The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SIFC Note:“CCP” stands for Communist Chinese Party
The last blog post in 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall was so sobering and heavy that it seems good to follow up with a lighter one on the same subject. The Lord promised never to leave us nor forsake us, even when the whole world is in an uproar and evil is having a nearly unrestrained reign of terror.
The temptation here is to use a slick “top-ten” reverse countdown, but there are far more than ten “silver linings” observed by this blogger, and all of them are hugely important to the final outcome in our society from this crisis, so this will be a long list, and in no particular order.
1. Millions of parents got back to parenting their own children, the way God has always designed. (“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”)
2 . “Family courts” were slowed way down, delaying unnecessary divorces. (All “divorces” out of our original covenant marriage are unnecessary by God’s definition – Matthew 19:6,8 – and He doesn’t recognize them under any circumstances.)
3. We haven’t heard one thing about “drag queen story hour” in a month of Sundays.
4. Ditto for the “urgent” need to mutilate the genitalia or alter the hormones of an emotionally-unstable minor child, lest they be at “risk for suicide”.
5. Kids all across the country suddenly became safe on the toilet, and when changing clothes to get exercise.
6. Parents have had countless opportunities to personally teach their children how to conduct life: bake bread, cook a meal, fix broken things instead of throwing them away, budget scarce funds, care for a pet, sew a mask for the hospital helpers.
7. The price of gasoline went down for the foreseeable future.
8. Smog magically lifted from some of our cities.
9. Many of us received auto insurance refunds.
10. Jobless people got free food because farmers would otherwise been forced to waste their production.
11. Many churches are reporting greater attendance at online, streamed services than they ever had in the megachurch building.
12. Megachurches, meanwhile, have become unworkable for the foreseeable future, and have devolved into the much more scriptural and less anonymous house churches.
13. An icon of yesteryear culture is making a glorious comeback: the drive-in movie!
14. Schoolchildren everywhere (and their parents) are now immersed in the workings of U.S. Constitution.
15. Little girls and little boys are having the opportunity to see scientists in action as role models, and coming off as national heroes. Who will this inspire one day?
16. Little girls and little boys are getting a refreshing pause from athletes and Hollywood celebrities as role models.
17. We are all being reminded of the U.S.A.’s founding principles, and what all it took to win them, on a daily basis.
18. We are being treated to group worship videos from all over the world to lift our spirits.
19. The animal shelters magically emptied of previously unadopted pets who found homes at last.
20. County sheriffs gave us all a civics lesson in the letters they sent out stating that their oath of office to uphold the Constitution precluded them from enforcing “emergency order” fines and jail penalties for “crimes” their respective legislatures have not so designated.
21. Millions of Gen-Z’ers dreaming of a socialist Utopia got an unpleasant taste of socialism in action, as empty store shelves shocked them back to reality.
22. Meanwhile, these same Gen-Z’ers will benefit from a moratorium on the importation of low wage foreign workers who have for years been permitted to usurp their jobs and futures.
23. Dozens of great doctors and scientists became emboldened to speak out against the Federal public health agencies who have become part of “the swamp” in the last 3 or 4 decades, raising the hope that America (and other countries) might emerge physically healthier for the future.
24. A few states and countries did their CCP virus response without violating our Constitution, and because they did, we have objective data on how we can handle it better next time.
25. More people are clued into end times prophecy, and watching for the promised return of Jesus.
To be sure, there are some real “bummers” out there, as well: isolated grandparents and great grandparents, destroyed businesses, lost lives and lost privacy, the threat of compulsory vaccinations and digital tracking, food shortages, dangerous criminals being released from prisons, law-abiding business owners taking their place in the lockups, stress levels abounding, domestic abuse (including child abuse) in lockup, growing incivility in discourse about the situation, social media censoring, and on and on. The national debt burden that our children and grandchildren will have to contend with is tragic and disappointing to those of us who so wanted to bequeath them a better future. Another star-studded National Day of Prayer has come and gone without any signs of the necessary movement toward national repentance in the churches of the United States. Yet, we have received blessings from God we don’t come anywhere near deserving.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Who can speak of the mighty deeds of the Lord, Or can show forth all His praise? How blessed are those who keep justice, Who practice righteousness at all times!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise),SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, and that you may live long on the earth. – Ephesians 6:2-3
Mother’s Day 2018 has come and gone, and it’s now Mother’s Day 2019. In sharp contrast with Mother’s Day 1968, here are a few miserable facts:
Over 40% of children are born into fatherless homes outside of civil wedlock, and in some races this is as high as 70%
Over two-thirds of the unilateral divorce petitions are filed by WOMEN, yet most of these same women never recover financially and may easily retire impoverished
Some 80% of those filed petitions are non-mutual – that is, opposed by an innocent spouse who has not objectively done anything to harm the filing spouse or the marriage
Taxpayers, including divorcees, foot a bill for well over $100 billion per year in state and Federal costs arising from the social expense of state-accelerated family breakdown
What would beneficial reform look like? From a constitutional standpoint, allowing for the restoration of our right of religious conscience and free religious exercise under the 1st Amendment, and allowing for 14th Amendment equal protection with regard to parental and property rights, our suggested reforms are:
(1) All petitions that are notmutual filings would require evidence-based proof of serious, objective harm to the marriage or to the offended spouse. For example, “emotional abuse” would be professionally defined in the statutes in terms of specific behaviors, with professionally documented admissible evidence legally defined
(2) All divisions of property and child custody / welfare arrangements that are not agreed as part of a mutual petition would be determined based on objective evidence of marital fault being the key consideration, with a view to leaving the non-offending party and the children as whole as possible in comparison with pre-divorce conditions
(Yes, we readily concede that this would be creating substantial economic disincentives to dissolution of the marriage, and we make no apologies. The present system actively rewards the one seeking the divorce and actively punishes the innocent spouse who dares resist in any way.)
So what are the specific benefits to families and society (hence, to mothers) from these reforms?
Benefit #10 – They’d be more prone to have marriage as a realistic and durable option in their life. We hear this from the cohabiting young adults all the time, including households with kids but unmarried parents: “what’s the point of getting married?” Despite the social do-gooders who cheerlead with shallow slogans like “put a ring on it”, the kids sense the government power-grab that unilateral “no-fault” divorce imposes on their lives and pocketbooks, and many of them have been saying “no thanks” for several years now. Even if they’re not old enough to remember a time when the marriage contract was binding (absent some provable serious fault), they know the current civil contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, especially when they see 50 and 60-year olds who have been successfully married for decades suddenly unable to stay out of the jaws of the “family court” machinery.
Benefit #9 – Their kids and life companions would be less likely to commit suicide. This is not to say that in the halcyon days when the marriage contract was reasonably binding, there weren’t murders and suicides of wives. All one has to do is watch the old “Twilight Zone”, “Perry Mason” and “Alfred Hitchcock” episodes from the early-1960’s to know that this was an issue which probably justified some measured reform of divorce laws to allow for mutual consent “no-fault” grounds — and arms-length property and child settlements. But, certainly not the travesty we wound up with: unilaterally-asserted “irreconcilable differences” grounds, where the innocent was assumed guilty by the courts upon the allegation of one spouse, and no evidence to the contrary would be tolerated or heard or appealed, and where the guilty party was rewarded while the innocent party was smeared and robbed by the court (and sometimes even jailed).
The apologists for this robbery of fundamental rights from the entire classof innocent spouses claim it’s “justified” because the suicide rate in wives reportedly dropped by 20% following unilateral divorce enactment. But who’s to say that this improvement would not have comparably happened as a result of mutual-consent “no-fault”?
In the meantime, spousal murders have not abated, while estranged husband and young adult child suicides, and accidental deaths due to drug addictions, have skyrocketed. Mother’s Day is not such a happy day for some mothers for this horrible reason, even though they extracted their personal sexual and financial autonomy under the civil law. For other mothers, it’s not such a happy day because their husband decided to trade them in, and as a consequence they find themselves alienated from their children (perhaps even losing one to suicide or worse), even though they were the responsible parent who did nothing wrong. Benefit #8 –Their kids would be less likely to become gender-confused and gender-dysphoric. Speaking of high suicide and addiction rates, and looking back 50 years, we had this amazing phenomenon of rapidly increasing numbers of LGBTQ(xyz)-ers suddenly being “born this way” — when markedly fewer of them were “born this way” back in the days when it just so happened the civil marriage contract was legally enforceable. Ditto concerning the amazing inverse correlation between the demand for “marriage” among homosexuals and the legal enforceability of the marriage contract (while we’re at it).
Benefit #7 – Their kids would be less likely to be killed at school or (even worse) become the shooter. Sadly, we’ve come to have so many school shooting incidents in the past 20 years that they no longer shock us the way they used to. In 2013, CNN compiled a fairly exhaustive list of all such reported incidents, and has kept it updated since.Only three such incidents occurred between 1927 and 1970, according to the list, and only one of those involved a minor as the perpetrator. However, from 1974 to present, CNN reports such incidents, most of them involving minors, and since the late 1980’s it’s consistently been 2 or 3 per year, most of them carried out by a “son of divorce”. In his 2013 article, “Sons of Divorce School Shooters”, W. Bradford Wilcox, Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia writes,
“From Adam Lanza, who killed 26 children and adults a year ago at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., to Karl Pierson, who shot a teenage girl and killed himself this past Friday at Arapahoe High in Centennial, Colo., one common and largely unremarked thread tying together most of the school shooters that have struck the nation in the last year is that they came from homes marked by divorce or an absent father. From shootings at MIT (i.e., the Tsarnaev brothers) to the University of Central Florida to the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Ga., nearly every shooting over the last year in Wikipedia’s “list of U.S. school attacks” involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.”
This makes for dozens of mothers, on both sides of the gun, for whom each Mother’s Day is unimaginably painful.
