Unwed couple, children barred by Missouri town law
By P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times
BLACK JACK, Mo. — The last of the moving boxes has been put away, and the basketball hoop is installed next to the garage door. The refrigerator is covered with vacation snapshots and notices of an upcoming PTA meeting. Yet Olivia Shelltrack and Fondray Loving and their three kids are not yet settled into the sprawling five-bedroom home they bought in January.
In this middle-class suburb of St. Louis, about 14 miles north of downtown, city leaders have ruled that because the couple are not married, they and their children don't belong.
Last week, the Black Jack City Council.... rejected a measure to change the law prohibiting more than three people from living together in the same house if they are unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption. To help enforce the law, anyone moving into a house in Black Jack, as an owner or renter, is required to go to City Hall, show identification for every resident and obtain an occupancy permit.
Shelltrack and Loving, who have lived together for 13 years, said they did not know about the law when they bought their two-story yellow house early this year. The couple have two children together, and Alexia, Shelltrack's teenage daughter, has called Loving her father since infancy.
"I don't get it," said the couple's middle child, 10-year-old Katarina Loving. "My mom and dad love each other. What's the big deal?"
The debate over how to define "family" has become increasingly heated after decades of changing social norms. And a growing number of urban and suburban communities are turning to housing and zoning laws to say what is — and isn't — a family, said Frank Alexander, interim dean of Emory University's School of Law in Atlanta.
"It's a not-so-veiled attempt to control who lives down the street and [to] legislate relationships," said Alexander, who teaches a course on how housing laws define America's families.
Black Jack Mayor Norman McCourt noted that no federal or Missouri law bars housing discrimination based on marital status. Missouri does not recognize common-law marriage.
Advocates say communities are just defending local standards.
"They have the right to protect and restore a marriage-based moral order," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, a public-policy organization based in Washington.
Shelltrack, a 31-year-old stay-at-home mom, and Loving, a 33-year-old customer-service manager for a payroll company, said their families had asked whether the couple wouldn't be better off putting the house up for sale and finding a different city to call home. But they have decided to stay and fight.
The ACLU is helping them file a lawsuit against the city, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched an investigation into whether the city ordinance violates federal fair-housing laws.
If they lose, the couple could be assessed a fine of $500 for every day they live in their home in Black Jack.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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And this is America-a free country
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