity testing and wage garnishing to enforce parental obligations, and we insisted on having naive beliefs about socialization and behaviorism, feeling that kids didn’t care about their genetic heritage, or their true biological sex, for that matter. But nothing about the definitions of marriage, or fornication, or adultery changed, only the desire to enforce the laws.
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Fundies are against donor sperm, though many of them aren’t very consistent and are so pro-baby that many have been corrupted by a relative or friend who used it to “cure” her infertility to have a little baby, and they don’t like calling their relatives and friends lawbreakers or suggesting that they shouldn’t be allowed to do it. They’re wrong, though, and now donor conceived children are shelping them see that they are wrong.
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the fornication law doesn’t define fornication, but it means unmarried sex, and there are lots of ways to have sex. Missionary, doggy-style, with people watching, with a turkey baster, in a test tube. Sex is called sex becasue it joins the sex cells together in sexual reproduction. It doesn’t always result in meoisis, but it always might, so we don’t distinguish between the part that we do with the extremisites of our bodies and the part that might happen inside.
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And again, it doesn’t matter – REPEAT: IT DOESN’T MATTER – whether or not it is legal or illegal to conceive outside marriage. The point is that it is not only legal to conceive inside marriage, but that it is a guaranteed right of marriage to be allowed to conceive. And same-sex couples shouldn’t have that right, outside of marriage or inside marriage. Agree or not?
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If they don’t have conception rights and are allowed to marry, though, then we will have legally changed marriage and stripped it of its protection of conception rights. Suddenly, couples will not be allowed to point to the marriage license on the wall and insist that they have a right to conceive children together. Maybe you guys want that, maybe you don’t think dumb people should be allowed to conceive, but I do. I think joining our gamete with someone of the other sex (an eligible person of the other sex) is a basic civil right of man and it needs to be protected. These are dangerous times and we shouldn’t do anything stupid that inadvertantly strips us of our basic civil rights.
On behalf of a grateful BMG community, I salute your indefatigable attention to this important matter.
and fostering ignorance about science is not heroic.
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The BMG community could make life so much better for lots of people by getting behind my proposal. And people would give up nothing. But you think keeping genetic engineering legal right now is more important, even though it is clearly unsafe right now. Terribly costly, misplaced priorities that not only hurt couples today but could really cause long term suffering and damage society big time. Rethink, Bob, please!
….for some reason I am compelled to engage.
at least, i enjoy it stating this case, i’ve been doing it for years. thanks for engaging, and hopefully considering my points.
it’s perfectly legal for a man to impregnate his sister via artificial insemination, right? No “genetic engineering” there, just the old turkey baster would do the trick.
Sexual reproduction once was only done by putting penis in vagina, and doing that still risks conception even if you aren’t trying, so that is and was the thing that the laws cared about. You would have to be a literalist jerk to think that the thing that was relevant about sexual intercourse laws was merely a penis going in a vagina, and that the possibility of conception had nothing to do with it. Of course the ONLY reason that sexual intercourse was under such scrutiny was that it was the way that we procreated. You might be right as to the letter of the law, but completely missing the spirit of the law, which is to prevent siblings from conceiving together. After Billions of years, advanced life forms have now for the first time figured out how to reproduce without a male and a female having sexual congress together. Our laws are still a few thousand years old and probably need to be adjusted, or else just interpreted to take into account the new techniques available.
but, as has been pointed out upthread, you’re making this shit up. You want the laws to read in a particular way to support your theory, but they just aren’t obliging.
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That’s incest. If it was just about “procreation,” why include anal intercourse, fellatio, etc.? Conversely, if it was about procreation, why not say so somewhere? This law was rewritten in 2002 — it’s not an artifact of the time before there were alternative ways of fertilizing eggs.
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You’re just not right about the law on this. I’m not taking any position on your larger point, but on the law, you’re wrong.
I never said incest was just about procreation, did I? Nor is marriage just about the right to conceive, but that is the sine qua non, precariously. Do you agree about that, David? Do you think all marriages should have conception rights, or do you think that it should be OK to prevent some married couples from conceiving? Are there any couples you think should be prevented from concieving?
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About that law, I did already mention that they added the extra stuff recently (I too just had to cut and paste it, for everyone’s enjoyment), and said I felt they should have made a seperate section for assaults like that. Rape laws also were expaded recently and also need this distinction made and have modern techniques considered – I think taking someone’s reproductive rights from them and forcing them to possibly become a parent without their consent is rape. As feminists say, rape is about power, not erotic gratification (that’s what reading the General Laws are for!).
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You’re right, it would have been good for them to address donor gamete issues and so forth. That they didn’t in no way means they think that a man ought to be allowed to conceive with his sister though IVF, come on. And it in no way shows that unmarried people are legally allowed to conceive. It shows that they are waiting for the national conversation, and letting these issues get figured out after the fact in our court system. Perhaps they feel that advances their agenda faster? Perhaps they need to be re-elected, but judges are appointed for life? But they underestimate how popular a position it would be to end this debate and stop cloning and genetic engineering, preserve marriage, and provide fair protections to same-sex couples. Who would oppose that? The coalition of people who hate natural conception, who think stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to breed even if they are married, joined by the people who hate civil unions.
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Specifically, how am not right on the law? You’re being vague and evasive.
….every single posture that you take vis-à-vis established principles of law and precedent is categorically false and when challenged beyond the point that even your own intellectual contortionism can bear you obfuscate your own point by shifting granular elements of your previous explication and then accuse those challenging you of wanting to dismantle humanity on a genetic level.
I’m going to start again with a simple set of true false questions, then.
