Maybe We Ought To Do Away With Marriage?

This is a bit of a woolgathering post, so if it comes off disjointed and rambling, please forgive me.

 

I mean, more than usual, of course.

 

It all started in Florida...

Fort Myers Beach town council voted 5-0 to fire Scott Janke "without cause" after Mayor Larry Kiker called an emergency meeting Tuesday night.

 

Kiker said he learned that afternoon that Janke's wife is an adult film star, and word quickly spread. The elected officials took the action a few hours later.

 

"At no time did we make a judgment call on the activities of Mr. Janke or his wife," Kiker told The Associated Press. "It's a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is."

Janke's wife is an actress in adult films who goes under the nym Jazella Moore, and who has starred in the MILF Hunter videos.

 Not my cup of tea, but not hideous or even that obvious a porn actress. This, by the way, was one of the cleaner images I could find of her.

 

So first it was gay marriage that would scare the living crap out of the community, and now it's marrying a porn actor(tress)? Here you have a town manager who was hired to fix problems in the town itself, being fired...for what? His choice of companionship?

 

By the mayor's own admission, Janke "violated no rules or laws and added that he had done a good job for the island town."

 

Huh?

 

A man who was brought in to reunite a town that had been divided over some issues related to its beach...its beach...now finds himself being assumed to be an object of division himself.

 

Look, if he had somehow leaked a videotape of he and his wife (or other person) in the act, and you want to fire him for that, at least that's a construct I can understand. He'd be humiliated and the butt (sorry) of jokes for the rest of his tenure, making his job a little harder to perform to his standards.

 

But to say that his wife is going to somehow affect his ability to negotiate with people or to enforce codes or whatever it is the manager does seems ludicrous. To say that marrying a porn star somehow tarnishes the image of a bikini-clad beach community runs close to the line of silliness.

 

If that's the case, then why not go house by house and look at the folks who live there. Got any porn stars living on the beach? Get rid of them. And the drug dealers. And the guy who's cat meows too loudly when it's in heat.

 

If, as Councilman Tom Babcock of the town states, you are held to a higher standard as a public official, can we assume then there is absolutely zero corruption in the town? Or is Mr Babcock receiving a few bucks under the table because he's looking the other way about underage drinking or perhaps a zoning variance? Maybe he needs to be vetted again, along with every other member of the Ft Myers Beach government.

 

Why is it that marriage to anyone is anyone else's business? If a marriage makes a man or woman happy and helps them to perform their jobs more effectively and makes them better citizens in the community, then by God, why not let the man (or woman) marry whomever the hell they want to and just shut up about it!