Benefit #6 – Reproductive abuses, from profiteering abortionists to abominable surrogacy, would stop victimizing so many of them. “standerinfamilycourt” was shocked and outraged to see the U.S. listed in an article, Surrogacy by Country, by the organization, Families Through Surrogacy, where this practice is legal (but expensive). What most countries have in common where both surrogacy and abortion are legal (the latter often government-funded) is that they also have unilateral divorce-on-demand, and by extension, removal of fathers’ rights and responsibilities because he’s often been forcibly severed from his marriage and family. Where there are strong natural fathers favored by society and the legal structure, there is less room and demand for commercialized reproductive abuses that exploit and traumatize women — and commoditize children.
Hungary, in particular (not on the above surrogacy list), has recently decided to bank on this relationship between easy divorce and negative population implications, implementing conservative national family policies to avoid having to resort to open borders to resolve its demographic issues (to the angst of its feminists). If conservative family policies work there, they’ll probably work in other western countries and the U.S. Hungary only has “no-fault” divorce available by mutual consent, according to websites by Hungarian family law attorneys. Abortion is legal in Hungary, but it’s broadly reported as being very difficult to access, and its constitution states that “life begins at conception”. Look for God’s blessings to be on Hungary as a nation.
Benefit #5 – The national debt would begin to decline, improving the national security of mothers and their children. The national debt clock shows that the U.S. is over $22 trillion dollars in debt as of this writing. In a study released in 2008 by the Institute for American Values (which was 7 years pre-Obergefell and badly need to be updated), the combined state and Federal annualtaxpayer cost of family fragmentation due to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws was $122 billion per year. Compounded by the Treasury’s borrowing cost over those years since enactment, unilateral “no-fault” divorce could easily account for at least one-third of the total.
Benefit #4 – In-home child abuse would decline at the hands of the mothers’ boyfriends so their children could grow up safely again. Forcibly removing the rights and authority of natural fathers (in some cases, mothers) from the lives of their children has come at a very high moral and safety cost to those children. W. Bradford Wilcox (cited above) writes in a 2011 article for Public Discourse,
“This latest study confirms what a mounting body of social science has been telling us for some time now. The science tells us that children are not only more likely to thrive but are also more likely to simply survive when they are raised in an intact home headed by their married parents, rather than in a home headed by a cohabiting couple. For instance, a 2005 study of fatal child abuse in Missouri found that children living with their mother’s boyfriends were more than 45 times more likely to be killed than were children living with their married mother and father.
“Cohabitation is also associated with other non-fatal pathologies among children. A 2002 study from the Urban Institute found that 15.7 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds in cohabiting families experienced serious emotional problems (e.g., depression, feelings of inferiority, etc.), compared to just 3.5 percent of children in families headed by married biological or adoptive parents. A 2008 study of more than 12,000 adolescents from across the United States found that teenagers living in a cohabiting household were 116 percent more likely to smoke marijuana, compared to teens living in an intact, married family. And so it goes.”
Benefit #3 – Family and national wealth would markedly improve, leaving fewer of them poor in old age Wedlock (emphasis on the “lock”) creates wealth and staves off poverty, many studies have shown. Yet, close to 70% of the unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women, who don’t realize until too late, they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
If, on the other hand, they had to prove fault, and if they bore the cost of their own fault, they wouldn’t so readily fall prey to the deception of feminist ideologies. All too often they find themselves in unanticipated poverty after buying into the empty feminist promises and discarding their spouse, after which, they come to think the only way out is to throw another woman into poverty by seducing her husband onto the legalized-adultery-merry-go-round.
In terms of national wealth, this is a hand-of-God matter. Deuteronomy 28 tells us (vicariously, since this was spoken to His most-favored nation):
“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God:
“Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.
“Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock.
“Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
“Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
“The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways.The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways.So all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will be afraid of you.The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your beast and in the produce of your ground, in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I charge you today, to observe them carefully,and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.”
The Apostle John channels the words of Jesus in Revelation 2 to confirm this Deuteronomy 28 warning as still being true in the last days among the Gentile church:
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
Sexual autonomy is a contemporary “other god” that is served by immoral family laws. Notice that both blessings and curses passively overtake a nation according to the national choices made by clergy and government. Reading on in Deuteronomy 28, the opposite curse to each blessing is recited by Moses, except the curses far outnumber the blessings, showing that His protective hand over a nation holds back far more curses, which flood us when He removes it after many prophetic warnings go unheeded. Most of us would agree that God has allowed most of these poverty-from-disobedience consequences to fall on the U.S. and other western countries in increasing intensity as the Sexual Revolution has become increasingly entrenched in our culture, unopposed by the church.
Jesus was very clear about God’s commandment, which if we truly obeyed as a nation, there would be no humanist legal provision for divorce:
“…What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate…Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
Benefit #2 – Their pastors would quit lying to mothers (and fathers) about biblical instruction concerning remarriage It is a documented fact that commercially-published bible text has been “evolving” since at least the late 1800’s, that seminary faculties have been increasingly overrun with sexual liberals since the post-World War II period, and that academic freedoms have been increasingly on the wane in the last 10 years with regard to conservative biblical scholars. We now have free online bible study tools that enable just about anybody to conclusively demonstrate the liberal violations of Revelation 22:19. Back in the 1970’s, pastors in several denominations went on record as demanding that the church stop teaching that remarriage is adultery in every case where an estranged spouse is still living (even though that’s quite accurately what both Jesus and Paul taught), demanding the removal of denominational rules that would disfellowship them for performing weddings Jesus would call continuously adulterous. There were also demands for pastors in such an adulterous “marriage” themselves to no longer be denied ordination credentials, even though that’s the standard that the Apostle Paul himself implemented in the churches he established.
It’s also a well-documented fact (per the minutes of denominational conferences) that the chief cause for this was primarily economic – i.e., the fear of loss of church membership as legalized adultery supplanted holy matrimony going forward. But it was also emotional and reputational now, as falsified bibles (and pastors themselves commonly living in ongoing legalized sexual sin) emboldened a lot of church women to bully their own pastors if they didn’t take a liberal stance and shrug off God’s word to the contrary. If it’s true that the cause of doctrinal unfaithfulness was the pursuit of unrighteous mammon, the effect will eventually reverse to the extent the civil laws comport again with biblical morality concerning marriage. (Luke 16, from beginning to end, needs to be read as an integrated unit, rather than a random cluster of miscellaneous sayings of Jesus.)
Circa 100 A.D., the Bishop of Antioch said this in his Epistle to the Ephesians,
“Do not err, my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And if those that corrupt mere human families are condemned to death, how much more shall those suffer everlasting punishment who endeavor to corrupt the Church of Christ, for which the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, endured the cross, and submitted to death! Whosoever, ‘being waxen fat,’ and ‘become gross,’ sets at nought His doctrine, shall go into Hell. In like manner, every one that has received from God the power of distinguishing, and yet follows an unskillful shepherd, and receives a false opinion for the truth, shall be punished.” –St. Ignatius
No, this wicked idea that “remarriage” while an original spouse was still alive could ever be accepted by God as holy matrimony was an unfortunate time-bomb, a product of 16th century Reformation humanism (as was “replacement theology”, against which the Apostle Paul also warned). Eventually, this heresy removed inhibitions against enacting immoral family and reproductive laws in western nations, and deceived the lawmakers who today uphold these laws into having the audacity to call themselves “Christians”. This was also the reason why some conservative denominations made the eternally fatal choice in the 1970’s to revise their once-biblical doctrine to accommodate the enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, instead of standing strong against themanywhere close to the way they stood against gay “marriage”.
Jesus preached a 3-part definition of adultery, and part 3 actually precludes any notion of “biblical exceptions” we hear so much about:
(1) to lust in one’s heart after someone other than our living spouse (Matt. 5:27-28)
(2) to divorce a spouse in order to remarry (Mark 10:11-12)
(3) to marry any divorced person (and by corollary, to marry someone after being involuntarily divorced – Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b)
In Matthew 5:27-32 Jesus tell us that adultery doesn’t just occur extramaritally, but it occurs just as much inside of the “remarriages” of seemingly respectable church-going people, and by His reference to cutting off of our hands and gouging out our eyes rather than taking the first step toward this abomination, He alludes to this conduct leading to hell as the (unrepentant) destination. Later on, He directly and graphically says so in Luke 16:18-31.
Picture credit: Sharon Henry
While it’s not strictly necessary for pastors and lawmakers to visualize their sheep (and constituents) in the hell-flames to get the former onboard with moral divorce reforms in civil law, it sure doesn’t hurt. Pastors who do see this connection usually don’t perform the kinds of weddings that directly drive the demand for “no-fault” divorces. If lawmakers could see their adulterously remarried constituents in the resulting hell-flames as a repeal bill is before them, and if they knew that what the martyred Ignatius had to say was a certainty concerning the corrupters of families, it wouldn’t matter whether they were liberal or conservative, they would vote for the repeal of marriage “dissolution” laws altogether. Getting the state “out of the marriage business” would include getting the state out of the divorce business to the same extent!
Nine of these benefits to mothers (and future mothers) are temporal but extend to the 1000th generation, according to God’s word. The #1 benefit to mothers, however, is eternal.
Happy Mother’s Day to those who can celebrate today. Joyous Mothers Day to those whose messy circumstances lead them to find extra comfort in the Lord.
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.– Hebrews 13:4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
In 2013 I sent the following email to every Louisiana legislator, and some statewide leaders. I did not get one reply.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
While you are at work your wife could file for divorce, get a Protective Order based on her word that she is afraid of you, and you couldn’t get into your own house…not even get some clothes, shave kit, etc., and you would have to sleep somewhere else tonight.
That is divorce according to current law. Staying apart for just 6 months would guarantee her a divorce, and that is when you would start paying for something you didn’t even want…the divorce.
You wouldn’t hear any charges against you and proof of guilt, no defense because there aren’t any charges, and no way to appeal the judge saying “Divorce granted”…because there is no Case to appeal.
Now you see why I am an Advocate for Divorce Reform…fighting our ILLEGAL laws…that make you “like it or lump it” in divorce.
The lawyers in 1969 in California who came up with the current No-Fault divorce laws were told by an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court was present and told them that what they were doing was illegal, and they did it anyway.
Louisiana has had these illegal laws on the books for 40 years, destroying marriages and families…ILLEGALLY. These same laws are in effect in all 50 states.
