The Fundies' Marriage Amendment News and more News of the Weird

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The Sacred Institution of Marriage (continued)
Oklahoma state Rep. Mike O'Neal, married with three children and the author of the state's proposed "Defense of Marriage Act," was charged with a felony in February for grabbing a woman's buttocks in an Oklahoma City bar; he was also accused of making lewd comments to, and chasing after, her. And one of the sponsors of Georgia's sanctity-of-marriage constitutional amendment (introduced in January), state Sen. Bill Stephens, was divorced in 1991 after 15 years of marriage but then had the marriage no-counted ("annulled") in order to marry a Catholic woman in 1994, according to a public records check by Atlanta's Southern Voice.

Adventures With Lubricants

In January, a National Park Service ranger arrested Marvin Buchanon for drug possession along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. Buchanon had been discovered sitting in a truck one evening, naked, covered with baby oil and with women's underwear at his feet. And in a widely reported incident in May, Roger Chamberlain, 44, was arrested in Binghamton, N.Y., after having allegedly smeared 14 containers' worth of petroleum jelly on nearly every inch of the walls and furniture of a Motel 6 room (and who was found shortly afterward at another motel, himself covered with the substance).




Richard Timmons' $80 million police brutality lawsuit went to trial in April in New York City, with Timmons acting as his own lawyer to persuade a jury that he deserved to be a rich man because he was "beat(en) continuously" during his 1997 arrest. The jury turned him down after a quick deliberation, perhaps in part because his crime (for which he was convicted) was a triple murder that included the beheading of his wife and 7-year-old son.


Another Cardinal Rule Broken (the one about keeping a low profile): John Parker and Rick Owens were arrested in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart in Athens, Texas, in April, after they were allegedly spotted by several people sitting in their car carefully cutting out individual counterfeit bills from larger sheets they had just printed. And Dennett Colescott, 41, was arrested at a drugstore in Corte Madera, Calif., in April after an employee reported to police that Colescott was standing at the store's photo printer, calmly copying child pornography.



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[Zuni]

1. more fun with Republicans

Politicians on the High Road
In Louisville, Ky., local Republican Party activists John Lowler and Peter Hayes feuded recently over their status at the upcoming state convention, with Lowler alleging that Hayes punched him. Lowler had first accused Hayes of smearing him by suggesting that he had recently had gay sex. (Lowler acknowledges that he used to be gay but says he is now straight). Hayes said it was Lowler who smeared first by denigrating Hayes' religion, the Unification Church (headed by Rev. Sun Myung Moon). Hayes told the Louisville Courier-Journal in April that Lowler had taunted him by saying, "Moonie, Moonie, Moonie, Moonie, Moonie." (However, Lowler said he could recall saying only "Moonie, Moonie, Moonie.")