Gays can't marry - but inmates can??? Family values?

[The Straight Story]

Was just zipping through the TV and saw the story about the inmate and his wife who recently escaped (The Hyattes).

So let me get this straight. The right does not want gays to marry but convicted felons can marry while still in jail???? Is that family values?

[xultar]

1. Killers, rapists, and child molesters have and respect family values

[Must_B_Free]

2. uninsured don't get healthcare, but prisoners do...

[wli]

3. well, there are worse problems with prisons than that

Like this and that and that too.

[Sapphocrat]

4. Welcome to my world.

Here's something that may interest you. I wrote this in late 2003, on the "sanctity of marriage":

... Richard Ramirez comes to mind. You know, California's "Night Stalker" -- the self-proclaimed satanist who raped and murdered a whole bunch of folks, from kids all the way up to grandmas sleeping in bed, and then drank their blood. He got married on Death Row* a few years back. It was his right.

But it's not my right. The only thing on my record is a traffic ticket from 1990. (Oops, my bad -- it's not on my record. I went to traffic school and got it dismissed. Beyond that, I don't have any sort of record. But I guess that's not enough to qualify me for marriage.)

<snip>

* Not that there's anything unusual about murderers, rapists, and the like getting married in prison.

Off the top of my head:

Erik and Lyle Menendez (who blew away their rich parents with dual shotgun blasts) both did it.

Charles Manson Family member Tex Watson (the one who told Sharon Tate, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business") was not only married in prison, but has fathered four children since he's been on the inside.

Incidentally, if Tex were entering the prison system in many states today, he wouldn't be allowed to have conjugal visits -- but he could still get married! Which kinda blows to hell the argument that marriage between a man and a woman is all about procreation, doesn't it?

Susan Atkins (the Manson Girl who actually stabbed Sharon Tate to death, and considered cutting out Sharon's eight-month fetus) has been married in prison -- not once, but twice.

Angelo Buono, who with his cousin Kenneth Bianchi, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and dumped the corpses of two dozen or more women near L.A. freeway hillsides (making them the "Hillside Stranglers"), bragged about raping and sodomizing girls when he was just 14, was married at least three times and fathered at least six children -- all of whom he abused, either physically, sexually, or both -- and sexually abused the 14-year-old daughter of a live-in lover (who, in Buono's words, needed "breaking in"), long before he and Kenny started their murder spree. And yet he was allowed to marry in prison.

Even grandmother Karla Faye Tucker (whom then-Texas governor George W. Bush mocked cruelly after refusing her a stay of execution) did it.

And so did Ted Bundy (who has no connection to G.W. Bush, save for the fact that the serial killer and the resident-in-chief shared an eerie resemblance), convicted of 36 murders (although the true total may be as high as 100).

And I still don't have the right to get married?

I guess owning a vagina is a worse crime than wholesale slaughter.

The above is part of the introduction to a multi-part piece, "Conservative Babylon: Sex and the Not-So-Single Republican," which details the "moral values" of dozens of different right-wing perverts, from Randal David Ankeney to Charles Wingate.

Intro:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002551/2003/12/08.html#a515

Conservative Babylon: Sex and the Not-So-Single Republican
(This is the last entry; it's easier to read backwards through the posts.)
http://blogs.salon.com/0002551/2003/12/10.html#a523