I don’t even want to hear about Mike Huckabee polling well. Given how much the GOP’s fortunes have improved just based on outrage over the Democrats profligate spending and regulating (even after 6 years of the same by the GOP), I think the folks that like Mike Huckabee need to be drummed out of the party. I’m all for a big tent and everything, but Mike’s Jesus Juice isn’t something you can build a majority with. I’m fine with having a coalition with Christian conservatives, but religion and family aren’t promoted by big government. Bitter and I continue to live in sin because of the hope and change keeping our household underemployed, with the constant prospect of being unemployed. Makes planning an expensive event months later difficult. I can’t believe we’re the only people in this boat. Apparently birth rates are falling too, since people are afraid to start families because of the economy.
So Social Conservatives need to forget about Huckabee. The Hope and Change is killing family values more than anything.
Doing the right thing is not always the easiest way. Not always the most financially conducive either. IF you two want to get married and be a real family, don’t let Obama and gang stop you. You don’t have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a wedding. You can have a simple but good wedding. Just takes a little planning.
Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Even simple weddings are going to be expensive if you have no income coming in, or have to be focused on finding another job. I definitely could pull it off if I wanted to, but I’d probably have to piss off some friends and relatives.
Agreed. You don’t need no expensive wedding ceremony to be married. In fact, you don’t even need no stinkin’ government license. My wife and I have no such license and had no such ceremony.
Don’t know what this has to do with Huckabee …
Until fairly recent times, the notion that a couple was “living in sin” because they had not had a church wedding, would have been considered odd. Certainly throughout the medieval period, a couple that considered themselves married in the eyes of God were married as far as everyone else was concerned. The Church was happy to officiate at a wedding, but as long as this was a lifelong commitment, that was really all that mattered. There were, of course, the need for the banns to make sure that two people were not unintentionally engaged in an incestuous marriage, but that is a different issue.
The notion of official governmental sanction is something that comes out of Puritan disapproval of Catholic doctrine that treated marriage as a sacrament.
We could go the JoP route, but that would probably disappoint some family.
We’ve got the commitment thing down, and while I wouldn’t say we have our hearts set on some big, elaborate, expensive ceremony, not having one would disappoint some family.
A wedding doesn’t have to be expensive. People turn a serious commitment into a social event–and often such an expensive event that it destroys the financial resources of the couple or of their families, for years. That does not accomplish anything good. I know of couples whose marriage didn’t survive paying off the wedding.
“religion and family aren’t promoted by big government.”
They can, however, be pretty well destroyed by it. The biggest disaster of the 1970s was no-fault divorce, which took us from a society where divorce was too hard, to one where it was too easy. The costs of traditional divorce were high enough to encourage some couples to work a bit harder on their differences. The consequences of easy divorce have been dire, especially on children.
Yeah, I was about to say, do like my lovely bride and I did, and elope. ;-) There was a little disappointment, but overall everyone was quite happy for us.
As for the rest of this post…yeah, that.
Little risk with that for us, since we’re not talking about a lot of money. Not any more than we likely paid for the vacation to Hawaii. The difference is I could plan that at the last minute, given my job is safe for the next few months (at least I’m pretty sure). My fear is that we make a commitment to spend a few thousand bucks, go ahead with the thing, and then I lose my job a month before. Then you have the cost of the event, plus the opportunity cost of focusing on a wedding when you need to be finding a new job.
We’re hiring. We have two positions open, and aren’t having any luck filling either of them. Java, JSP, SQL, Struts. And you get to live in a state with a serious gun rights constitutional provision.
The big problem with Huckabee is he a BIG spender. If you look at his record you will see plenty of big spending, but funny not one pair of unmarried cohabitants in the stocks. Save your worries for real things.
That’s not his worry. His point is that for a man who supposedly wants to put family values first, smaller government would be the best tool for putting families back on track. More people would likely take the plunge to get married, more people would be willing to have babies, and families wouldn’t have to spend so much time and energy worrying about their jobs and whether they get to keep their homes so they can instead focus on the things to do with their children. No one here is arguing that they believe Huckabee wants to put unmarried people in the stocks, we’re just making the point that a healthier economy would be the best way to get the results the social conservatives want in terms of putting family values back on the table.
I completely agree with Bill and Bitter: Huckabee always gave me the willies, because of his Big Government tendencies. I have no problem with him being a Jesus Freak.
I have similar qualms with Mitt Romney, despite sharing his faith. I’m not convinced that he’s a Small Government type.
I’ve voted Libertarian most of my life, and would rather have another 4 years of the O, than have Huckster in office. The guy is evil, yet somehow evangelicals eat it up. Disappointing.
Bitter,
I guess you know your partner better then me but all read was Jesus Juice and some apparent worry about the fact that you guys were unmarried and not much that Huckabee
could give Obama a run for his money on profligate spending.
You really, really misread that. He’s not a social conservative, so that’s an area of disagreement. He’s just pointing out that he’s more than willing to coalition with them for the sake of politics. But, that for the sake of accomplishing the goals they claim such as promoting families, fiscal conservatism is the key. Getting people out of this period of uncertainty will encourage more couples to formally settle down and will encourage more baby-making. If families are the ultimate goal, then they are best served by working with others in their coalition to fix the economy, not tax and spend everyone into bankruptcy.
I wonder why the government needs to be involved in marriage at all, other than as a contract between parties.
If a man a woman contract to be married, what business is it of government? Likewise, two men or two women.
4 men and 6 women? So what? What business is it of yours? Marriage is a contract, and as long as the parties contracting are adults who are competent to enter contracts, the government should stay out of it.
The courts have enough time dissolving a marriage between two people. I can’t imagine more than two. The problem isn’t really the contract itself, it’s how do you deal with the situation when one of the parties wants out?
“I wonder why the government needs to be involved in marriage at all, other than as a contract between parties.”
Because the children that the biological products of the marriage aren’t parties to the contract. This is about the only particularly good reason remaining for the government to be concerned about marriage–and guess what? Same-sex marriages don’t have biological children.
“Because the children that the biological products of the marriage aren’t parties to the contract. This is about the only particularly good reason remaining for the government to be concerned about marriage–and guess what? Same-sex marriages don’t have biological children.”
That, and you are ignoring the fact that the government is not regulating who can have children, they are regulating who can get married. You had to have fallen asleep in class to think the two are related.
“The problem isn’t really the contract itself, it’s how do you deal with the situation when one of the parties wants out?”
The same way you deal with a legal partnership, such as a law or medical practice when one wants out.