{"id":12293,"date":"2012-12-18T05:52:41","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T11:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=12293"},"modified":"2012-12-18T05:52:41","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T11:52:41","slug":"further-eroding-the-concept-of-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/18\/further-eroding-the-concept-of-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Further Eroding the Concept of Family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Eureka, two women roommates think that their combined households containing an adult child and two minor children constitutes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/news\/local\/metro\/eureka-disputes-claim-that-it-s-all-in-the-family\/article_1bf74232-5e8f-50bc-9217-ec0107550d83.html\" target=\"_blank\">a family<\/a>.  (Also <a href=\"http:\/\/eureka-wildwood.patch.com\/articles\/definition-of-family-debated-in-eureka\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.enquirerherald.com\/2012\/12\/18\/2228279\/friends-living-together-test-towns.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Note that none of the sources claim they&#8217;re a lesbian couple, which would change the timbre of the case.  The articles claim that they&#8217;re two people who moved in together to share household costs, and they&#8217;ve run afoul of a local ordinance that says homes can only be shared by families.  It&#8217;s designed to keep owners from turning single family homes into multiple unit dwellings and to keep the number of roommates down from frat house levels.<\/p>\n<p>The two women ran afoul of the one family per home regulation, and instead of seeking a variance in the one-family rule , they&#8217;re seeking to expand the definition of <i>family<\/i> to include unrelated <em>and nonsexual<\/em> unions of adults.  You know, like a club or new dyad (why stop with two, though?).  <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost enough to make a fiscal conservative think that the social cons are onto something when they say that the whole concept of family is under sustained, although unrelated, assault.<\/p>\n<p>If these two women and their children constitute a family in the eyes of the law, what does not?  Also, into what other elements of the law would this ruling set a precedent?  A roommate can get custody of a child when the roommates&#8217; shared domicile dissolves?  What about in the death of a roommate, can the roommate get custody over the kid&#8217;s grandparents?  Will insurers have to start covering your roommates?  These are not unrelated questions.<\/p>\n<p>In our grandparents&#8217; time, this sort of argument would be unheard of.  In our parents&#8217; time, it would have been laughable.  In our time, it&#8217;s just plausible enough that it could go either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Eureka, two women roommates think that their combined households containing an adult child and two minor children constitutes a family. (Also here and here.) Note that none of the sources claim they&#8217;re a lesbian couple, which would change the timbre of the case. The articles claim that they&#8217;re two people who moved in together [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-missouri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12299,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12293\/revisions\/12299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}