family values

As Elizabeth careens through the Heartland of America on her road trip in search of anti-porn paranoia, I'm continuing to sit in the relative comfort of my apartment in Brooklyn doing my own investigations into the heart of America's traditional values crowd. Just think of me as Peter Fonda in cyberspace, baby. But without bad acid trips or getting shot by rednecks, hopefully.

So this afternoon, as the caffeine hits my brain, the first thing that comes to my attention is a news item from Black Jack, Missouri, via Ed Brayton's Dispatches From the Culture Wars. Black Jack has a certain infamy in the area of civil liberties already: in 2006, they were sued by Fondray Loving and Olivia Shelltrack because the couple, who had lived together for 13 years, was denied an occupancy permit on the grounds that they were in violation of a local ordinance that forbad three or more persons from living together if they were not related "by blood, marriage, or adoption." The couple had two children together, but the oldest was from one of Shelltrack's previous relationships. Loving and Shelltrack filed a federal lawsuit, and the city wound up settling by giving them the permit and spiking the ordinance.