Do not want.
I don't suppose it's much of a surprise anymore that Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli as a problem with the womenfolks these days, and the womenfolks these days have a problem with him, but there are a few particular snippets
in this piece about Cuccinelli support within the "fathers' rights movement" that seem, well,
off. Cuccinelli has that same awkward
offness about him that affects so many theocrats, where their every profession of having "values" seems a bit too feudal lord, a bit too "future religious cult leader still deciding whether to go with the feathered hat or the one with antlers." It's all got this undercurrent of intangible
icky.
“If you are sued for divorce in Virginia, there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop it,” Cuccinelli said in 2008 to the Family Foundation, a socially conservative Richmond-based advocacy group. “This law has everything to do with the breakdown of the family. The state says marriage is so unimportant that if you just separate for a few months, you can basically nullify the marriage. What we’re trying to do is essentially repeal no-fault divorce when there are children involved.”
As a state senator in 2005, Cuccinelli offered a bill that would have made it so parents initiating a no-fault divorce could have that action counted against them “when deciding custody and visitation.”
We're advocating that people who want a divorce should be forced to say married? Because that will stave off the "breakdown of the family"? I suppose that makes sense if you consider "families" to be the same thing as pet hamsters or puppy breeding mills, but it seems to conflict rather egregiously with the whole notion of granting people free will, or the government not getting involved in personal lives, or a host of other things. Yes, I realize that this debate still rages on in certain circles, but those circles are backwards and stupid. The rest of us moved on a long time ago.
More on Cuccinelli's creepiness below the fold.
And punishing the parent who initiated divorce proceedings would have rather nasty effects, when we're talking about violent or otherwise abusive relationships. I'm not sure what is supposed to be accomplished by giving an abusive father custody of the children rather than the mother who had finally decided she had had enough. Once you've gotten to the point where you're deciding who has to keep living with who in order to satisfy your own personal convictions about these things, you get into a very dangerous area, and Ken Cuccinelli's notions of who can't be in a relationship with who (gay people, primarily) and who should be forced to be (everyone else) strike me like a grown man playing house with other people's lives. Then there's this, related:
This year, 47 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Cuccinelli was one of three who did not sign it. His spokesman said at the time that Cuccinelli would not support a bill that was still subject to change.
The updated legislation has been law since March, and Virginia Democrats have run ads against Cuccinelli on the issue. He still has not articulated a firm position on the issue, though Nix said he and “other law enforcement in Virginia are highly motivated to do everything in their power to protect women and children within the commonwealth.”
That
subject to change bit is of course horseshit; officials supporting bills that are subject to change happen all the damn time, because bills are
always subject to change before being passed into law. That's how it works. If you're claiming you can't have opinions on proposed laws of the land until after they're settled law, what the hell do we need you for? If you still can't quite muster a solid, non-fishy-sounding opining
after it's become law either, then I think it's very fair for other people to point out that you don't seem to be trying very hard.
People during the 2012 campaign sometimes said that they found Mitt Romney "creepy." I never did; wooden, certainly, and awkward to the point of a Chevy Chase comedy sketch, but you could at least identify his underlying motivations in the race, even if those motivations nearly always boiled down to "people like me should have more money, because I want that." He was not a particularly likable persona, to be sure, but neither was he particularly contempt-worthy. I find people like Ken Cuccinelli to be genuinely "creepy," however, because his own underlying motivations on every issue are seemingly to ensure that other people comport their lives, loves and emotions in accordance to his wishes. It's those social issues that motivate him, not the economic ones, and on the social issues his rhetoric frequently turns to various explanations as to why other people's sexuality or family lives or separation decisions are wrong and what the state should be doing about that. That's what hits the uncanny valley spot, for me, the thing that makes Cuccinelli feel like something plucked from a cautionary tale or an old Twilight Zone episode. As theocratic, Taliban-lite action figure, he's a little too on the nose.