I hope that concerns you IMMENSELY, and that you will initiate actions to put a stop to these ILLEGAL laws.
(SIFC: Billy Miller is a Baptist pastor, family patriarch, covenant marriage stander and family law reform activist who lives in Louisiana.)
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
This will be a good news / bad news account of the third consecutive unsuccessful try in Texas to restore fundamental constitutional protections to “Respondents” sued by their own spouses in “family court”. Re-introduced into the 86th Legislative Session by Rep. Matt Krause, HB 922 would have limited the “no-fault” grounds for divorce to cases of mutual consent and have required cases where the spouses do not mutually agree to the divorce to submit proof of existing fault-based grounds, while HB 926 would extend the waiting period for “no-fault” divorce to 180 days. Testimony for these bills occurred at a very late evening hour on May 1, 2019 with just 2 business days’ notice of scheduling. More about that unfortunate circumstance follows below.
The latter bill extending the waiting periods made it out of committee on Thursday, May 2 and still has a remote chance of being scheduled for a floor vote in the House in time to go to the Senate before the 2-year adjournment. During the 85th legislature, this bill made it out of committee unanimously (versus 5-3 this time), but was killed by adverse lobbying of someone in the Calendars committee. HB 922 was killed by the Democrat-dominated JJFI committee, and will need to be re-introduced in the 87th session in 2021. It also passed out of this committee in the 85th session but met the same special-interest lobbying fate before it could come up for a floor vote or proceed to the Senate.
This blog post will be something of a post-mortem: what went well, and not so well, and will shine some light on some long-festering process issues in the Texas legislature that has, over time, made legislative reform of family laws a bit of an uphill battle structurally.Family structure activists are not deterred, even though the demographic trend in Texas points to an even more liberal-dominated legislature in 2021 when it next convenes.
Is a Constitutional Amendment Needed to Allow the Texas Legislature to Convene Annually?
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 46 state legislatures meet annually today. The remaining four states—Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas—hold session every other year, each in the odd year. Illinois convenes annually but holds approved, pending bills open for two years, rather than require them to be reintroduced each session, which seems to be a cost efficiency to the taxpayers, not to mention, a bit of a safeguard against the effects of voter fraud and rapid demographic change (such as via unchecked illegal immigration) in elections, and possibly curbs the sort of Calendar Committee chicanery the Texas House is bloody infamous for. In each span between legislative sessions, committee membership changes along with the makeup of the House, with a definite recent “bluing” trend in this (once) deep-red state, as people move into Texas from economically-failing liberal states losing several large employers each year.
The frequency of legislative sessions is set by the Texas Constitution, which reads as follows:
Sec. 5. MEETINGS; ORDER OF BUSINESS. (a) The Legislature shall meet every two years at such time as may be provided by law and at other times when convened by the Governor.
Hence, any change would require passage of a measure to put a statewide referendum on the ballot to change Article 3, Section 5. This actually brings up one key example of the effect of biennial legislative sessions in Texas: we are coming up next month on 4 years elapsing since the capricious Obergefell decision legislated a “right” to gay “marriage” from the Federal bench, and nullified all of the DOMA (defense of marriage) amendments passed by citizen referenda a decade or so before, in numerous states. Although a bill, HJR 64 was debated to put the DOMA repeal measure the ballot in the fall, astonishingly it still sits in committee, with only three weeks remaining in the session. It appears that both the Texas marriage statute and the Texas constitution will continue to officially define marriage as being only between one man and one woman well into 2021, the 6th anniversary of Obergefell, since the constitution must be amended before the statute can be changed.
As the moral fabric of society has continued to fray, at least in part due to the societal destructiveness of divorce-on-demand, so has the legislation load perceived by citizens and their state leaders as necessary to manage all of the ever-worsening symptoms from this disease, now in its 3rd and 4th generations since enactment (boomers, gen-X, millennials, nextgen). The NCSL article cited earlier makes this interesting observation:
“In the early 1960s, only 19 state legislatures met annually. The remaining 31 held biennial regular sessions. All but three (Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia) held their biennial session in the odd-numbered year. By the mid-1970s, the number of states meeting annually grew tremendously—up from 19 to 41.”
Gun rights activist Rachel Malone provided her Facebook followers this statistical breakdown of Texas bill activity as of May 1 or so:
722 bills passed by the House (693 are HB’s)
640 bills passed by the Senate (632 are SB’s)
37 bills passed by BOTH chambers (but some still in process / conference)
16 bills sent to Governor
In the past 6 sessions, an average of . . .
– 6,363 bills were filed
– 1,382 bills were passed by both chambers (trending downward to the 1200’s)
– 1,342 bills were signed by the Governor / went into effect
– 389 bills died in Calendars (about 25% of the bills sent there)
– 258 bills passed the Senate but died somewhere in the House
– 368 bills passed the House but died somewhere in the Senate
– 11 bills died on the House floor
– 0 bills died on the Senate floor
How does this compare with other populous states that meet annually, such as Florida and California? A good topic for study!
In the meantime, anyone can see that there’s basically only a 5% chance per biennial session that any bill in Texas would make it to the governor’s desk, including (apparently) a SCOTUS-dictated matter from 4 years ago– and plan their activist activities accordingly.
The power of life and death is literally in the hands of the Committee Chairman’s scheduling choices Attorney Harold Dutton has been the Chair of the Juvenile Justice and Family Issues committee for the past several legislative sessions. He is a man with a very checkered family life of his own, and has apparently treated this standing appointment as a personal fiefdom, according to a 2007 article in the Houston Chronicle. The Chair of each House committee controls the hearing calendar for that committee, a fact which is absolutely key to the difference in what occurred this year with HB’s 922 and 926.
Not that Rep. Dutton had all that much to fear in terms of a repeat of the 4-3 party line committee approval that occurred in 2017 for HB 93, the predecessor bill to HB 922, since the Democrat majority on that committee was now 5-4, with 100% turnover in the rank-and-file members. But just to be on the safe side, a bill filed in January was not scheduled for a hearing until May 1. Two business days’ notice of the scheduling was given after business hours on the Friday before. The hearing was scheduled on a day when there was a very heavy agenda on the House floor, typical for this point in the year when the session’s calendar days are dwindling, so the hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. didn’t actually start until after 7 p.m. That was tough enough, but these bills were heard alongside a litany of bills whose numbers indicated they were filed substantially later on, including an albatross of a bill opposed by an army of LGBT activists: HB2109 which sought conscience-based protections from liability for wedding officiants to recuse themselves from certain weddings. This testimony was, of course, prioritized to lead off (and, cynically, it set the political tone for) the entire evening.
SIFC expects that Chairman D was giving himself high-5’s for preventing the parade of constitutional law attorneys who testified in 2017 before his committee that Texas’ divorce law is profoundly unconstitutional, and replacing that with a literal Gay Pride parade twice as large. Despite the bills being introduced for the 3rd timeby a practicing constitutional attorney, and despite ever-faithful veteran constitutional attorney Shelby Sharpe reprising an abbreviated portion of his 2017 testimony (given only 2 minutes this time instead of 3 minutes), and despite another family law attorney echoing the unconstitutionality with handouts to the committee, what wound up resounding from the testimony was the technically-true but woefully-incomplete declaration of Texas Family Law Foundation head lobbyist Stephen Bresnan that “no court in the United States has ever found no-fault divorce to be unconstitutional.”
The final injury came in the departure from the room of most of the GOP members shortly after the gay rights debate, which ended around 8:30 p.m. After powerful reprise testimonies by Kristi Davis and Jeff Morgan and a few other excellent witnesses, none of them got any questions from the committee members, mostly because there were few or no Republican committee members present any longer to give them a hand. Ditto for when Texas Values Sr. Policy Analyst Nicole Hudgens was peppered by feminist committee members with repetitive ideological “questions” she couldn’t quite handle to everyone’s satisfaction (partly due to coming off as being a bit unprepared). Last time, executive director Jonathan Saenz testified in favor of the predecessor bill. Whereas the victim witnesses got no questions, Ms. Hudgens’ 2-minute debut testimony evoked 6 contentious minutes of questions from the remaining committee members.
Another pivotally-damaging moment in the testimony questioning….
Rep. Callani to Ms. Hudgens: “Why do people get divorced?” (@1:57)
Texas Values’ Nicole Hudgens: “There are a number of reasons you can get divorced, but you have ‘insupportability’ which is no-fault divorce but this is not talking about…in the case of abuse or in the case of neglect..others, this is simply talking about ‘no-fault’ divorce…”
Rep. Callani: “Right, but what do you think the reason for that is?”
Hudgens: (pause) “It can be a number of reasons.”
Callani: “Just one of them”….(after longer Hudgens pause)…”Like a reason that people would get divorced…other than abuse?”
Callani: “So in your work for the Texas Family Law Foundation….”
Hudgens: “That’s Texas Values”
Callani: “OK, Family Texas Values…and you’re against divorces…so when…what types of divorces have you seen being…that were insupportable…what was their reason for wanting to get divorced?”
( SIFC: Noooo, Nicole, pleasedon’t assent to her rhetoric again!! Proper response: “there can’t be any ‘insupportable’ marriages in the legal sense because the term has not even been objectively defined in the statute.” Legislator lecture coming in….4, 3, 2, 1… )
Hudgens: “There could be a number of reasons. We’re for government promoting a policy that keeps families intact as much as possible, so…it could be a number of reasons…right now you can just get divorced for pretty much any reason.”
Callani: “All I want you to do is just give me one reason why people would get divorced.”
Hudgens: “A lot of people would say ‘it’s complicated’…”
( SIFC: Callani could easily have gone in for the kill right here, but she was having herself a ball playing like a cat with her helpless prey….)
Callani: “But what do you think is complicated about it?”
Hudgens: “One person says they don’t want to be in the relationship anymore….”
Callani: “So if that’s reason, if this bill were to pass, it defeats the whole purpose.” (She didn’t say of what, but it’s clear that she believes in the “force people to stay married” dogma.)