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Marriages all have conception rights. T/F
Not all couples do. T/F
Couples that don’t, are not and cannot get married. T/F
Genetic Engineering is currently unsafe. T/F
Same-sex conception requires GE. T/F
Only natural meoisis is safe and should be allowed. T/F
All marriages should continue to have conception rights. T/F
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…is the one you don’t ask. All Unmarried People Have Conception Rights T/F. Which is unequivocally true.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect the rights OF marriage. We could explicitly declare unmarried sex and conception legal, and it wouldn’t change my concerns about marriage and genetic engineering.
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The answer to your quiz is True. Everyone unmarried person has conception rights (Skinner said so), but they have to marry first (Skinner, Loving, Zablocki accepted), and we all have the right to marry. There are some relations and statuses we are not allowed to marry or procreate with.
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The important questions are the ones I DID ask. I answered yours…
Is it the Puritain heritage or something? If you are in public service, you are supposed to be in a semi-impoverished condition? Not receive payment the equivalent of similar responsibilities in the private sector? How many knew Marie Parente was a former foster child with guts and gumption? I don’t have to agree with every position a legislator takes to know courage and hard work when I see it. I don’t understand the need to insult all those years of real service.
David – there is no per diem involved. She and another Rep. (no, I’m not going to help you there) are requesting an increase based upon the $600/mo office stipend, paid whether or not you rent an ouside office or not, and remarkably similar to Bulger’s housing allowance in that regard. The argument is that taxes have to be paid on that stipend, unlike the tax free per diems which are not part of the claim, and the the IRS considers it to be income, and ergo should be part of pension.
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Only Rep. Parente is asking about the parkig space, and I do not know if that was taxed or not. I would note that a Beacon Hill parking space recently sold for $250,000.
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Part of the reason to do this, by these retiring legislators, is to clarify for future retirees, rather than have a zillion cases one by one.
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UMass and the SJC created this problem. And all the taxpayers get to solve them all.
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Yes, obviously Parente is doing this for altruistic reasons. Just like logrolling her scam would be “an act of courage,” in her words.
since this has already been all over the Globe. I assume the “other Rep.” you’re talking about is ex-Speaker Bartley.
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Also, according to the earlier Globe story (emphasis mine),
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So unless you’ve got a source that can refute that, I’m sticking with what’s in the post. Also, here’s a handy quick-reference, also from the Globe story:
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And finally, yes, the idea that Parente is doing this out of some selfless desire to clarify the law is quite hilarious. If only we had more self-sacrificing public servants in that mold!
Making their cases more parallel, just as I am sure the other college presidents will be treated the same as Bulger.
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Not being in the Globe doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
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What is at issue with Rep. Parente is how wide this decision goes – does it include legislators as well? And David – having two Reps. apply IS an efficiency, rather than Cahill having to pop up over and over again, as there aare far more retired Reps. and Senators than college presidents.
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BTW – BULGER got an office stipend all his years in the Lege – is HE due for another jump?
Why should I believe what you’re saying if you’re not willing to back it up? It’s a public filing, right?
I say no more.
Tom George, just for starters
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http://www.capecodto…
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I’m assuming PP means “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican” rather than “Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.”
Or am I mis-reading your argument? BTW, not many Bulger supporters around here, last time I looked, just as a point of reference.
I can’t speak for PP, but I don’t even see the controversy.
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Bulger wins SJC case. Case concludes that ‘regular compensation’ determines pension. SJC adds salary plus housing allowance, and other stuff. SJC excludes the annuity because there are special statutory provisions providing when that annuities are be added to ‘regular compensation’.
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Other participants in the pension plan also have housing allowance and other stuff.
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Other participants make claim.
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Slam dunk. Pensioners will win. Read the case. If the rule of law is that their pension must be based on i) salary plus ii) other stuff that is considered ‘regular compensation’ like housing, parking, perks, etc….then why shouldn’t they make a claim for it.
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I would. Wouldn’t you?
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Move along. No story here…except that chick on the front page really looks like Ted Kennedy in a blonde wig, no?
And I actually predicted this outcome in September of 2005 –
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http://capecodporcup…
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IS NOT. It’s a disgrace. Makes part-time legislators look like a good idea…oh, that’s right for many it is a part-time job.
…not advocating for a result.
I believe that the office stipend and the value of the parking space are both taxed.
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And no, i do not believed anyone is allowed to “sell” their space.
…The SJC in Bulger’s case was far from irrational in its decision. The compensation package that Bulger negotiated included the housing allowance. It was, and was intended to be, compensation. One might quibble over whether the negotiators on behalf of the state should have awarded him a “housing allowance” as part of his compensation package, but the fact is that it was part of his compensation package.
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Parente is now claiming that her parking allowance was part of her compensation package. That is preposterous. That merely allowed her to park in designated areas. Her claim would be about as dumb as a worker for a private company claiming that his parking privileges in the company’s parking lot was “compensation” when it came time to figure his pension pay-out.
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Parente should go home and wimper. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Why did they seperate the housing allowance from the salary then? Perhaps because they thought the salary would be what the pension was based on?
Whatever the ultimate outcome of Parente’s request, she won’t be able to rely on Bulger’s housing allowance as a precedent. The housing allowance is specifically included in the state’s public pension law – section 1 of Chapter 32 says that “evaluated maintenance” as provided in section 22(1)(c) is regular compensation, and section 22(1)(c) expressly refers to “a non-cash maintenance allowance in the form or full or partial boarding and housing.” In the SJC’s view, if a non-cash housing benefit is expressly considered regular compensation under Chapter 32, and therefore part of the basis on which an employee’s pension is determined, why then shouldn’t a cash housing allowance also be considered regular compensation? So, unlike office stipends and parking spaces, the housing allowance is something expressly covered by the statute.