Cohabitation Nation

William Bennett | Posted 8:34 PM

I don't need to tell you what Bill Bennett thinks of cohabitation. Here's Katha Pollitt's take on his gambling problem:

Bennett's defenders make much of the fact that he never condemned gambling and so was not actually a hypocrite. Leaving your own pet vice off a long, long list of sins, and then, when you are found out, exempting that vice as practiced by you but not as practiced by others--that's not exculpation from charges of hypocrisy, that's what hypocrisy is.

If Bennett were a jolly, modest fellow, full of love for fallen humanity and the first to admit he was just another sinner like the rest of us--if he were less quick to impute the worst motives to perfectly ordinary behavior, like having two kids; if he spent less time promoting rigid, puritanical morals and more time promoting, oh, kindness and tolerance and looking into your own heart and cutting other people some slack because you never really know what demons they're contending with--no one would be piling on now.

But then, with a message like that, no one would have heard of him in the first place. You don't get to play Christian on TV, or amass real political power along with your millions, by urging people not to throw the first stone, especially if they live in a glass house. Jesus tried that, and look what happened to him.

Ouch! | Posted 8:20 PM

A couple should be able to live together or marry in peace.

"He opened the door ... and this unmarried couple was cohabitating, right there on the floor." | Posted 8:48 PM

Grand Forks Herald columnist Ryan Bakken is on a roll! First this, now this:

Sshhhhh. The cohab law isn't being enforced

A scandal of epic proportions threatens North Dakota law enforcement.

Weeks after the Legislature has adjourned, the state still has no arrests - none!!! - for cohabitation. And we do know cohabitators are out there, don't we?

Other than the crucial bikini waxing legislation, keeping the law forbidding unmarried couples to live together was the hallmark of the legislative session. The 2003 Legislature - Motto: "Let's Live the 20th Century Over Again, Starting at the Beginning" - demanded that this act remain verboten.

Yet, law enforcement is spitting in the eyes of our state's leaders by not making a single arrest.

Grand Forks Police Chief John Packett and Grand Forks County Sheriff Dan Hill offer a lame excuse for this slipshod enforcement of the law. "We haven't had any complaints," each one said, obviously having collaborated beforehand on their alibi.

"Since I haven't had any complaints, I think you can make the assumption that it's not a concern to the community," Packett said. "We have to make sure laws are compatible with the community standards."

So, if I ratted out an unmarried couple, demanding they be hauled away in handcuffs and chains, what would you do?

"Then it gets into the realm of if it's good public policy," Packett said. "Is the peace being disturbed? Are people's welfare in jeopardy? Is there a concern over property? If you can't answer those questions with an affirmative to yourself, it's probably a question you shouldn't be asking."

That sounded like a "no," didn't it? So there you have it: Defiance of the very laws he's sworn to keep.

Hill wasn't defiant, but he was squirming under the hot lights of my interrogation.

"We're just not out there seeking those people," he said. "We'd have to catch them at it. We'd have to witness it. And it's only a misdemeanor."

What, no hidden listening devices implanted in the bedside lamp in search of the tell-tale sounds of cohabitation? No undercover operation under the covers? For shame.

It would be a waste of time, Hill said. "I really can't see the courts coming down very hard on anyone charged for something like that," he said.

So the judicial system is part of the scandal, too? Wow. I envision a Pulitzer for this expose.

Probably in a futile attempt to avoid impeachment, Hill told how he once did make an arrest for a similar offense about 25 years ago. He opened the door to an otherwise vacant apartment and this unmarried couple was cohabitating, right there on the floor. They were charged with trespassing and some other charge.

"I can't remember the specific charge for what they were doing; it might have been the cohabitation law," Hill said. "Anyway, the charges were dropped when they told the judge they were going to be married soon."

Agreeing to marriage? That's what you'd call a plea bargain.

So, I went to the highest law official in the state - yes, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem - demanding answers. "I'm clean on this," he said. "Prosecution is the county state's attorneys' responsibility."