( SIFC: While every question couldn’t have been anticipated, less than two minutes invested in a Google search would have produced this fairly accurate study information, courtesy of AARP, which places “abuse” far down the list, and would have put up a far better fight against Callani’s media-driven assumptions…the fact is that the vast bulk of divorce is driven by adultery, and in a lot of cases, deliberate spouse-poaching in older, more affluent couples with older kids, and often grandkids….creating massive retirement problems, and rewarding the offenders while severely penalizing the non-offenders. If this kind of informed content had filled those 6 minutes, they would at least have had something substantial to chew on, and it would have raised the opportunity to educate the committee on at least two important points that almost never get talked about!)
(Please click to enlarge)
Perhaps the most harmful moment that carried the evening, as a result of the GOP lawmakers all leaving the room, is the patently false statement by TFLF lobbyist Bresnan which went shamefully unchallenged because nobody remained present who was both entitled and motivated to debunk it at that point:
Bresnan: “And the third thing I’d like you to consider is leverage. If I’m in a relationship with someone and they can’t leave without my permission,
I have extraordinary leverage over them. I want the kids, I want the car, I want the house, I want the business. I want everything. If you want out bad enough, that’s what you’ll give me. Right now, people are on an equal basis and they can dissolve their marriage, and in no way should you allow the law to..uh..change the leverage in a relationship.”
But suppose GOP Rep. Faithful had been in the room, wide awake and on the ball — despite it being 9 p.m. by then (since the liberals somehow managed not to take a dinner break, no doubt because of the wherewithal for campaign contributions that were on the line here)….
Rep. Faithful: “that’s certainly an interesting point of view, Mr. Bresnan. Let’s probe that a bit further, if you don’t mind. Do you think it’s really necessary, in the best interest of the family as a whole, for the idea of “leverage” to be a zero-sum game, where the petitioner has 100% of the leverage and the respondent has zero percent? How do you see this as being an ‘equal basis?’ The AARP has rightfully been growing concerned because the most recent studies show that due to the effect of no-fault divorce laws on younger adults opting not to marry at all, the only growing category of no-fault divorce is what is commonly called “gray divorce”, often where a couple has been successfully married for decades. Often these divorces leave an innocent spouse, who wanted to save their marriage, with half or less of their retirement savings, 401K’s, IRA’s and pensions. So, AARP published a 2004 study reportshowing that the chief driver for these gray divorces is adultery and / or the selfish desire to marry someone else, and the divorce petition filer is typically the adulterer. Let me ask you: should the adulterer have 100% the leverage over an innocent spouse who has done nothing substantial to harm the marriage? Should they get the house, the business, the kids? Could you tell us how that is good for society, Mr. Bresnan?
Of course, back in December, following the disastrous 2018 mid-term election results which reflected the changing demographics in Texas, Rep. Krause tried to warn us (privately) that there “would be little appetite for” family law reform in the 86th session. He was a little reluctant to re-introduce the bills, but thankfully was persuaded (late). The video feeds showed him looking a bit disengaged, overtaxed and disinterested throughout the May 1 committee proceedings, and he apparently did little to encourage his conservative peers to stay in the room when their pushback against commercial / special interest testimony was absolutely crucial.
Taking the picture as a whole, SIFC believes it was still right to keep re-introducing the bills despite the formidable obstacles to enactment rehearsed above. William Wilberforce did this before Parliament for more than 20 years, across the entire spectrum of political circumstances, in order to engage the uphill battle to abolish the slave trade. The activist community can do a much better job of supporting Rep. Krause’s political courage by taking all of the following steps:
(1) praying for Dutton’s defeat in 2020. He’s been over the JJFI committee for far too long, and was morally ill-qualified for that pivotal Chair to begin with
(2) making a lot of off-session visits to allies for educational purposes, especially Texas Values, but also sympathetic family law attorneys like Cecilia Wood (who seems as well-informed as anyone). Ideally, we’d be visiting those same committee members with educational materials, but historically each session typically sees new faces under Dutton on that committee, so perhaps the only solution is to see all incumbent Reps in the off-session season, and from Nov. – Jan. 2020 visit the newly-elected (who are likely to wind up on the committee). This means Jeff Morgan, who has purposed to focus on enlisting the support of the state’s churches in the off-season, will need a lot more hands.
(3) re-courting the constitutional attorneys who testified in 2017
(4) entreating Rep. Krause to file his bills on Day 1 of filing rather than in January, so that testimony in both chambers can occur by March
(5) prioritize the courting of Senate concurrent sponsorship
(7) solidify ties now with the Constitution Party of Texas who might be able to help Jeff Morgan with some of the ground work over the next two years
(8) write Rep. Krause a heartfelt thank-you now, hoping for his re-election, and advising him how we will be doing our part to better support his efforts next session For just one example of potentially effective connections, HB 2109, the wedding officiant recusal bill, which had six co-sponsors (Reps. Flynn, Bonnen, Dean, Schaefer, Springer and White) has already died on the vine this session, which really need not become a tragedy that leads to a similarly ill-considered Alabama-style reaction. Would these gentlemen not be great candidates for some timely education on why the successful repeal of unilateral forced divorce would make their issue go away altogether — by quickly killing the demand for gay “marriage”? This is before even mentioning the budgetary heroes and rock stars they would become over the next few years! According to a 2008 study, unchecked unilateral divorce was costing Texas taxpayers almost $3 billion each and every year. This might be a great conversation to have with these gentlemen even before this session adjourns at the end of the month, if their attention can be had during crunch-time.
The debate on HB 2109 was (in reality) about compelled moral approval for sodomy-as-marriage, and by extension, the morality of sodomy in general. May 1, 2019 needn’t have become Gay Day in Austin, and it needn’t have been a Democratic committee member pointing out how this bill reflected a “fire, ready, aim” mentality
(Flynn testimony: “I thunk it up mahself”) behind it. Passage of HB 922 (accompanied by the future repeal of Sec. 6.006 – forced divorce with a 3-year delay in redundancy of Sec. 6.005) would have made that whole debate moot and unnecessary. Hence, there seems little reason why all six should not have been co-sponsors on Rep. Krause’s bills during the 86th session, and why they shouldn’t be courted by our team to become co-sponsors during the 87th session.
“standerinfamilycourt” is retired from corporate life, and lives several states away, but would have loved to spend part of 2018-19 in Texas for the reasons mentioned above. Steps are being taken to find a way to monetize Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional so that the finances to do so, and to start working other states, become available in 2019-2020. Prayers are appreciated for success and God’s direction in this fundraising vision. We have a formidable adversary, but a mightier Lord, so it all boils down to: who’s hungrier to win?
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. – Hebrews 10:35
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17
As sure as death and taxes, any time a “family law” reform bill is before a state legislature which seeks to curb unconstitutional, non-consensual “no-fault” grounds being allowed to shred a family at the selfish whims of one of the spouses, there are two media responses:
(1) loud howling about people “trapped” in “bad marriages” (the Left), and
(2) deafening silence (the hypocritical Right).
“standerinfamilycourt” humbly submits (and will demonstrate) that these objections are overblown and way out of proportion in the “fairness” picture.
The model reformed“no-fault” statute will do a few essential things (all are a necessary minimum):
(1) limit the use of subjective grounds like “insupportability”, “irreconcilable differences” and “irretrievable breakdown” to a mutual, joint petition, where all the terms and conditions are agreed by the parties at arms-length (rather than by strong-arm). The mutual petition part is important here. No-fault dissolutions should never be obtainable by default judgment, or where the effects of divorce are not mutually agreed. All default judgments should be fault-based, without exception.
(2) restore the availability of fault-based grounds in the alternative, which is important because many state legislatures have eliminated and disallowed these.
(3) ensure that desertion or “living apart” grounds are only available to the non-offending party.
(4) ensure that marital misconduct is a material consideration in child custody and property division judgments if the parties cannot agree these things mutually and state them on a joint petition.
Yes, this kind of reform will (at least temporarily) leave some parties legally married against their wishes. However, there are several reasons why both the time frame of delay in legally “dissolving” the marriage, and the number of such cases has been greatly exaggerated. This is especially true in contrast with the millions involuntarily divorced today against their consciences and against the best interest of the children and grandchildren of the marriage.
Here’s why:
=> although this 1980’s statistic needs to be refreshed by a study, 20% of dissolution requests are mutually agreed between the spouses. It is quite possible that the legalization of homosexual “marriages” has increased this figure a bit.
=> of the remaining 75-80%, perhaps half (under current law ) do involve fault grounds, but the Petitioner is choosing “no-fault” grounds for cost and privacy reasons. Cost should not be as big a deal as it’s made out here, since the statutorily at-fault party can ultimately be made responsible for the costs if the non-offending party has no resources for filing and legal costs.
=> in the case of endangerment, there will be restored fault-based grounds and fault-based remedies available immediately., as covered above.
Of the remaining 40% of potentially negatively-impacted parties being compelled to remain legally married longer than they’d prefer, the following mitigations still remain:
=> nothing in this reform prevents an unhappy spouse from separating and living apart — an act that is biblically forbidden in an original marriage unless there is danger to family members (covered above), and living as immorally as they wish with whomever they wish. They will simply no longer be rewarded by the powers-that-be for doing so.
=> in the case of abandonment, the story is the same, with perhaps a delay of a year or two. This is not really an unreasonable delay for the sake of restoring the ongoing integrity of our Constitution and our society.
One canard that keeps surfacing is very true, but very selectively applied by the shameless propagandists who skillfully trade in emotional manipulation: “you can’t force people to stay married”. Indeed! We’ve shown here that over a year or two time frame, anyone who wants to legally “dissolve” their marriage, or cause it to be “dissolved”, has a clear path to doing so under virtually all circumstances in a meaningful “family law” reform scenario. The more accurate saying is “you can’t force someone to live with a person they don’t wish to”, but their legal marital state is irrelevant in any case. What is relevant is WHO PAYS under the law.
The emotionally manipulative howling in the press is really about the economics and incentives changing from those that reward the offending spouse and divorce industry, to those that protect the spouse who is committed to family integrity and the true best interests of the children and grandchildren.
