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In Michigan’s state Senate Wednesday, a bill to finally repeal a long-disused (because it’s literally unconstitutional) 1931 law forbidding unmarried couples from living in sin easily passed, so hooray, once the House passes it and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs it, the state’s legal code will be rid of one more “zombie law” clogging up the statutes. Then Michiganders won’t have to worry about being sentenced to a year in prison and fined up to $1,000, unless of course they have a time machine so they can go back to the Roosevelt administration (any of them) to shack up and fuck.
That’s pretty neat and good-governmenty, and we are thrilled to let you know that some states are acting like it’s the 21st century, great job, everyone enjoy your modern jet packs, brain uploads, and sex robots, have a nice day, the end.
Oh, you sillies went and read the headline, so now I have to tell you the rest of the story, don’t I? You in the back there, put that sexbot away. Yes, even if it does look just like a Telefunken U47. Because of course the bill didn’t get a unanimous vote in the state Senate, even though, as we note, it is not merely unenforced and antiquated, it’s unconstitutional under Lawrence v Texas, at least until the Supreme Court throws that out.
Oh. Maybe that’s why nine Republicans voted to keep the ban on cohabitation.
State Sen. Stephanie Chang (D) didn’t just want to clean up the criminal code with Senate Bill 56; she also pointed out that the old law could actually have “real life implications” even though it’s unenforced:
The Internal Revenue Service tax code states that individuals can’t claim certain tax benefits if their relationship violates local laws, Chang said. She argued unmarried couples in committed relationships in Michigan should have the same rights as they would in any other state.
“This bill is not about a moral issue, it’s not about changing people’s behavior, not about marriage rates,” she said in a floor speech Wednesday. “It’s really just about bringing us into the 21st Century.”
Some Republicans insisted that those tax penalties made repealing the law a bad idea, because now there’s another incentive for people not to get married, and oh, won’t that be tragic for Families? State Sen. Thomas Albert (R) said maybe criminalizing cohabitation was a “foolish idea,” but that the statute should stay in place to encourage mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam.
“I very easily would be a yes on this bill if the tax structure continued to encourage marriage,” Albert said, citing benefits for children who grow up in a household with married parents.
“Federal law prevents taxpayers from claiming some dependent if their relationship violates state law. The bill before us today would clear the way for two unmarried individuals living together to meet dependency requirements and claim those tax benefits,” he continued.
Also, there’s that thing with the dogs and cats, you can’t be too careful.
State Sen. Ed McBroom (R) fretted about the horrors faced by children from a “broken home,” although that sounds like more of an argument to ban divorce, since “together” is a key word in the phrase unmarried persons living together. He explained that his no vote wasn’t motivated by a desire
“to be mean or stodgy. It was passed because it was better for society – in particular, children.
“A repeal of this law is not a promotion of the common good,” McBroom said. “Cohabitation has been consistently shown to decrease the resilience and permanence of marriage, and to decrease the potential that marriage happens at all. … Broken homes are incredibly damaging to the future of children.”
We will close by adding that we wasted a good 10 minutes of our life looking for details about this teasing line from Michigan Advance, which mentioned that McBroom had referenced “popular television shows and movies in the 1970s and 1980s,” but damned if we could scrounge up any quotes, which were undoubtedly hilarious. So please feel free to make up any anti-living-in-sin quotes involving popular media from that era, and you can believe McBroom said them, OK?
[Michigan Advance / Bridge Michigan / MLive / Photo by ‘Turbot’ on Pixabay, free license]
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