Turns out, “anger at women’s autonomy.” Just a slightly more round-about way, that’s all.
Much like the hardcore anti-abortion crowd is all geared up to go after contraceptives, the hardcore anti-gay-marriage crowd is settin’ its sights on no fault divorce.
MADISON, Wis. A leading supporter of the gay marriage ban approved by voters this week says it’s just the first step in an effort to build a “culture of marriage” in Wisconsin.
Family Research Institute executive director Julaine Appling says the next step is “stopping the bleeding of no fault divorce.”
Just the next obvious step in our march back to tradition.
Fifty-nine percent of voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Appling says the organization doesn’t perceive gays and lesbians as “the enemy,” but rather is focused on preserving the institution of marriage.
What a gold-star day for the gay rights movement: downgraded from “enemy” to “collateral damage” by the Family Research Institute. Sorry, queers, but if we let you join our club how are we going to keep control of our womenfolk? You seem like a reasonable bunch, I’m sure you see our dilemma.
Hopefully the Family Research Institute has tipped their hand a bit early, it’s just too bad they didn’t tip it early enough to affect the outcome on that bigotry amendment.
*headdesk* *headdesk*
Yanno, I think that a happy marriage is A Good Thing. I also think it’s terrible when a man dumps his wife for a trophy model or whatever.
But banning no-fault divorce flies in the face of so much reputable social science, not to mention common sense, that I want to pull my hair out.
A study (by Justin Wolfers and Betsy Stevenson) has shown that no-fault divorce has lowered domestic violence rates and dramatically lowered women’s suicide rates. Why? For one thing, no-one is driven to suicide or murder to escape miserable marriages. For another, women (who file the majority of divorce petitions) can credibly threaten their husbands with divorce in order to negotiate better treatment.
Most tribal societies have, or had, the equivalent of no-fault divorce. Nisa of Marjorie Shostak’s famous !Kung monograph had three husbands. In most societies, a woman had every right to kick her husband out and send him back home to his Mom (and likewise a husband could easily leave and go back home to Mom if he wanted!).
Other studies have shown that divorce rates are much lower amongst college-educated people with high incomes. Therefore, I humbly suggest education, job training, and job creation as the panacea we are all looking for. Decent jobs: good for the economy, good for marriage, good for self-esteem, good for what ails ya! And much less intrusive on privacy and personal rights, to boot.
Why can’t people see how fucking pathetic and sad it is to want to force someone to stay married to you? Whatever happened to these people’s pride and self-respect?
But banning no-fault divorce flies in the face of so much reputable social science, not to mention common sense, that I want to pull my hair out.
the point is to make america as godly and legally christian a country as possible by whatever means possible, so that when He (possibly jesus, possibly Sweet Chocolate Cthulhu, opinions among Pre-millenial Dispensationalist dominionist groups vary) returns, America will be made into the perfect utopian New Jerusalem, and the various filthy pagan jews, muslims, catholics and secularist liberal scummunists will be dropped into hell to suffer a million flaming agonies for all of eternity (or so say the ones who think jesus is going ot come back, those who believe in the second coming of our gender neutral lord sweet chocolate cthulhu think that it will be a time of puppies, kittens and soft beds with well built, appropriatly gendered/post-gender sexbots who’ll suit our every personal sexual preference and desire, for all the filthy pagan jews, muslims, catholics and secularist liberal scummunists who refuse to repent)
Er. Their lame attempts at fulfilling Holy Babble doctrine don’t go far enough, but if they did their hypocrisy would show, and we can’t have that, now can we? The buybull hates all sin equally, including divorce, so why are divorced people welcomed in church but gays are not?
Until the religious wackos start lobbying heavily to outlaw all divorces, why, it sure looks like they’re picking and choosing which buybull doctrine to follow. The only time in the buybull that geeshus got pissed enough to throw stuff around, I do believe it was in the temple, and hypocrisy was the cause.
Christians are fucking hypocrits and I am sick to fucking death of them. ALL OF THEM.
I’m not, because none of the Christians I know personally are anything like this, and their beliefs have always seemed a lot closer to the Christianity I learned about in school.
This is truly beautiful – I want to urge you all to get the Republican Party to support the repeal of divorce laws everywhere. Can you think of a less popular move, of anything more guarenteed to cost them the vote of every person who’s been married more than once (inter alia)?
Let’s see. It would cost them the vote of Rush Limbaugh (divorced 4x), Robert Dole (divorced, dumped first wife when she had cancer), Newt Gingrich (divorced 2x, dumped first wife when in hospital, cheated on second with secretary), and John McCain (dumped aging first wife for fresh young second).
Oh waitaminnit – they’re all REPUBLICANS! Dangit! I guess we won’t lose their votes!
Just goes to show how hypocritical the “famblee values” crowd really is. Divorce is A-OK for aging white men who want younger wives, but not for the unwashed masses, and CERTAINLY not for women to initiate!
[...] PunkAssBlog: The hardcore anti-gay-marriage crowd is settin’ its sights on no fault divorce [...]
“But banning no-fault divorce flies in the face of so much reputable social science, not to mention common sense, that I want to pull my hair out.”
Pull away. Its not that people wont be able to get divorced, its just that “fault” will be a factor in the court. (as it is in New York & other states) and is in property division and alimony.
As far as “social science” well, what rock have you been hiding under all these years?
“Numerous scholars—from Leora Friedberg at the University of Virginia to Nicholas Wolfinger at the University of Utah—have shown that divorce does in fact function as a social plague. Friedberg showed that passage of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s accelerated the pace of divorce by about 17 percent between 1968 and 1988. Wolfinger showed that a parental divorce increases the children’s chance of later being divorced themselves by more than 50 percent, and is by far one of the most potent predictors of divorce.
The research of Sara McLanahan, a professor of sociology at Princeton (and one of my advisors for my doctoral work there). McLanahan is no conservative. In the 1970s, as a divorced, single mother, she set out to show that the negative effects of divorce on children could be attributed solely to the economic dislocation it caused.
But after spending 20 years researching the subject, she came to the conclusion that the social and emotional consequences of divorce also played a key role in explaining the negative outcomes of divorce. She also found that remarriage was, on average, no help to children affected by divorce.”