Non-consensual “no-fault” divorce laws strip non-offending spouses of their free speech, free religious exercise and conscience rights, along with other fundamental Bill of Rights protections including the right to raise their children according to their convictions, the right to free association with family members on both sides of the family, their property rights, 4th amendment rights against warrantless search of their finances without being accused of a crime, their right to live under an enforceable marriage contract, their right to a jury trial when confiscation of those things is sought by the state. The best and only way to distract from all of these harsh truths is to howl loudly about very shallow considerations. In interests horribly adverse to the nation as a whole, they strip us of the separation-of-powers guaranteed by Article 3, allowing the legislatures of these states to override constitutional separation-of-powers protections by legislating away true judicial discretion, true cause of action, and true due process.
Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable.
– Proverbs 14:34 (Douay-Rheims Version)
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:32-33
Video credit: Jeff Morgan. Matthew Johnston interviewing Dr. Stephen Baskerville, February, 2019
Our blog spends most of its time and words mapping out the moral space between scripture and unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, all the while being well aware that this is “taboo” space which is alleged to be at odds with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Actually, this moral space consists of three moral sub-spaces:
(1) the moral space between scripture and the allowance of fault-based divorce which does not violate the Constitution, but severely violates scripture (Matt.19:6,8 ) – Space “A”
(2) the moral space between fault-based unilateral divorce (Romans 13:4) and mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce – Space “B”,
and, finally
(3) the moral space between mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce and forced, unilateral “no-fault” divorce (Isaiah 5:20) – Space “C”.
(please click to enlarge picture)
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
“standerinfamilycourt” began pondering this due to the repeated persistence, in a small strategy discussion group, of a Catholic man who refuses to budge from Space “A” on both moral and constitutional grounds. He therefore stands opposed to the apparent consensus of the majority in that group: that our divorce law reform objective, particularly insofar as it encompasses the legislatures, should be Space “A” + Space “B”. It’s not at all that this gentleman believes per the bible that death is the only thing which severs and dissolves holy matrimony. On the contrary, as a “good Catholic”, he also believes that an “annulment” decree from the bishop does this, but in that case he would argue that some extrabiblical “defect” somehow made it “not a marriage”.
At the same time, a brilliant young legal scholar in the group also believes in reform encompassing only Space “A” – on technical constitutional grounds related to Articles 3 and 10 of the Constitution, but for pragmatic reasons, can settle for Space “A” + Space “B”, so long as this result doesn’t get overturned in court on those same constitutional grounds. (“Get ‘er done”!) The difference between the two gentlemen is in their motives and reasoning in arriving at the same end point. Our Catholic friend believes there are some instances other than physical death which lead God to assent to “dissolution” if church leadership does, and absent leadership corruption (a huge presumption), this would normally track with fault-based jurisprudence which would be better for the children of the marriage than their parents having an option to decide together to end their marriage. (Church traditionelevated above God’s commandment, by perceived “delegation”). Meanwhile, our millennial believes that God has delegated so much authority to the state that the Establishment Clause must override God’s law in order to prevent a “theocracy”. (State over God, because the alternative in a pluralistic society might be worse.) SIFC cannot agree with either view, because of Who God says He is, and the outright blasphemy involved with corrupting in any measure one of the key symbols of His holiness and His relationship with His people.
That said, SIFC can also “live with” a pragmatic reform result of Space “A” + Space “B”….but upon deep reflection, believes that if Jesus Christ were in this discussion group, He’d say that even Space “A” is too much “daylight” between the instructions He left us with and what we as Christian citizens will settle for in our family laws. Space “A” actually reflects the Pharisaical school of Shammai which He rebuked in Matthew 19, while Spaces “A” + “B” + “C” reflect the Pharisaical school of Hillel which He also rebuked in Matthew 19.
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter heaven. Matthew 5:20
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” Matthew 19:8
Christ’s position would be: only God, and not civil government has authority over holy matrimony, and nothing short of holy matrimony is actually moral:
Space “A” + Space “B” + Space “C” – Space “A” minus Space “B” minus Space “C” = zero human authority to create holy matrimony or grant a divorce from it.
Christ would grant civil government the authority to track marriage and death records to support the union, but would say that all divorce is man-made and of no effect in the kingdom of God, unless the “marriage” it purports to “dissolve” was invalid and kingdom-unlawful to begin with. He would say that all authentic marriage is only God-made, and anything outside of that is adultery, which sends people to hell if they don’t repent of it, and for which He will eventually judge our unrepentant nation, especially if the shepherds of His church remain complicit. By contrast, one recent state is attempting to keep the usurped authority for the state to continue granting unilateral “no-fault”dissolutions, but prospectively only record God-joined unions (and all manner of other man-fabricated cohabitation arrangements) upon affidavit, and doing so in order that the state’s judges may escape perceived persecution and actual liability at the hand of the homosexualist community from conscience-based refusal to officiate sodomous weddings.
“Standerinfamilycourt” is sincerely wrestling with this….
So…just how acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for change in a law that is presently sending people to hell by the millions, in favor of a reformed law that maybe only sends people to hell by the thousands (on the prevention side), and increases the legal avenues for repentance which avoids hell (on the rectification side)?
How much more or less acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for a law that prohibits divorce altogether (that is, strikes the dissolution statute in its entirety — whether or not there exist what men might consider to be “fault-based grounds”), thereby sending few or no one to hell because they divorced their true spouse, but sending some to hell because they can no longer civilly-divorce a faux spouse, and which also closes off all avenues of biblical repentance via man’s law? After all, it can’t be emphasized often enough: the law is a teacher, (especially with regard to the unregenerated who have no way of being counseled from within by the Holy Spirit), for better or for worse.
“standerinfamilycourt” may never have the answer to this dilemma until actually standing before the throne of God, when all of a believer’s life works will be judged to see what survives the fire:
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are. 1 Cor. 3:10-17
“standerinfamilycourt” is right to be concerned that all of the very costly and difficult activism, in terms of changing man’s divorce law, is only “wood, hay and stubble”. But if legal reform could also change hearts, reduce the massive number of people dying in a state of adultery, and increase theharvest of godly offspring who ultimately become citizens of heaven, that becomes a precious metal which will withstand the fire.
In Mathew 6, Jesus told us to seek His righteousness (presumably for ourselves, but perhaps also for others) while we’re first seeking the kingdom of God. In Matthew 5:6, He declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Both verses clearly promise a fulfillment from Him if our heart motives are what they should be, and we’re doing our part to obey the seeking, hungering and thirsting part.
Many earnest believers will argue either (1) “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he might please the one having enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4), and therefore eschews all political involvement by Christians, or (2) God’s law of marriage only applies to the redeemed. Although the first idea has some merit, the second is completely contrary to Christ’s instructions, so “standerinfamilycourt” respectfully rejects both notions, in times like these.
It seems, therefore, the moral focus needs to be on the net effect on souls arriving in the kingdom of God, in clean wedding garments. That is all that will survive the fiery test of our life works. Obviously, if the “dissolution” statutes were all repealed from the lawbooks of all 50 states and not replaced, the expected result would be a wave of both righteous and unrighteous marital abandonments, the former resulting in repentance from adultery , and the latter resulting in a massive, if not unprecedented, increase in adultery because of the cultural intolerance of being told by government what to do. As predominantly immoral as our society has grown in the past five decades (encouraged by the enactment of increasingly immoral civil laws), perhaps the effects would initially “wash”, then who knows what would follow after that?
Situational ethics and moral relativism are never healthy things, and are downright nauseating to SIFC. This is the mistake Moses appears to have made, in endeavoring to “manage” sin in a pretty identical situation (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) instead of strongly rebuking it, and Christ showed that He was less than impressed with this. After all, it was not Moses whom Christ commended as the “greatest among all men born of woman”. It was instead His cousin, John, who sacrificed his very head to try and warn two adulterers to repent to escape hell. The kingdom of God suffers violence, not appeasement and accommodation! In accepting moral Space “A” or moral Space “A” + “B” for pragmatic reasons, there is both situational ethics and moral relativism involved, because human compromise is being aimed at seeking to prevent a perceived greater evil anticipated from a stricter law, due to inherently evil human nature.
Talk like this can be very unsettling to those who have never had the constitutionally-false notion of a thick wall of separation between church and state meaningfully, intellectually challenged. Certainly, among millennials, there is a long-fed fear (much of it, historical-revisionism-driven and propaganda-driven) causing this generation to struggle in particular with the Establishment Clause, and almost elevating it over the Free Exercise, clause out of concern, (perhaps) that Christianity will lose its moral authority and representation if Allah, Buddha, Krishna and Marx are not given equal place with the Most High God of the bible in our society. A lot of it has to do with the time period in which boomers vs. millennials and generation X-ers lived and grew up. And that has a lot to do with (believe it or not) the downstream effects of enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce. Those of us whose hair is now graying grew up for at least a couple of decades during a time when Christian values indeed dominated, and families under all religions actually thrived, even if they were prevented from dominating or having equal representation. That’s because we still HAD our families, directly due to Judeo-Christian domination of power structures and government.
In another February interview, Dr. Baskerville told World Magazine , “The churches withdrew from private life? And the state moved in. What had been the role of pastors and priests became the role of lawyers, judges, and social workers. The church has never tried to reclaim its turf, and has been a major contributor of secularization, of people feeling the church is not part of their life when it’s not enforcing the marriage contract.
“What can be done now? The church has got to step in. Much of the history of the Christian church has been brave churchmen speaking out when the state overreaches its authority. This whole area of sexual morality is, frankly, our turf and God’s turf. The state has a role but is overstepping.”
Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s. And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace. – Luke 20: 22-26
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse posted another excellent question from that interview on the Ruth Institute facebook page: Q: Were churches sleeping when no-fault divorce emerged?
A: Some churches did raise their voices, but much of their attention was diverted at the time by Vietnam and civil rights. There was very little debate, very little discussion. No-fault divorce, the welfare state, and the cohabitation explosion were all usurpations of the church’s role by the state. Governmental power was inserted into a realm of private life that had been the realm of the churches.”