Stenehjem even sounded like a cohabitators' sympathizer. "One of our chief justices - and I can't remember which one - once said that the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it," he said.

Anyway, I apologized to him, Packett and Hill for taking their valuable time. Packett said there was no need to apologize.

"That's OK," Packett said graciously. "It's a timely subject. It's probably something that people will enjoy reading."

His tune will likely change when he reads this. I anticipate an outraged public storming police headquarters over this blatant dereliction of duty.

If we let this go, what's next? Serial jaywalking? Sidewalks covered in spit?

First on my 2006 reading list | Posted 11:11 PM

Rebecca Mead's article is on its way to becoming a book about the American wedding industry and "the intersection of love and marriage with the marketplace in contemporary American culture," to be published by Penguin in 2006. [From Publishers Lunch via LS]

Pure coincidence or trend? | Posted 7:58 PM

In all the U.S. newspapers indexed by Lexis-Nexis, there hasn't been a single use of the phrase "cohabitation nation" in the last ten years. Yet both the Commercial Appeal and the Sacramento Bee use it as a headline in the same weekend?

Memorial Day | Posted 7:54 PM

Back from the wonderful Baltimore wedding of S. and D. Prior to the wedding, Dorian and I grabbed a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Amusingly, the small restuarant was tightly packed, and we ended up sitting within close earshot of a couple in the middle of a deep discussion about whether or not to cohabit. They ultimately decided against, for now.

"The practice is still controversial and not something Mid-Southerners are quick to talk about openly." | Posted 7:03 PM

An article on unmarried couples appears in the Memphis Commercial Appeal today. What's the headline? "Cohabitation Nation."

Fully informed cohabitation | Posted 4:22 PM

People unfamiliar with my work incorrectly assume that I'm pro-cohabitation and anti-marriage. At heart, I'm a fan of responsible, informed, supported choices. I'm against marital status discrimination and the pressure to marry. But I'm also in favor of same-sex marriage and don't believe married people should pay more taxes than unmarried ones.

Case in point: JF sold a copy of Unmarried to Each Other to her co-worker, who gave it to a friend, who was preparing to move in with her boyfriend. As she read through the book, she started asking him more questions and thinking about whether or not she was ready to move in with him. By helping her to examine her choices, it made her realize that something wasn't quite right. Indeed, she was on to something: she spontaneously called him late one night, and another woman answered his phone... Needless to say, she called off the cohabitation.

Friendster, Day 2 | Posted 10:11 PM

My friend network has now grown to 1317 people, mostly thanks to the daylong outreach efforts of a least one enthusiastic blogger. However, as he becomes more familiar with the network, he's also realizing its limitations. "Male-female ratio precisely that of an undergraduate engineering program," he emails. Nonetheless, the gang moves forward.

Progress so far:
Dates: None.
Serious relationships: None.
Cohabitations: None.

Friend-of-a-friend networking for dates, possible future cohabitation | Posted 10:14 PM

The gang is all signing up for friendster, hoping that it will result in dates, serious relationships, and maybe even cohabitation. We'll see. I'll do my best to play matchmaker.

"We want to hire the best employees available." | Posted 12:45 PM

This article speaks to some of the absurd rhetoric that surronds something as straightforward as a private company offering domestic partner benefits to attract and retain the best employees. My favorite quote: "The family has been the foundation of society, and any endorsement of these other relationships undermines the family." The reality, of course, is just the opposite: DP benefits support and strengthen families who otherwise might not have health insurance.

Epic individuals | Posted 12:51 PM

Looky, looky, thanks to a tip from MOP, it is now public knowledge that certain epic individuals' blogs will grace the fashion pages of the NY Times tomorrow. Kudos to the gang! I've got to hand it to JVG, in particular, for starting his blog for this reason, and not six months later getting his URL mentioned not once, but twice in the paper of record.

