Occupancy Permits and Bureaucracy, Oh, My

So it turns out that occupancy permit I bitched about having to get wasn't just about my lil' ol' township making some extra scratch on each home purchase. No, no. It turns out it's actually about small-minded politicians deciding who should be allowed to live in a house together. Yes, that's right. They make you register who lives in the house so they can decide whether it's a fit arrangement to allow into their town.

(Update: The link to the article has now been replaced with a link to the Google cache of the article, as the original copy of the story is now gone from the hosting server.)

Insert explatives about living in the mid-you-know-what here. I know it's not the mid-you-know-what's fault, but sometimes things here seem a little...discouraging.

If you're too busy to RTFL, I'll summarize. It's apparently okay to have one child in your house if you are two consenting adults living together out of wedlock, but it's not all right to have more than one. That's just flaunting your lack of family values, I guess. Here's the best quote:

At the hearing, Shelltrack said, one board of adjustment member, Norma Mitchell, even pointed at her and asked, "I don't understand why you as a woman didn't exercise your right to marry that man," before being hushed by another board member.

I'm all for marriage. Hell, I'm sure you all know by now that I'm married myself, and happy that way. In fact, I'm all for any two people who love each other enough to work as hard as being married requires, marrying each other. But I don't see how forcing two people into an institution the bureaucrats in question supposedly hold so sacred strengthens the concepts of marriage, family, or, it gags me to type it when I'm using it like those gee-this'll-get-me-votes politicians use it, values.

I'm sure some people wonder why those two people don't just go down to the courthouse to pay their forty bucks and get a marriage certificate that will appease the powers that be and then put it out of their minds, going on with their lives in the same arrangement they had before. I'm sad to tell you that I'd probably do that too, just for expediency's sake. There's a pretty good argument for it. It's easier, keeps 'em off you back, and if you're committed enough to buy a home and live the life that would be described in many states as a common law marriage, why not get the piece of paper and frame it upside-down on your mantel just as a conversation point?

Why should they have to, though? If it didn't bother them (for whatever reason it does) they probably would already have done it. It's clearly a deeper issue. One that goes to the heart of why some people find it so satisfying to decide for other people who are causing absolutely no harm to anyone else (or no harm, at least, that would somehow be lifted by forcing them to simply go through a charade of a civil ceremony that means nothing to either of them) what is and is not "appropriate" or "moral".

I, for one, don't think it's particularly moral to force your own concepts of religion (because, let's face it, that's what every tetchy marriage-related issue goes back to) or sanctity onto others. I certainly don't think it's very moral enact a law that allows you to sneakily sit (ugh, I hate splitting infinitives, but rewording it makes me sound like Judi Dench) in judgement of each and every otherwise-happily living and breathing family that happens into your beloved little township.

(I realize, before someone says it in the comments, that laws such as these are usually on the books to prevent 100 people from squeezing into one house and causing actual problems with sanitation and the like. I realize also that this is the excuse these people sitting in judgement of this family are hiding behind, but that application of the law has no relevancy in this case. That may be the spirit of the law, but they are using the letter of it to decide who is righteous enough to move in, and that is where my stomach turns.)