All of the above is true enough, of course, but does not represent the whole picture, at least with regard to the Protestant churches:
[standerinfamilycourt 3/6/2019 on this Ruth Institute Post ]Martin Luther & co are partly to blame for the church apathy. Forced divorce would be a much bigger issue had he not turned over the authority to the civil state to regulate holy matrimony in order to obtain access to man-made “dissolution” certificates, then established the Reformation church on the outright heresy that original holy matrimony bonds can be severed by anything but death. The real insult to the church is that the civil state is deigning to regulate marriage at all, much less on a “no-fault” basis, but heresy reigns supreme, and revised bibles back it up. For the church to do much to oppose state regulation of marriage, much less any kind of tyrannical divorce law, they would have to acknowledge that all resulting “remarriages” are morally and spiritually invalid adultery in all cases. When they can get away, and indeed grow rich, with not doing so, that’s too big a morsel for most to bite off.
One of Martin Luther’s more outrageous quotes (actually acknowledging that only death dissolves holy matrimony, and providing a very creative solution) goes thusly…
Dr. Morse’s Roman Catholic Church has their own canon law, and has continued to claim its authority over marriage, notwithstanding the state’s competing claim to that authority. Both claims are overstated and distorted from a kingdom of God perspective.
Perhaps it’s best to step back and look at the behavior of our nation’s founders and their choices with regard to allocating authority over marriage, between human government (Caesar) and God’s commandment that marriage was indissoluble except by physical death. It was these men who claimed “certain inalienable rights” directly from God, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is interesting to note that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any of the original state constitutions eventually ratified in the thirteen colonies even attempted to allocate the authority to regulate marriage to civil government at all, even though Federalism and Article 10 left the states this space. Based on this, SIFC believes it is fair to say that our nation’s founders started off on the conservative end of Space “A”, fairly aligned with biblical instruction, and this is one of the reasons God incubated and fostered our nation, making it extraordinary in its greatness. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of moral space between the Bible and the Constitution until case law and legislatures put the moral separation space there later.
A Word About Our Founders, the Framers of the Constitution Were all of our principal founders followers disciples of Jesus Christ? No. Many were deists and humanist subscribers to natural law, including Thomas Payne, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and Benjamin Franklin. Others, like John Jay, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster were unequivocal about following Christ. Virtually all of them knew and expressed an overt warning that the form of government they had designed and bequeathed to the future citizens of this nation would only continue to function in an environment of national biblical morality.
Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence said: “Without morals a nation cannot subsist for any length of time.”
John Adams said, “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.”
Though widely assumed to be a deist, Benjamin Franklin said, “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid?”
( SIFC: That can be the rise of a nation for a kingdom purpose, or it can be tolerated rise of a malevolent stronghold into an empire to punish an unrepentant nation that once enjoyed His extreme favor, and in yesteryear faithfully carried out that purpose, but now is leading the world into deeper debauchery and idolatry.)
Also, observed by Ben Franklin: “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports”, and, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the bible.”
John Adams declared, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
(Tell us 21st century citizens about that, Mr. 2nd U.S. President!)
Finally, Noah Webster said, “…the moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis for all our civil constitutions and laws…All the miseries and evils that men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from the despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the bible.”
It is frequently argued today that we can’t go back to what we first had as a nation (as if the Lord God were indifferent), because our nation’s residents are no longer homogenous enough for it to work, therefore, we have no practical choice but to govern according to the prevailing cultural morality. (Much of this, it can be quite accurately observed, is said with the motive of coddling and appeasing the homosexualists.) “standerinfamilycourt” hereby prophesies that if we continue on as a nation with this ridiculous fallacy, the Muslim caliphate ultimately will not share that opinion with us, and will not hesitate to impose Shariah law on a morally-unruly citizenry. There is plenty of historical precedent for this in the bible and recorded world history. God owes the United States of America nothing, but He allowed first the Assyrians and then the Persians to overtake the nation of Israel. After seven decades of subjection, He required an intense purge of unlawful “marriages” and restored societal morality before He would restore sovereignty to His favored nation whose religious leadership was complicit in the systemic evil.
The following is only a theory on SIFC’s part, but it has been well-tested by the first nearly 200 years of our nation, when Baptists, Anabaptists and Methodists (who were socially disdained back in England) got along just fine with the Anglicans and Presbyterians. Later on, the Jews and Catholics got along just fine with the Protestant leaders and citizens under the civil marriage laws that prevailed until 1970. God’s moral favor gave cover for civil governments to impose that morality on the Mormons and Muslims, a circumstance that today shows signs of beginning to break down. Civil law does not need to prohibit man’s consensual divorce in order to appease God and wisely govern the people, but it must never forcefamily dissolution and fragmentation on innocent family members while morally and financially rewarding the guilty family members. Society begins to break down at the point when obeying God’s biblical family law (whose very core is Gen. 2:21-24 and Matthew 19:4-6,8) becomes either very difficult or impossible under the corrupted civil laws of men.
Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people. – Proverbs 14:34
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17
The “senior members of the Judiciary, the Family Mediation Task Force, Resolution (the national organization of family lawyers)” have the perfectly “simple” solution to the Solomonic dilemma posed above: make it henceforth unlawful for another to come and examine him.
(At least, until they’re all back in court afterward, fighting over the level of support and visitation of the children, upon which the next 10 years of fees may be billed, post-decree.)
Thomas Pascoe of the Coalition for Marriage called the House of Commons legislative “impact assessment” supporting enactment of “no-fault” divorce in the UK, on the premise that it will reduce conflict, “very flawed”. We call it, “not very original” – nor experientially true. We couldn’t agree more with Mr. Pascoe. In fact, after studying the study, we find his critique quite tactfully understated with regard to the entire study’s design, purpose and independence. Based on U.S. experience, we have much to say about the validity of the very premise that conflict over the involuntary dissolution of one’s marriage, and abridgment of parental and property rights, while innocent of any objective and provable charge, can or should be “managed” by the state as a primary goal of marriage regulation. The U.S. experience shows the acrimony can only be postponed until after the “dissolution” is imposed, and that this particular state-of-affairs has a long track record of being extremely lucrative for the legal community, while imposing absolute totalitarianism on the citizenry as a whole, outside of the protected special class.
In Part 2 of our coverage of these developments, we do a “deep dive” into the validity of the report, gleaning what we can about sponsorship, financing for the study, design, independence and objectivity. We do so from a U.S. experience-base of almost 50 years concerning the on-the-ground ability of the government to “manage conflict” in an adversarial divorce petition over inalienable property and parental rights, especially one where there’s no defense available to the “Respondent”, as is the appalling case in most U.S. states. We concede that the British constitution differs in various respects with the U.S. Constitution when we use terms like “inalienable”, and we forthrightly concede that these things have eroded over time in the U.S. due primarily to judicial corruption.
Undertaking this task has actually required the reading of several ancillary reports in addition to the House of Commons recommendation (briefing) report, including the public vetting results, and a 171-page commissioned “research” paper financed by a liberal public policy foundation (which states in a foreword that it also funded 1980’s research pushing unilateral divorce-on-demand), and spearheaded by a family law professor. This centerpiece research paper focuses primarily on administrative convenience for the courts, and “public perception” of the law, and not at all on evidence surrounding family integrity or outcomes (which should be paramount).
Pointedly not considered in the design of this “study” was any highly relevant U.S. data resulting from similar policies as here proposed, or whether the unilateral divorce laws enacted in the United States and Canada are sustainable in light of their extensive, progressive damage to the constitutional republics involved, nor even where similar policies (“postcard divorces”) had to be repealed even under communist regimes before those societies uttlerly collapsed. Most tellingly, Professor Tinder ignored Dr. Mark Regnerus’ landmark 2012New Family Structures Study which was longitudinal over 15,000 subjects and a 30 year time period, and showed (among other things), that children raised in step-parent homes resulting from divorce did as almost poorly in their adult outcomes as children raised in single-parent homes – a clear rebuke on public policy which promotes non-widowed remarriage. Indeed, the study was not concerned at all with family structure outcomes; did not ask that question, therefore did not consider any of the abundant data along those lines. Despite engaging a statistics firm, this study did not even do a competent root cause analysis on the study questions it did ask, to validate the problem statement before defining “alternatives” and jumping to predetermined recommendations.
A properly-validated study would have examined the proposals from persistent reform efforts in other “no-fault” countries such as the United States, at least to have reasonable assurance that all viable reform models were being considered in this study. We further note that if the problem statement and root cause analysis had been properly constructed, the rather trivial complaints which the study said “justified” reform would have been more properly attributed to the lack of availability of a joint petition based on “irretrievable breakdown”, rather than mis-attributed to fault-based grounds — as was the true case in the United States in 1969.
It is quite implausible that Resolution would not have been aware of the steady wave “no-fault” reform bills over the last 15 years or so before legislatures in Michigan, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma, where the persistent reform consensus has been around providing a combination of consent-only “no fault” grounds by mutual petition, and fault-based grounds that would apply in the event consent cannot be obtained. The best of these reform efforts also seek to apply fault-based property and child custody standards which have the goal of reforming the perverse financial incentives involved in the family law industry’s practice of actively contributing to the promotion of family breakup, to judicial collusion and corruption, and to preemptive control of all related legislative committees. It is also implausible that the lobbying organization “Resolution” would not be aware of the commercial advocacy of their counterparts in the various state bar associations and family law associations in the U.S. Surely, they would be aware of the rapidly-growing Parents’ Rights movement backlash in North America that has resulted from the very policies which this “reform” campaign advocates. Instead, this “study” takes a mere “snapshot” of existing problematic legislation which these intensifying reform efforts are aimed at, and disingenuously complains that the UK is “out of step” with what is occurring abroad.
In “standerinfamilycourt’s” humble opinion, the only portion of these study documents that were not primarily lobbying propaganda was the very interesting public vetting results (which were basically ignored in the final recommendations), along with very valid criticisms in Section 5 of the report.
