Criticism
The far-reaching nature of the Marshall-Newman Amendment intended to reinforce its Marriage Affirmation Act has attracted criticism. Writing in The Washington Post, Jonathan Rauch argued that:
Virginia appears to abridge gay individuals' right to enter into private contracts with each other. On its face, the law could interfere with wills, medical directives, powers of attorney, child custody and property arrangements, even perhaps joint bank accounts. If a gay Californian was hit by a bus in Arlington, her medical power of attorney might be worthless there.
The Virginia Attorney General has issued an opinion stating that the amendment does not change the legal status of documents such as contracts, wills, or Advanced Medical Directives between unmarried people.
While experts are divided on the exact impetus for the amendment, political commentators have suggested that it was placed on the ballot following confidential polling indicating that incumbent senator George Allen might not be successful in his bid to win re-election. Republican strategists may have hoped that the Marshall-Newman Amendment would turn out the socially conservative voter to not only pass a ban on gay marriage, but also re-elect Allen. Although the Marshall-Newman Amendment did pass, Allen's campaign self-destructed, following the so-called Macaca controversy.
Read more about this topic: Marshall-Newman Amendment
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)