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That’s right! The ACLU is now supporting a man in his struggle to take the last name of the woman he intends to marry without undergoing the traditional name change procedure for anyone wishing to rename themselves. The plaintiff, Michael Buday, is alleging that the $320 fee he must pay, as well as the advertisements he must take out in newspapers to announce the official name change, constitute discrimination, since his wife could change her last name for a mere $50 as part of the process of formalizing the marriage. The full story is available here.

I appreciate this man’s efforts to put back in the past another rediculously outdated notion, that of a woman becoming the property of her husband upon marrying him. Also, it should shed some light once again on the difference between the state’s civil definition of marriage and various Christian organizations’ religious views on the institution which unfortunately shares the common name of ‘marriage.’ What may seem at first silly is in fact a serious point of contention in this country right now, especially in light of the struggle of gay rights groups to achieve the same legal and civil protections which secular marriage laws now afford only to heterosexual couples. We must, as a nation, come to understand that the reasons for two people to come together and share their lives with one another are often unrelated to any Christian or other religious values, and that offering secular advantages for adherents to certain religious viewpoints violates the separation of church and state that we supposedly hold so dear to our very basic notion of liberty.

man, woman, last name, marriage, civil union, LA, los angeles, lawsuit, ACLU, Christianity, Christians, Christ, religion and marriage, religion, husband, wife, name change

South Dakota took another step towards the primal muck of pre-evolution today by banning nearly all forms of abortion within the state. The douchebag leading the charge is Governor Mike Rounds (send the asshole an email, or a letter, telling him how much you despise him for his fascist ideals), a fucking moron who has tried for years to weasle South Dakota’s female population’s civil rights away with various different anti-abortion laws. Thanks to the overwhelming stupidity of enough of the idiots who determine the course of South Dakota’s politics, that law finally passed today. If you’ve ever met anyone who’s worked at a Planned Parenthood office, or a rape counseling center, or a teen pregnancy counseling organization, I’m sure you know how absolutely thrilled they are to know that their hard work is once again being threatened by the insipid pond scum known as the religious right. In fact, if the terrorist anti-abortion protesters who linger outside such establishments for the sole purpose of torturing and tormenting the emotionally vulnerable and understandably upset victims who are forced to pass them on the way to receive treatment aren’t waving their plastic fetuses and screaming obscenities in victory all over the country today, they’re even dumber than they seem. Not to mention that Christians whining about abortion is inherently myopic and just plain hypocritical (see the post about Pope Innocent III). Honestly, it would be really nice to see someone else put the fear of God (sorry, couldn’t resist) into these fuckers, maybe to give them an idea of what it’s like to take what they seem so happy to dish out all the time, or just so they understand what it’s like to be the victim instead of the perpetrator. But of course, such action would be illegal, meaning only anti-abortion protesters and pro-life ‘advocates’ would really give the strategy any thought. So anyway, Mike Rounds…fuck you, douchebag.