The official recommendation for the new legislation reads as follows:
“The Government proposes that there will still be only one ground for divorce: that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. However, this would be established in a new way. The Government proposes to move away completely from both the ability to allege “fault” and the ability to contest (defend) the divorce: We propose to move away from an approach that requires justification to the court of the reason for the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage to a process that requires notification to the court of irretrievable breakdown. We also propose to remove the ability of a spouse, as a general rule, to contest the divorce (this is formally called defending in the legal process…). The Government reasons that if one spouse has concluded that the marriage is over, then the legal process should respect that decision and should not place impediments in the way of a spouse who wants to bring the marriage to a legal end. Importantly, this change would also prevent the legal process from being used to exercise coercive control by one spouse over the other spouse who may be a victim of domestic abuse.
“The Government therefore proposes to repeal the requirement for petitioners to give evidence of one or more facts and to replace it with a process of giving notice of irretrievable breakdown. In this process, the person seeking the divorce (or potentially the couple jointly) would give notice to the court of the intention to divorce, stating their belief that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. Irretrievable breakdown would therefore continue to be the sole ground for divorce. In the two-stage decree process that we propose to retain, the court would not be able to grant the first and interim decree (the decree nisi) if it was not satisfied that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.”
( SIFC : Notice the clever pretense of a residual “judicial discretion function” in the last sentence, mimicking a pseudo separation-of-powersbut no longer with any actual substance, since explicitly all that will be legally required is the Petitioner’s subjective assertion which would then bind the judges to just one possible decision, once appealed. Under the U.S. Constitution this sort of window-dressing would be an imperative due to Articles 3 and 10.)
How did the vetting population feel about this? And who were they?
Overwhelmingly, these UK citizens are opposed to the main legislative recommendation to remove fundamental family protections, but their voice is clearly being ignored. This figure tracks right along with data gathered three decades ago in the U.S. that showed 80% of Respondents to a “no-fault” petition alleging “irretrievable breakdown” opposed the dissolution of the marriage based on religion and conscience, even if they could not afford to formally contest. Clearly, these UK citizens know when their civil rights and the sovereignty of the family are at risk, and when they don’t buy into the problem definition to begin with.
Based on who the vetting population consisted of, it is clear to see who made up the 15% minority in favor of forced, non-consensual divorce.
Independence in the research study?
SIFC found that in digging into the Nuffield study on which the legislative recommendations almost entirely rely, the backward-engineering (n.b. desired solution defines the “problem” which scopes the “research”), and cozy relationships between the legislators, judiciary and the family law industry didn’t take long at all to detect. Clicking over to the webpage of one of the partners in the study, statistician firm Bryson Purdon Social Research, we find their list of current and past projects shows that they are regularly hired by legislators. The acknowledgments page of the study gushes about the extensive contributions of the family law lobbying association in the UK called Resolution, several members of which served as advisors and “recruited interviewees”.
It would have been great to compare the list of officers and trustees of the Nuffield Foundation with those of Resolution, but unfortunately, the latter was unavailable to non-members. We have already mentioned the study director’s extensive ties to family law. As a touching finish, we read this dedication: “This report is dedicated to the memory of Sir Nicholas Wall, a former President of the Family Division (of the Judiciary) and an advocate of divorce law reform.
Rationale for disregarding overwhelmingly negative public input On page 16 of the study, we read the following (bold emphasis added by SIFC):
“In our national opinion survey, 71% thought that fault should remain part of the law. However, the general public are unlikely to be aware that the current law does not in fact seek to make a definitive allocation of blame or of the very limited scrutiny that the court can undertake in practice.
(SIFC: In other words, the ignorant peasantry simply “doesn’t understand” that the current statute is meant to preserve an appearance, and isn’t meant to foster the best family outcomes, renovate the system from the ground up so that the judiciary can manage its case load, preserve fundamental rights of innocent family members or promote any meaningful changes in the existing power structures for the good of society as a whole.)
“Drawing on qualitative interviews with the parties, we drew a contrast between two different and mutually exclusive moralities in relation to divorce: a traditional one based on ideas about individual justice for the petitioner, and a responsibility morality based on the ‘good divorce’ where the focus is on harm-minimisation, especially in relation to children. The first emphasises the importance of a strict adherence to and finding of fault; the second would eliminate fault if possible.
“We also traced how adherents of both moralities experienced the divorce process. In general, the experience of both groups was largely negative, but for different reasons. For some embracing a justice morality, the pragmatic orientation of the justice system could be deeply frustrating, whilst for others the experience of fault turned out to be problematic due to the conflict and upset it generated. Those embracing a responsibility morality also found the experience difficult. Some were using fault pragmatically but found the process slow and painful; whilst some who were avoiding fault on principle found the long separation required to avoid fault very difficult in practical terms and also left them feeling they had lost control of private family decisions. A small number of interviewees a dopting the justice morality wanted the role of fault to be strengthened, but for most the removal of fault was strongly preferred. ”
( SIFC : The removal of fault may have been “preferred” for Resolution’s hand-picked interviewees for the study, but this was certainly not born out in Commons’ vetting effort with the general public, which showed an even stronger result at 83% than the still-overwhelming 71% found in the study. We should also note that the last statement directly contradicts the beginning statement in this quote: so, which is it, Resolution?)
Why is increasing the role of fault important to this “small number of interviewees”? Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College, and author of two enormously important books, “Taken into Custody” (2007) and “The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power” (2017) travels all over Europe explaining this very eloquently…
Dr. Baskerville (~ 2 minutes): “Nobody’s claiming we have to force somebody to live in a house with somebody they don’t want to live with. The question is…who bears the consequences? It’s a legal contract, or it should be, and if one walks away from it, what are the consequences? Who gets the house? Who gets the children or property and so forth ? Under what circumstances does the state have the role to come in and start allocating things? So fine, if someone wants to leave a marriage then I think we have no choice but to allow them to do that. But that’s not what we’re talking about here in the divorce machinery is positive state action against the other spouse. Why should that spouse who wants to leave the marriage without legal grounds…
( SIFC : excluding purely subjective legal grounds not based in any provable offense against the marriage or family members)
“… shouldn’t he or she leave with just the clothes on their backs, what they can get in a suitcase, and nothing else? Do they have the right to take the children, take the house, take the property with them when they leave? And this, of course, is where the state has to step in and say…has to allocate fault. They have to say where justice and injustice is.”
We provide this additional brief link to another key segment of the February, 2019 interview with Dr. Baskerville, for important further context. The study respondents in favor of increasing the role of fault know that the true best moral interest of the children and the only avenue to actual, objective justice, upon which a sustainable society depends, absolutely requires the application of fault, at least with respect to the effects of the divorce. The real barrier to this policy alternative, of course, is the hoped-for business model of the family law special interests, including the sponsors and designers of this “research study”.
“The aim of the policy is to reduce conflict between couples involved in divorce, dissolution and legal separation. The policy objectives are in line with wider strategic objectives to deliver a modern courts and justice system, including to provide a fair and effective justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families.
“The objectives are:
• To ensure that the decision to divorce or dissolve a civil partnership continues to be a considered one
• To minimise the adversarial nature of the legal process, to reduce conflict and to support better outcomes by maximising the opportunity for the parties to agree arrangements for the future
• To make the legal process fair, transparent, and easier to navigate
• To reduce the opportunities for an abuser to misuse the legal process to perpetrate further abuse”
These are purely ideological statements, with an undertone of making the law as LGBTQ-friendly as possible (code word: “Equality”). We point out that if a justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families were really the objective, then the research study would have been designed accordingly around family structure outcomes, and Dr. Regnerus’ rigorous 2012 NFSS study would have been invaluable support in reaching that outcome.
Because the April, 2019 position paper by Lord Chancellor David Gauke brings no other independent evidence to bear other than this heavily-biased and less-than-arm’s-length “research” (extensively requoted verbatim in the final recommendations, including the incomplete set of policy alternatives)– and the public citizen input has been patently ignored and discounted, “standerinfamilycourt” rests our case against the validity of “support” for this legislation here, rather than picking apart the legislative conclusions point-by-point (which was nevertheless tempting!)
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.” – Mark 10:11-12
This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now. In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance. On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly – God be praised! On the bad side, we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations. Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.
Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”. Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S. Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.
Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent attorneys out of their pockets?
Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?
The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”. Hello?
Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate: the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors. Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue, so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public! If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary DivorceCorp,and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.
“Barbaric!” they all hissed. Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations, for both intact and government-shattered families.
Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands! How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.
The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:
“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.” – Daily Mail, July, 2018
Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious: Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife. The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago. It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.
Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”: emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.
As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation, including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview, “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”
Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.
Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper, Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative) was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have. ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.” In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.” (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)
Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world. History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned. As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites. According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women. She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S. womens’ bar groups. Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak). We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships). Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery. The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.
These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another” in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench. On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.
This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” – rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.
In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed). Both were unstable situations, however, mustthe UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences? What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period? Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven? As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.
No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed. It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. ) Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,
“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.
“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.
“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”
So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign, the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.
Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,
“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad
“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation. I will have to write or email him a letter, we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this, yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”
Perhaps this Cornish friend will now be able to educate her MP about the five-decade U.S. adventure in state-enforced family shredding, and inform him that a growing number of people in the States don’t think setting back the family clock 50 years is actually that bad an idea. This is not yet a “done deal”. Bad policy was enacted and repealed before in the UK. This is even worse policy, and does not deserve to be enacted, despite the powerful endorsements. Even India had the common sense to repeal faultless unilateral divorce practices in their country, ruling them unconstitutional violations of equal protection and property rights.
Discretion will guard you, Understanding will watch over you… To deliver you from the strange woman, From the adulteress who flatters with her words; That leaves the companion of her youth And forgets the covenant of her God; For her house sinks down to death And her tracks lead to the dead; None who go to her return again, Nor do they reach the paths of life. – Proverbs 2: 11, 16-18
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him.The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house.18 It happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. This woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on it.So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.”Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” Thus they spoke before the king.
Then the king said, “ The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’”The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king.The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!” Then the king said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had [o]handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to [p]administer justice.
