Before the 1960s, it was really hard to get divorced in America.
Typically, the only way to do it was to convince a judge that your spouse had committed some form of wrongdoing, like adultery, abandonment, or “cruelty” (that is, abuse). This could be difficult: “Even if you could prove you had been hit, that didn’t necessarily mean it rose to the level of cruelty that justified a divorce,” said Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Then came a revolution: In 1969, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California (who was himself divorced) signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing people to end their marriages without proving they’d been wronged. The move was a recognition that “people were going to get out of marriages,” Zug said, and gave them a way to do that without resorting to subterfuge. Similar laws soon swept the country, and rates of domestic violence and spousal murder began to drop as people — especially women — gained more freedom to leave dangerous situations.
Today, however, a counter-revolution is brewing: Conservative commentators and lawmakers are calling for an end to no-fault divorce, arguing that it has harmed men and even destroyed the fabric of society. Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, for example, introduced a bill in January to ban his state’s version of no-fault divorce. The Texas Republican Party added a call to end the practice to its 2022 platform (the plank is preserved in the 2024 version). Federal lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, have spoken out in favor of tightening divorce laws.
Easy fix, people will stop getting married. Give the younger generation another reason to not have kids.
If the only families pumping out kids are Christian crackpots, that’s a win for them. They want to out-breed you.
usually
Please cite your source for that. The religious nutters who are adults now were once kids of religious families themselves.
Slight non sequitur, but slightly connected (welcome to my brain). Anyone can safely ignore this long, rambling comment.
There’s a series of books called The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. It starts off as kind of an HP Lovecraft meets spy novel meets a sys admin workplace humor thing. Somewhere in there, I think it’s the 4th book, there’s one called The Apocalypse Codex that deals with a quiverful group of Christian true believers that are accidentally worshipping an otherworldly horror and using parasites to “save” folks. It even features a forced birth center. I’ve known quiverfull, prosperity gospel, literalist folks my entire life, but every time I hear about quiverfull people I still think about that novel. I can highly recommend the series if anything I wrote above sounds remotely interesting, especially if you can get the audiobooks. Here’s one of my favorite passages from that book:
“They’re believers, Mr. Howard. Pentecostalist dispensationalists—they are saved, but they are surrounded by the unsaved, and they think their master is returning imminently, and anyone who isn’t saved by the time of his arrival is doomed. So they intend to save everyone whether or not they want to be saved, one brain parasite at a time.”
Other than the extra-dimensional horror, I think the book pretty accurately describes the mindset of those people. The series metaphor for modern society is so good that he had to delay and rewrite the last book because the original plan, prior to the pandemic, was to have the final resolution be a highly contagious disease.
Yeah we had a big quiverfull church not far from where I used to live. They were in a cycle of being in the news every few years for how they promote their flock to get on government assistance to afford more kids. People making six figure incomes were getting a variety of benefits because they had over a dozen kids, in two cases two dozen kids. This would piss people, garner calls for legal changes to stop this abuse, bring up how they are exactly the type of people who want to scare people with “welfare queen” stories, etc.
For a couple generations, the pumping out children mandate made it grow. However, around the third generation they started seeing a steep decline in parishionership. Basically the founding members’ kids weren’t nearly as willing to stay in this cult, and by their grand children’s generation, their birthrate wasn’t enough to replace their flock. By the time their great grand kids’ generation came around (current time) they were quickly dwindling in numbers. Now every time their welfare stuff hits the news they now have interviews with people who cut their families off, and left the cult, being interviewed about how insane they are.
From what I have been able to find, this seems to be the general timeline of these “super family” sects. They burn themselves out, and as time time progresses, the burnout comes more, and more, quickly. So the long term prospects of the baby factory faiths isn’t good.
With no birth control or abortions, conception will become legally-binding marriage.
Women tend to flee areas like that. Ask China how it worked out with the one child policy.
“Well that’s easy to fix! We just have to prevent them from leaving without a male guardian’s permission.”
– Conservatives, probably
And with child marriage looking to make a comeback, you can bet your ass that arranged marriage will also return.
Turns out the full Biblical definition of marriage is again, women and girls have no say in who they marry. Just wait. First they legalize child marriage, then they legalize arranged marriage. Got a debt to pay off? Just offer the guy you owe money to your daughter. Want to move up the social ladder at work? Have your daughter marry into a higher class. Don’t worry about what she wants. Marriage isn’t about “love”, whatever that is. It’s a tool for moving up in the world. /s
But it’s almost like they want European-style feudalism back. The CEOs and billionaires become the new nobility, and we all become serfs, and we are basically already there. But, I have a plan. I’ll join my liege lord’s army and hopefully I’ll serve honorably enough that he shall award me a fief and small parcel of land. Then y’all can move in and become my serfs!
I was married, later divorced, and am now in a position where I’ve been in a committed relationship for more than 10 years, but we aren’t married.
The benefits are clear and pushed onto us: I can’t share health care with my partner if we aren’t married. The system is rigged to make people in relationships eventually get married.
This is why my husband and I got married after 10 years together. Originally neither of us cared because we were essentially already married. But doing it officially then I could be on his insurance, and if anything happens where one of us gets incapacitated the other can make healthcare decisions. Sucks that’s how it works though.
I was in the same boat as you. However, I met my wife while working overseas. We dated and lived together for two years.
The only reason we got married was for immigration reasons. If she could have came to the US easier then we would still be “dating.”
Once she got to the US, she asked why we divorce so much. I explained for 99% of people we get married for 3 reasons; pregnant, religion, or financial. Once one of those are resolved we split.
It is due to the system pushing you into young marriage. To produce kids young and never own anything but work non stop.
Remember work 50 years for the possibility to enjoy 10, maybe.
