For years, social conservatives have been fighting to prevent certain people from getting married. But they’re waging a parallel battle, too: Trying to keep married couples together.
In cooperation with the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, socially conservative politicians have been quietly trying to make it harder for couples to get divorced. In recent years, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills imposing longer waiting periods before a divorce is granted, mandating counseling courses or limiting the reasons a couple can formally split. States such as Arizona, Louisiana and Utah have already passed such laws, while others such as Oklahoma and Alabama are moving to do so.
If divorces are tougher to obtain, social conservatives argue, fewer marriages will end. And having more married couples is not just desirable in its own right but is a social good, they say. During his presidential campaign, former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) emphasized finishing high school and getting married as cures for poverty. “If you do those two things, you will be successful economically,” he declared at a 2011 event in Iowa.
A legislative movement against divorce may seem like a non-starter in a country where half of married couples avail themselves of this right, but as with legal challenges to Obamacare and the rise of the tea party movement, today’s fringe idea can quickly become tomorrow’s mainstream conservatism.
Divorce has long been a cultural touchstone in America. Social conservatives regularly advocate a return to a more traditional system of divorce — namely that it be extraordinarily difficult to get. For example, the only way an Alabamian could get a divorce under the state’s original 1819 constitution: “No decree for such divorce shall have effect until the same shall be sanctioned by two thirds of both Houses of the General Assembly.” Even a battered wife — who, of course, couldn’t vote — would have to petition her all-male state legislature and get supermajority approval before being freed from matrimony.
In 1969, California became the first state to legalize no-fault divorces — permitting divorce without requiring proof of wrongdoing such as adultery — in the Family Law Act, signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan. Within a decade, 45 other states had joined California. By 1985, 49 states had legalized no-fault divorce; New York did just four years ago .
No-fault divorce has been a success. A 2003 Stanford University study detailed the benefits in states that had legalized such divorces: Domestic violence dropped by a third in just 10 years, the number of husbands convicted of murdering their wives fell by 10 percent, and the number of women committing suicide declined between 11 and 19 percent. A recent report from Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress found that only 28 percent of divorced women said they wished they’d stayed married.
Yet the conservative push for “divorce reform” is finding sympathetic ears in statehouses, where Republican lawmakers have regularly introduced bills to restrict the practice. Their rationales range from the biblical (God bemoans divorce in Malachi 2:14-16) to the social (divorce reduces worker productivity) to the financial (two households are more expensive to maintain than one). Leading conservatives such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have also argued that marriage is a solution to poverty.
Is there anything social conservatives don’t want to meddle in? Now it’s someone else’s marriage. The divorce rate in this country is about 50%. Additionally, about 50% of all Americans are married. The statistics aren’t really all that good. However, is this situation a problem and, if it is a problem, is the social conservative meddling a fix?
For starters, couples can’t just decide to get a divorce, in most states, and go do it. Is making divorce difficult a way to protect children or is it a way to make certain their parents REALLY hate each other? Any delays in divorce make the process more expensive. Adding additional financial burden can’t be good for anyone.
Let’s ask that all important question: Does marriage really protect children and ensure their well-being? I would say emphatically NO. I believe good relationships between parents help children to grow in a relatively stress free environment. Marriage does not have to be a part of this good relationship. The government cannot legislate good relationships. Any attempt to prolong marriages that are destined to fail is simply more interference from the social do-gooders who want less government intrusion in you life. Go figure.
Indeed I am, George. I remembered it, and this thread caused me to go back and read it again.
Thank you Wolfy for remembering this. Rick, you may not know what love is but I can tell you I do.
That is one of the prime purposes of marriage. For people to stick with one another when things go really bad. I’m in favor of people doing that.
But I’m still in favor of deconstructing what “love” is, so that we can understand it. I say it’s projection of your needs onto another person, with sexual attraction added.
I’m speaking of “romantic love”. The kind middleman is speaking of is largely one’s own ebullience projected outwards.
All I can say Rick is that I would not want to live in your world or your household. Must be like living in East Berlin during the Cold War.
It’s probably good to remember that Rick often plays the role of provocateur. It’s good for our brains.
IMHO he’s doing a piss poor job of it.
I think I’m living in the same world as a very large percentage of people. Who are fatalistic about marriage.
If “love” is not as I described it, what do you think that it is? A magical substance sprinkled in the aether, dropped down on us from time to time by storks?
No poems, please.
I know that Rick likes to push buttons a bit, but I find his posts on this thread almost tragic. There’s a lot of subtext there. And I can’t imagine posting some of those feelings on a blog, of all things. I can’ t imagine Mrs. Bentley not being hurt by that.
Anyway, I’ll throw in my two cents, based on my own small sample of 1. I’ve been married to the same guy for over 30 years now. We were pretty much kids when we got married–had no money, needed to finish school, and needed to learn to live together and function as adults. I can assure you that it hasn’t been all roses and chocolates all these years, either. We were tested in ways we never imagined.
So fast forward to now, with an (often, but not always) empty nest, and we’re entering a new phase that seems really exciting to both of us, with new hobbies, a renewed interest in fitness and a close-knit group of friends. We have our share of anxieties like anyone else, but there is no sense of fatalism at all. We’re all grown up, we’re having fun together and taking care of each other. It’s not perfect (what is?), but it feels a lot like real love to me. Some things just need to age a bit to be really fantastic. Renewable contract? Prenup? Pshaw–we both have good careers and would do quite well financially alone. But why give up on something that keeps getting better?
