I am to be made an aunt again

[attackfish]

My brother called my parents to announce his engagement.  This was no real surprise to us.  He and his intended are very much in love, and we had all been taking bets on when he was going to get the nerve to ask.  My parents took him out to dinner a few days later, and my mom asked to see the ring.  Well, that engagement ring wasn't alone.  She looked at his wife, and at him, and asked aghast. "Is that a wedding ring?"  Which is how we all learned that the two had eloped.  So then, my dad noticed that my brother's being extra attentive, and my sister went out with my new sister-in-law and noticed she stayed away from alcohol, so when they came over to dinner a few days later, my sister asked her the million dollar question.  Yep, she's pregnant.  She's due in the beginning of August.  So anyway, we just found out the baby's sex, and my brother and his new wife (who is a wonderful woman, and they're crazy about each other) are having a baby girl.  My first niece, I'm so excited!

Comments

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

LOL! What happy news. So no one was miffed about the elopement? Will there be a reception and/or party for the happy newlyweds?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Other than teasing my brother that he's way too old to elope, no. It's because of a retrogressive little Alabama law that says it's illegal to have two adults who share a bed and are not married with kids in the house, and breaking this law is reason to renegotiate custody. They've been playing all kinds of games with guest rooms and separate tents while camping, when they have the boys and it's just gotten ridiculous. Next spring, they're going to hold a wedding, but they just decided it made more sense to get the legal part over with now.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

How has that law not been challenged a million times on privacy rights, pursuit of happiness etc.? o_O Then again this is Alabama, a state where debtor's prisons (http://www.thenation.com/article/178845/town-turned-poverty-prison-sentence#) are alive and well and people hold "Christian Seder" in a building named after a Nazi, so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for just about anything that goes down there.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Wow, just wow. That article is hair raising. I knew that the private prison system in this country is a way of gathering slave labor, but I didn't know about the private probation industry, and the fact that they could imprison people for failing to pay a debt to them. These people are breaking the law in so many ways, and no one wants to tell them no, because they've got it into their head that the people being persecuted are bad and deserve it.

Alabama's custody system is really warped, and there is a history of people being denied custody because of their religious practices, or because they're queer, and for the latter, this particular rule against cohabitation is used as a justification. Yes, this law should be challenged, but child custody and divorce law is so full of frankly horrifying bias in so many ways that this is honest to God one of the more minor ones.

[ljlee.livejournal.com]

I guess Alabama has that big red X on its flag for a reason. I don't get how Southern states can somehow think their way is better when they do worse on just about every marker of life quality there is, from infant mortality (http://www.americashealthrankings.org/AL/IMR/2011) to literacy (https://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/StateEstimates.aspx) to health (http://www.americashealthrankings.org/rankings), life expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy), even divorce (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/25/divorce.bible.belt/). (Obviously there's nothing wrong with people divorcing, it's just laughable for politicians and preachers to wrap themselves in the "family values" mantle and demonize the "East Coast liberals.") And they want the rest of the country to look like them? Ugh.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I don't get it either. I swear though, as soon as I can, it's off to Colorado, and I will never look back.

But in the mean time, I get to enjoy my siblings, nephews, and new niece. Silver linings and all that.