Marry as I legislate, not as I do. Ooh! I get to say “I do” and you don’t!
Sometimes when you move to a foreign place with a tropical climate, friendly people, and a low cost of living, all for the sake of a native girl, you pay the price by dealing with that place’s silly customs, backward ways, and primitive belief systems. Here in Florida, while a generally hospitable people hold many silly notions, such as the concept that two people of the same sex shouldn’t get married. The local chieftains banned same-sex marriages some eighty seasons ago, and when in a 2008 tribal council (called an “election”), they made an addendum to their sacred parchment of laws written by their ancestors (“The Constitution”).
(Okay, enough writing about Florida the way many news writers cover other countries.)
Pam Bondi is Florida’s Attorney General, and along with fellow Republican and State Governor Rick Scott, she was named in a lawsuit that states that Florida is discriminating against gay couples by not recognizing same-sex marriages that were performed in places where they are recognized.
Here’s the statement by Bondi’s office made in official court documents. Pay attention to the part’s I’ve put in bold text:
“Florida’s marriage laws, then, have a close, direct, and rational relationship to society’s legitimate interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who produced them in stable and enduring family units.”
A quick visit to Pam Bondi’s Wikipedia page shows that she’s been married twice:
- The first time, from 1990 to 1992, in a marriage that lasted 22 months
- and in a second marriage that lasted almost 6 years, from 1997 to 2002.
She recently had a “non-binding ceremony” — a civil union of sorts — with her fiance. According to reports, it had all the trappings of a wedding, without actually being one, for reasons that have not yet been revealed. While her fiance, who is a widower, has children from his marriage, Bondi never performed her wifely duty of producing offspring despite having had not one, but two opportunities to fulfill her sacred mission and biological imperative.
I’m not the first person to notice this; John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council (the group’s name should already be a warning) questioned Bondi’s “true conservative” credentials and lifestyle by noting that “personally, she has no children and lives with her 60 year old eye doctor boyfriend.”
I think it’s the heat that makes people here a little wacky.