George, you made my day. Thank you.
It sounds like you all were either lucky or worked real hard at making your relationship a huge success. (or maybe a little of both)
I do think that today’s couples should look at pre-nups. Unless it is a very mature couple, most people let hearts and flowers do their thinking for them rather than reality. I also think young people have no clue what you could be facing should you end up divorced. Financial issues one faces in divorce can be debilitating.
Over my lifetime, I have seen some of the most unlikely people divorce–people you thought were pretty close to being the perfect couple. Then the ones you would have bet on as most likely to divorce are still going strong.
Mrs. Bentley’s last name is not really Mrs. Bentley, so it’s all good.
@Rick Bentley Well, I needed to call her something, since I have no idea what your last name is. Guess what? My husband’s last name isn’t Woodhouse, either 😉
Thanks Emma. You know what is scary? If Rick and whoever his wife is have children who are growing up in a loveless house. Won’t call it a, “Home”, since that implies a place where love abides. It is sad to think they will grow up as unloved and perhaps heartless souls wondering what is missing from their lives. Will they pull the wings off of butterflies because they have no love for beautiful things? Or maybe Ted Bundy clones or Jeffrey Dahmer who “loved” his fellow man with a little parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme? Makes one wonder…
George, you’re out of line. I’ve helped to raise children and love my grandson more than anything.
You make a rather large step from one being cynical about romance to one being a sociopath. It’s interesting that that connection flies out of you.
But I’ll try to approach your rather insulting comment rationally …
Do you really believe that Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer used people as objects, without compassion, because they weren’t taught adequately to believe in “love”? You think their mental illness could have been avoided if someone had stressed your personal philosophies to them more strongly? What I think is that those guys were born twisted. And that too often in society people naively look to blame mental illness on bad parenting.
Nothing that I said attacked family structure or the importance of parents showing love for and being tightly bonded to their children. I am advocating a realistic approach to marriage in the 21st century.
From your comment about Bundy and Dahmer I can see that you and I see the world very differently. I’ve come to believe that the root of much evil lies in mental illness.
Some people are born sadists, without compassion. It happens.
Some people are born pedophiles – that’s not a choice that people make.
Some people are born highly aggressive, predisposed to murder others.
People too often want to pretend that we’re all born equal, and that with good family structure and good parenting that children won’t turn out bad. But I think that Bundy and Dahmer and the Marquis de Sade and the average pedophile in jail were born this way.
Too often in those cases (this is true of Dahmer, and Bundy) one parent was a bad one, and we try to see their evil as a reflection of that parenting. But more often than not I think that’s a red herring. The real cause and effect is that the parent was bat-s*it crazy, and the kid was also.
I’m not saying that we can’t make a positive difference in this world with kids. I am saying that Dahmer and Bundy are not good examples for you to be using.
Who are you Rick to determine when I’m out of line? I think you are warped and must not have had much love in your early life and thus believe this is how life should be. Too bad and very sad. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
“I’ll go a step further on this – as we all know that I like to take my posts towards a level of discomfort.”
Which makes it exceedingly funny that you now accuse George of being “out of line”.
I think that when he speculates about the type of home my children grew up in, it’s pretty far out of line. Ditto on my childhood.
Presumably he feels the same way about most of the divorced fathers of the world, so maybe I shouldn’t take it personally.
“I think you are warped”
And I think that your anger is based in your fear of living life alone and looking the reality of human existence in the face. It’s similar to the vehement reaction the very religious sometimes have when someone asserts that their God is not real.
I felt that way a while back in this thread, but I didn’t speculate about what effect this may have had on your children, or call you “warped”. I’m doing it now, though. Not for the first time on this board, real bitterness comes out of you towards someone who sees the world differently than you.
I’ve got to assume that if you had a gay kid and your wife left you, you’d go completely off the deep end.
Interesting point about “nature” vs. “nurture” when it comes to truly evil people. When I was in nursing school, I did a rotation at the former Dominion Hospital, in the eating disorders unit (yeah, an Italian girl like me, who wished just once she could say “Just eat the friggin’ pizza already and stop obsessing about it!”) and also the unit that housed people with Multiple Personalty Disorder. A look at the patient charts in both units had some level of consistency. In far too many cases, parents were extremely abusive–involved in Satanic rituals and the like where the patients were victimized in one way or another while they were growing up. How sad that there are so many victims (and largely women, at least while I was there) suffering the aftereffects of such grievous abuse. No one could grow up normal in those situations.
I think that correlation makes sense for eating disorders, frequently tied to self-image issues rather than mental deformity. But will break down when we approach sociopathy.
OK, now I’m imagining that George has a male gay kid, who gets married, raises a child with their spouse, and the kid occasionally hears sex through the walls. The kid also turns out to be gay, and George’s son teaches him at some arguably appropriate age the basics of safe sex and that gay sex is nothing to be ashamed of. Then George’s kid gets divorced and raises the grandchild while teaching them that romantic love is not a solution to life’s problems. And then when George starts to go absolutely crazy over this, his wife leaves him over the issue. THEN he’d really go nuts.
Gee Rick, you have found me out. I’m crazier than a bed bug.
Oh, maybe I should say, “Nuttier tha a FRUIT cake.”