Here’s a jaw-dropping, “holy shit” item: in Ohio, beating someone you live with is only domestic violence if you’re married, and the justification used for this is Ohio’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.
A judge has ruled that Ohio’s new constitutional ban on same-sex marriage prohibits unmarried people from being able to file domestic violence charges, a decision that has prompted an immediate appeal by prosecutors.
Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage, among the nation’s broadest, would affect the state’s 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn’t limited to married people.
Wednesday’s ruling by Cuyahoga County common pleas judge Stuart Friedman changed a felony domestic violence charge against Frederick Burk to a misdemeanor assault charge.
Burk, 42, is accused of slapping and pushing his live-in girlfriend during a January argument over a pack of cigarettes.
His public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the charge because of the new wording in Ohio’s constitution that prohibits any state or local government from enforcing a law that would “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals.”
Prior to the amendment’s approval, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The new amendment banning same-sex marriage no longer allows that.
This disgusts me on all sorts of levels. The discrimination against same-sex partners is bad enough, but using that to reduce the possible penalties for abusing someone you live with purely because you’re unmarried is reprehensible — in this case, the assault was reduced from felony domestic violence, with a possible 18-month jail term, to a misdemeanor assault, with only a possible six month jail term.
Here’s hoping the appeals process goes a long way towards turning this mess around.
“Children of the Light” by Eva O Halo Experience from the album Gothik (1994, 4:22).
I knew who she was, of course, and had seen the occasional brief clip from one film or another here and there, but I had yet to actually watch any of her work. All I knew about her was the image — the blonde bombshell, most often posed either with her skirt blowing up around her waist or in her famous nude shot.
Some Like it Hot
L.A. Story
