ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 1, 1996 TAG: 9602010093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
WELL, IT'S a busy time for members of the Virginia General Assembly, and among the busiest is Del. David Brickley. A Democrat from Prince William County, he has introduced legislation taking on both abusive spouses and unruly students. From the first, he would demand restraint; from the second, respect.
Unfortunately, the way he'd go about exacting civility betrays a legislative lack of restraint and respect - a hubris weird in its otherworldliness but all too common to bill-making.
On the well-meaning advice of doctors, who are all too familiar with spousal abuse, Brickley recommends that Virginia marriage licenses contain the following warning: "The laws of the Commonwealth affirm your right to enter into this marriage as an equal partner and at the same time live within your marriage free from violence and abuse. Neither of you is the property of the other."
A useful admonition, to be sure, especially in reminding the dearly betrothed that laws regarding assault and battery and rape apply to spouses as much as to strangers. Certainly, no one would suggest that such a warning is trivial, especially in relation to other conceivable addenda - say, releasing spouses from legal obligations to pick up after one another or to feign amusement at the other's jokes.
Domestic violence is no joke. It remains scandalously widespread and underaddressed. The question is: Where do you draw the legislative line? Children, after all, shouldn't be treated with violence or as property either. Should protective language be attached to birth certificates?
Laws against physical abuse, moreover, already are on the books; the point is to enforce them in the home as on the street. Steps other than adding fine print to marriage licenses would be more likely to encourage such enforcement, and less likely to confuse proclaiming a thing with making it happen.
Meantime, if the notion that you can't make spouses do what you want comes as disquieting news to some, they may be reassured by another bill, introduced in Brickley's flurry of do-gooding, that at least would require kids to stand at attention.
Brickley has heard about public-school students being less than respectful during daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. What to do but pass another law?
There is the small problem of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that schools may not require students to recite the pledge. But "it's another thing," says Brickley, "to be falling asleep or doodling while the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited. With all the problems we have in this country, this bill won't do any harm."
Yet this bill fails to meet even the unimpressive legislative standard of avoiding harm. Assuming Virginia's schools aren't teaching kids how to swear allegiance and fall asleep or doodle at the same time, who would more likely fall under the censure of such a rule than students who, under the high court's protection, choose not to participate in the pledge?
While we're at it: How would the Department of Education write such rules? How would they be enforced? And how would they differ from rules presumably already in place, formally anyway, prohibiting unruly or disrespectful behavior at all times?
As with his marriage proposal, this pledge bill combines a mismatch of means and ends with a grand restatement of already existing proscriptions that require enforcing. Pity the lawmaker who wisely votes against both, only to be branded in his next campaign a supporter of wife-beating and opponent of the flag. Pity Virginians burdened with representatives who too often put posturing above policy, and distractions before actions.
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