ustxtxb_obs_1965_04_02_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

had lunch together in Austin. They were determined to make an all-out fight against the amendment at the Senate hearing that night on the basis of Christianity, Judaism, and human values. That afternoon, as it happened, Eckhardt spoke on the proposal to a student group at the University of Texas YMCA. He took its purpose to be racial, but said he didn’t know why the real estate people were for it. “I always hate not to know, because there may be something even more sinister than is apparent,” he said. Possibly, he said, the intent was to nullify zoning laws, or to cancel the forced oil pooling law. As he spoke it occurred to him that the amendment would “negative the open beaches bill,” which he sponsored in the House and which became law in 1959. \(This bill said the state had never given up title to the Gulf beaches in such a way as to exclude the right of the people As for human rights, Eckhardt said, Markgraf’s proposal is “one of the most horrible bills that’s ever been devised” and “constitutes the wildest departure from a liberal position,” and its passage would be “a double indictment of the good sense of the legislature.” Since covenants against racial discrimination are required in all federal housing projects, the amendment “could well cause the federal agencies lending money in Texas to have to withdraw,” he said. In sum, Eckhardt thought it most likely that “a bunch of segregationists have sold this to the Texas Real Estate Assn.,” but that it is also possible that land speculators interested in changing land values either up or down might be behind it. THERE WAS A RUMOR that the Senate sponsor, Grady Hazlewood of Amarillo, was going to convert Markgraf’s amendment into California’s Proposition 14. Sure enough, Hazlewood did this, but then he accepted the killing of his own proposal. . This was not apparent to persons who listened only to the public sounds at the Senate hearing, and it was not reported in the daily press. The chamber was filled with churchmen rabbis, ministers, priests. After fiddling and fuming with other questions, the constiutional amendments committee heard Hazlewood. First he proposed to substitute “simply the California amendment, which was voted on by the people of California and passed by two and a half to one majority vote.” But then he recognized an Austin lawyer, Sander Shapiro, who, the senator said, “wrote my will,” was not speaking for anyone but himself, and is a fine man. Shapiro had discovered a defect in the bill Hazlewood said he had not thought of himself. “I don’t know what the amendment will do to existing law,” Shapiro said. People rely on covenants to protect them in subdivisions where there’s no zoning; beyond that, the amendment might outlaw zoning and building restrictions, he said. But then Shapiro went further than Hazlewood wanted him to. “There are 17 organizations here to testify against it, and these organizations represent 100,000 people,” Shapiro said. “I think it will turn into a political strife which is unnecessary at the present time.” Hazlewood interrupted thencut off his only witnessto say that all he had wanted from Shapiro was “the legal point.” Sen. Walter Richter, Gonzales, moved to send the proposal to a subcommittee for “further study” at once, without any more discussion. Hazlewood agreed because of the “legal question.” Callan Graham rose in the chamber to say that his group, the Catholics there, would not insist on testifying. That was that. Asked about the subcommittee, the chairman, who is Sen. Abraham Kazen of Laredo, just smiled. Kilpatrick said, “We won’t ever have to hear debate on it, either.” Sen. A. R. Schwartz, Galveston, said that the amendment had been killed by “only the churches, so help me,” by “a unification of the churches.” Well, what saith the Texas Real Estate Assn.? Truett Latimer is its lobbyist. “Oh, I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he told the Observer. Did the association still support it? Emphasizing the word, “principle,” Latimer replied, “We’re for the principle A Communication As he put it, Rep. Bass had got “quite a lot of fun” out of the hearings on his bills to equalize the legal status of married men and women with respect to rendering their property for taxation, jury duty, transient dancers, and killing the paramour of the other. I also got quite a lot of fun out of Ronnie Dugger’s coverage of the It occurs to me that fellow readers may be interested in the history of a Texas husband’s right to shoot his wife’s lover, regarded by some as Texas’ particular contribution to American jurisprudence. Like so many of our especially Texan legal institutions \(our homestead law, our venue statute, the independent executor, our adoption law, and our community propercuckold’s right to take vengeance for an affront to his conjugal honor is Spanish in origin. It unquestionably recognizes a double standard, as Mmes. Tobolowsky and Scruggs would be the first to point out, but inherent in that recognition is a realization of the fact that some wives are given to playing around a bit as spring rolls around \(see Shakespeare, “Spring,” Love’s Rep. Bob Eckhardt says, the ultimate in All right: I Spring When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings heCuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! that’s involved in the bill, that a person has a right to do what he wants to with his property.” And that was all he would say. The organizations whose spokesmen were ready to testify against it, but who went home confident their purpose had been achieved, represented the Texas Council of Churches, the Texas State Assn. of B’Nai B’Rith, the Department of Christian Social Relations of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, the Houston Jewish Community Council, the Fort Worth, Houston, and Texas components of the American Civil Liberties Union, the San Antonio Board of Rabbis, the social action directors of the Texas Catholic Conference, the Southwest advisory board of the Anti-Defamation League, the Southwest regional council of the American Jewish Committee, the Houston chapter of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, the Catholic Social Action Department of Texas, the Community Relations Council of Dallas Jewish Relations, the Houston Council on Human Relations, and the South McGregor Civic Club of Houston, as well, speaking for themselves, as persons associated with the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. R.D. equality attributable to sex occurs when the adulterer is killedrather than the adulteress. Of course if the husband gets the wife too by mistake, such killing is construed as murder without malice \(that is, voluntary manslaughter in the language fessor Stumberg pointed out, unlike burglars, robbers, and murderers, the paramour gets a “sporting chance” to fight back, and his killing of the outraged husband is treated as murder without malice too. THE SPANISH criminal law effective in Texas until 1835 took a dim view of the activities of a married woman’s paramour and gave the husband the right to punish him. One section of the Spanish Code of 1265 provides, however, that the husband must three times give the paramour notice to stay away and specifies how the warnings are to be given. But if he catches them in the act of adultery, prior warning is unnecessary; the paramour had waived his right to due process, so to speak. Later Spanish codes \(1567 7th cencan deal with the adulterer and the adulteress as he wishes; a 13th century pro II When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings heCuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! .. . April 2, 1965 Origins of the Cuckoo Law