What state do you live in if you don’t mind me asking. Many states have rules that would allow you to add them to their insurance if you live together for a length of time. A year for AZ is what popped up when I went to search because I’m here on a work trip.
The concept of the European style family is a tool of conservative control. When you create specific boundaries on what is considered kinship you create subjects of economic categories. If you get a bunch of kickbacks for playing by the rules then there are also people who are purposefully excluded from playing to create additional economic goads. Like if you are disowned from your family you can lose generational wealth and support which is designed to keep young people in line by way of fear . Welfare and social securities weakens the economic ties of the family politic control to make you reliant on the support of the people you are related to by blood and to keep people who might be your chosen family at a distance unable to help.
So called “family values” aren’t lovely dovey nice things. They are to make being an individual with different needs a failure state.
That would be crazy. The courts would have to rule that kids can be legally culpable. That would be wild shit.
Isn’t this the same argument as “if women can’t have abortions, they will stop having sex”?
Nobody gets married under the assumption they will get divorced. Marriage is supposed to be a gesture of a life long commitment.
On top of that, there are financial benefits to getting married.
I highly doubt this would stop anyone from getting married.
People should stop getting married because it’s a government contract based in religion - it’s gross and I don’t want either of those things being involved in my relationships.
I fully agree marriage should be simple with little to no government or religion involvement. That’s why we see less people getting married or if they do it’s later in life.
The only real reason to get married now is financial and health benefits. That’s it.
Making it harder to divorce will lead to the ones waiting to rethink if it’s even worth it.
Marriage rates have already been dropping and divorce is an available option. Removing that out isn’t going to increase people’s confidence about going into marriage.
And as the nightmare stories come out about the guys (and probably some girls, too) who change overnight once the marriage license is official (or annulment period ends or whatever becomes the “now you’re locked in as long as I don’t get caught cheating”), it’ll only go down further.
There will also be a reaction to the women who decide to just stop being loyal once they are done with a marriage but can’t get out.
“It harms men.”
So does rat poison. You walk back no fault divorce get ready for a return of mysterious deaths of shitty men.
I’m all for them getting their just desserts, but not at the cost of women suffering
When Ronald fucking Reagan is too liberal for your party, I think it’s time for self-examination.
Republicans today are not the same as Republicans back then. Reagan did more for illegal immigrants than any president since. I’d vote for him in a heartbeat if it was him versus the two bad jokes currently campaigning.
He also ignored the AIDS epidemic on purpose, leaving thousands to die simply because he didn’t like gay people.
This is what you really NEED to know about abolishing no fault divorce:
And that will cause huge problems, especially for anyone experiencing abuse. “Any barrier to divorce is a really big challenge for survivors,” said Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “What it really ends up doing is prolonging their forced entanglement with an abusive partner.”
If they abolish no fault divorce it WILL cost lives
That is the bottom fucking line. There is no argument against divorce that exists that can prevent that. Wait no there is, oh golly they will make exceptions for abuse. That sure fucking sounds familiar. Hmm like maybe it was the concession ‘pro-life’ would make for abortion.
And look how that turned out.
Before roe v wade was overturned they were all about protecting the abused, somewhat, with caveats. Kinda like they are talking about divorce here innit?
If they abolish no fault divorce it WILL cost lives
“Probably, but those are lives of women, not people.”
-Conservatives who support this shit
Stop you’re making me cry. It’s so “funny cuz it’s sad” it went past the point of being funny.
you’re not wrong.
Democrats need to stop using these terms. Republicans are pro human-capital. They want numerous, dumb, poor workers to control and they want to own women.
Interestingly, I’d assume that between home surveillance systems and cell phones, proving domestic violence shouldn’t be too tough nowadays.
I don’t think this is a safe assumption. The victim may not have free access to hardware. The police/etc may not believe them. They may be afraid of being murdered if they try to record something. Just off the top of my head.
You can read “why does he do that?” by Lundy Bancroft for fascinating and depressing information about abuse. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224552.Why_Does_He_Do_That_Inside_the_Minds_of_Angry_and_Controlling_Men
Just like how “there will be exceptions for unviable pregnancies” no amount of direct video evidence of abuse will be enough to justify for the courts to justify a divorce. If they had people’s well being and best interests in mind this wouldn’t even be proposed.
This should require anyone working on these laws that is divorced to be retroactively married to their ex-spouse automatically.
Those women did nothing wrong, don’t punish them like that.
This is exactly why they are working on these laws: so they can treat their wives like property and the women have no recourse.
Meh, very often the women married to conservative assholes aren’t blameless. And often share their husband views.
A lot of them are raised to be that way though. One of the big pushes in a lot of Christian circles, for example, is the push to raise kids believing in complementarianism instead of egalitarianism–simply put, that god created men and women to have different roles, and that men just so happen to be in the role of leadership. Combine that with extreme purity culture (at times involving courtship instead of dating, for example) and a fervor to push for big families, and you get a bunch of grown ups looking up after 5, 10 years in a marriage going, “wait, I was promised happiness, why am I so miserable?” Divorce is a huge tool to help. We need to give people, especially women and children, a safe exit from high control spaces.
No, because they had a valid reason to get divorced, unlike everyone else.
Just like their abortion.
I know more than one woman who fled one of these convenant marriage states. One still can’t get the divorce officialized because her toxic abusive husband keeps insisting on an endless parade of marriage counseling, via answers to the divorce court.
I don’t know if forcing her back into the marriage because that same abusive husband started working for a legislative lobbying outfit would be productive.
I have had enough of conservatives climbing into the tree house and pulling up the ladder behind them.
Some, they say, can’t get married. Now they want to say who can split up. Let’s see them live the walk they talk first.