Freedom to Read Protection Act | Posted 7:41 PM

U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants to protect your right to read, The Valley Advocate reports:

A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

That was the quote of the day March 7 on the website for Food for Thought Books, and it's a clue to the types of books that are the stock in trade in this Amherst store. Look in Food for Thought's window and you'll see the latest in critical, avant-garde, world-conscious writing: titles like Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living Together and Staying Together or Fugitive Days: A Memoir, by Bill Ayers, community activist and founder of the Weather Underground.

At the moment, the owners of Food for Thought and other bookstores throughout the country are wondering if someone besides a prospective customer is looking in their windows. The Patriot Act, passed in reaction to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gives the FBI and other federal agencies broad new powers to track down suspected terrorists by demanding records of books sold from bookshops and borrowed from libraries. Federal agents with court orders could always ask for records of books purchased or borrowed by a certain person believed to be a security risk; now they can made broader requests for customer lists and other records that show who's reading what.

Throughout the nation, this provision of the Patriot Act has started up a bookseller revolt, as store owners tear up receipts to keep from being asked to hand them over. Riding to their rescue on Capitol Hill last week was U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders filed a bill, the Freedom to Read Protection Act, that would roll back the provisions of the Patriot Act relating to bookstores and libraries to the previous status quo. Sanders' bill would also require government agencies to report to Congress regularly on how many bookstores and libraries have been subjected to searches for records and what the searches have yielded that has actually reduced the threat of terrorism.

The Pros and Cons of Shacking Up | Posted 5:08 PM

If you're a Comcast cable subscriber, you can watch Dorian debate "The Pros and Cons of Shacking Up" on Real Life with Mary Amoroso tonight at 6:30 p.m.

Epic | Posted 9:02 PM

JVG has written "Buddy" Cianci: the musical.

Mother's Day | Posted 8:53 PM

Modern mothers travel with cell phones, but technology hasn't caught up with demand. Both Dorian and I lost our connections to our mobile mothers at least twice during our "Happy Mother's Day" calls today.

2nd printing | Posted 9:40 PM

It's official! Unmarried to Each Other is now in its second printing.

Trendwatch | Posted 10:22 PM

Karen emails: "For those fast-food-equivalent relationships: marriage in an inflatable church, divorce on the divorce bus."

Courage | Posted 8:23 PM

Just returned from bicycling 42 miles with my father around New York's five boroughs as part of Bike New York. With 30,000 riders, Bike New York is the largest group cycling event in the world, and even more memorable than New York's skyline and diverse neighborhoods are the numerous accidents that invariably happen from so many bikes being on the road at once. To start the ride, all one needs is a sense of adventure. By the time you've witnessed your third accident, courage is the driving force to complete it.

Meanwhile, in North Dakota, Ryan Bakken is right on target:

The North Dakota Legislature's regular session is over, with legislators having fulfilled their apparent biennial purpose: Provide ample fodder for Jay Leno's monologues.

Now, with a special session looming, there's the opportunity for even more silliness.

During the regular session, Leno was handed several nights' worth of material after the Legislature voted to retain the law against cohabitation. And he was blessed with more comedy content with the bikini-waxing legislation....

Back to the cohabitation vote. It didn't divide legislators into camps of those who had high morals and those who didn't. It divided them into two different categories - the brave and the cowardly.

The brave would be those who stuck their political necks on the line by voting to drop the cohabitation law. The cowardly would be those who voted to keep it. They feared that a different vote would paint them as cohabitation supporters and thus immoral.

Power Lunch | Posted 10:00 PM

Big media day: I was in New York on CNBC's Power Lunch talking about financial issues for unmarried couples. Dorian is quoted in a Seattle-PI article, "More moms and dads aren't tying the knot," which is one of the best pieces of I've seen on the issue.

On the way back to Penn Station from CNBC studios, I had the last minute inspiration see if LS and JA were available for our own power lunch, but alas time constraints only allowed for a power talk via cell phone with LS while standing in line at the Amtrak ticket counter. What did we talk about? Blogging. LS has switched to movable type.

G. says blogs are the male equivalent of a diary. If I had movable type, like LS, I'd ask you to post your opinion on this issue. Since I don't, email me instead.