– 1 Kings 3:16-27
Back in biblical times, sons were a big deal, even to “ladies of the night”, because sons were a means of longterm survival if there was no husband in the picture. It was on this basis that Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law repaid his treachery toward her by masquerading as a prostitute to get him to impregnate her, and when it was all said and done, he remarked that she was more righteous than he (duh!) Anyone who has been to “family court” knows that not much has changed: sons and daughters often translate into cash flow of varying reliability, courtesy of the court, for some women, and a few men as well, not to even mention some abusive state entities. It’s understandable, then, that the parent who’s ordered to provide the cash flow would so much rather have parenting time instead. Who can blame them? Given that the states also get Federal payola in the form of Title IV-D payments for collecting those child support payments, we now have those babies being divided threeways in “family court”, instead of in half as proposed in Solomon’s court.
There are lots of videos out there describing this ugly underbelly of Big Divorce, a $100 billion per year industry, that additionally costs state and Federal taxpayers another $100+ billion each year in transferred social costs from unilateral “no-fault” forced divorce laws. While we pointedly disagree with some of the spelling, and the conclusion, the facts and statistics are well-presented in this expose‘.
Trust us when we say that our empathies are always with the innocent Respondent who was forced into “family court” against their will and conscience, when they never did anything to harm their children or family. The typical situation:
Connie Covetous marries Billy Beergut, both previously single, but perhaps they were involved premaritally or cohabited first. Connie finishes school, has a couple of kids, and goes to work in a job making around what Billy makes. It’s still not enough to keep up with HGTV and the Travel Channel, and Billy doesn’t feel compelled to climb the economic ladder to make enough for upward mobility. She’s exhausted. He’s enjoying their kids and his hobbies. Connie starts complaining about Billy to a male coworker she admires, who is climbing the ladder and doing all the things to improve himself that she wishes Billy were doing. The male colleague complains back about his wife who “is taking him for granted”. The two become involved and promise each other to divorce their respective spouses. Under our legal system, it doesn’t matter whether or not those now-surplus spouses consent from the curb. The unilateral petitions will be granted 100% of the time, and a reason doesn’t have to be given. Neither discarded spouse does consent, so Billy is dragged into court, and he’s ordered to pay child support and become a part-time father, by an imperious “black-robe” perched above him. Now Connie’s household income is four times his, and he’s evicted from the family home to boot. Close to 70% of unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women in the United States, as even the divorce attorneys tell us. Only two states require mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds, and technically only one state, Mississippi, has laws that don’t eventually enable a forced divorce against the consent of an innocent partner.
Is mandated 50-50 shared parenting really in the best interest of the child? That depends. Is it right for even 1% of the children’s time to be spent under Connie’s adulterous roof? Arguably, not! The trauma of remarriage has been shown in studies to be even worse for child outcomes than just the divorce, if the children are exposed to the legalized adultery partner. If Billy B. becomes a “stander”, and does not remarry or take on a girlfriend, the childrens’ outcomes will be better than if both parents remarry and are materially well off, no matter how little he’s allowed to see the kids. The kids will see the day-in, day-out moral example their father sets in honoring his marriage vows in the most difficult of circumstances, i.e., immoral civil paper ordering him not to honor those vows to protect and cherish. If, on the other hand, both parents are living in some form of state-licensed or unlicensed adultery, and that’s the forward plan, neither home is any better than the other for the kids, and they will be raised to believe adultery is an unavoidable cultural norm, that nothing in life is that reliable, and they will probably even avoid marriage as adults, having the next generation of kids out of wedlock.
If we go back to 1968 and earlier, we didn’t have these societal issues to any meaningful degree because we had fault-based custody decisions. That system worked well, and the reason it did has already been explained. That system was also much cheaper for the taxpayers of the day (some grandparents will actually remember when we used to balance our state and Federal budgets), and it helped our constitutional republic to thrive because we always raised a majority of solid, moral citizens in sufficient numbers to sustain it. Today that’s rapidly breaking down into cries for socialism among the children of this regime – as if unilateral, forced divorce isn’t already socialism, but clearly, blanket 50/50 shared parenting isn’t the answer from the sociological perspective. It’s only one more layer of socialism, transferring resources from the virtuous to the less virtuous on both a micro and macro level. (“standerinfamilycourt” is only coincidentally in agreement with the legal vultures of the “family court” regime on this one issue. Hopefully that won’t happen again.)
Let’s now look at it from the fundamental rights perspective, and the longstanding legal precedents that have come down under the Bill of Rights. The growing number of shared parenting activists out there are correct that there are due process and equal protection issues involved here, under the 14th amendment. But it’s not necessarily because they aren’t given the same amount of parenting time as the custodial parent, unless both parents are guilty of some equally grievous infraction against the marriage, the safety of the home, or the moral development of the children. In fact, the guy in the video is technically arguing against his own core argument, in a sort of laughable double-speak. For example, at ~5:30 minutes he says,
“creation of the ‘best interest of the children’ state statutes was unconstitutional! And a lie. They are vague value judgements (sic) and cannot be used until after harm to a child has been proven.”
On the contrary, SIFC would humbly propose that the mere filing of a unilateral divorce petition on “no-fault” grounds is prima facie evidence of harm to the child, as well as to grandchildren, both born and unborn. Under those circumstances, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the Petitioner(s) should not get more than supervised visitation, and no overnights, or whatever differing arrangement they mutually agree with the other spouse. That’s equal protection under the law, and the “best interest of the child”, friends. (Sword held at a respectful and safe distance from the baby.) SIFC does agree that the principle of Parens Patriae ~7:10 is definitionally incompatible with “no-fault” because an asserted fault must be established for this power of the state to apply, and that it has been rampantly abused by state courts, which are acting ministerially for legislatures who enacted the entire gamut of “no-fault” laws (not just grounds statutes) unconstitutionally.
The looting of the system evolved over time, escalating dramatically in the 1980’s. The violation of civil rights and constitutional precedent occurring at the first hearing, which this gentleman refers to ~8:10 actually consists of reducing the parental authority of the non-filing spouse below 100% unless there’s some fault basis! And the burden should be on the Petitioning side to prove this under the normal standards of evidence. On the other hand, even if it’s 50/50, the innocent spouse’s civil rights are already being violated by 50% – half the maimed, spiritually dead baby, so to speak. The constitutional issue this gentleman speaks of still remains under his split-the-baby approach, whether he’s being deprived of 50% of this parental sovereignty or 90% of it. Admittedly, 50% is financially less burdensome than 90% in terms of child support, but that’s really a separate property-taking issue, which is also better-adjudicated under a fault-basis. Under a proper repeal of non-consensual divorce on “no-fault” grounds, the divorce simply would not be granted unless the parents came to binding terms on all such matters so that nobody is forfeiting, nor being deprived of, their fundamental 14th amendment protections.
To be sure, most of the proposed legislation before legislatures in many states call for a “rebuttable presumption” that this is in the child’s best interest, something that is likely to prove to be utterly meaningless “window dressing” in practice, given the rampant judicial corruption throughout the family court system, and the high hurdles to court access that most of us experience, should the need arise to rebut the presumption. This will be a mere band-aid on a pustulent boil that needs full lancing and draining. It appears that the industrial family law machine and its lobbyists are somewhat split on the issue, looking as they always do through their primary lens: impact on longterm fee revenue. A few firms embrace it, realizing that nothing is ever really final. Most stand vehemently opposed, proving that pushing through forced divorces quickly, then litigating over children and support collections for years thereafter is the optimal business model. We should keep an eye on the trend in state enactment threat, those of us who hope to abolish non-consensual “no-fault” decrees altogether. Strategically, in the face of enactment of a law that has pretty strong public sympathy, as 50/50 shared parenting has, and seems inevitable — as a matter not of if but when, might there come a day when under those changed circumstances, we could start to persuade the “family law” lobby that forced faultless divorces are no longer in their business interest? Are they aware from their own market research that 80% of unilateral “no-fault” divorces in the U.S. aren’t really mutual, nor over “irreconcilable differences” other than adultery or the desire to pursue adultery legally?
“standerinfamilycourt” is aware that this post is not going to sit well with those who are already-divorced and not looking back, possibly “remarried”, strapped with child support payments and either alienated from their children, or allowed too little time with them. That sucks. Unfortunately, it boils down to the same choice you would have made for their sake if you were civilly still in that marriage. There would be no one on the side, for their sake, with or without the subsequent civil paper condoning it. You’d be on your knees taking your complaint to the Lord about any and all barriers to your being the parent He appointed you to be. You’d be sacrificing and laying down your life in order to raise them right, since you only get one shot at it. The Lord would see this and, in His time, move mountains in your behalf.
Here’s what the Righteous Judge says about the best interest of the child:
And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into thefiery hell.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.”
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! – Isaiah 5:20
What does a materially-constitutional “no-fault” divorce law look like? Above all, for a unilateral divorce law to be constitutional, there must be no front-door (nor back-door) means to force a divorce on any unwilling spouse who has done nothing to seriously harm the marriage or family members: to the full extent that such harm is not objectively provable with hard evidence. Beyond that, no spouse should be deprived of property, parental rights, free association, free exercise of religious conscience, nor be subjected to arbitrary, vague charges that cannot be understood in advance sufficiently to avoid running afoul of them. In other words, any law that removes these explicit fundamental Bill of Rights protections without regard to proof of marital fault, over which the defendant has had reasonable self-control, should be deemed unconstitutional on its face.
Finally, there should be no violation of the separation-of-powers between the branches of government, as laid out in Articles 1 and 3 of the Constitution. Most liberal, socialist schemes do indeed involve violation of the separation-of-powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government, or between the legislative and executive branches. For example, when a Federal Judge or Justice proclaims a new fundamental right, such as “privacy” without undergoing the rigorous Congress-based, state ratification-based process of amending the Constitution, there has been a violation of separation-of-powers. Hence, judicial precedents and subsequent legislation which rely on an alleged right to “privacy” to legalize or expand abortion, overrule sodomy or adultery prohibitions, require state-paid contraception (and the like), would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by our nation’s founders.
Under this same principle, a legislature may not pass a law that strips the judicial branch of its assigned powers under Article 3 (and its state constitution counterparts), by channeling matters through a court only for appearance sake, while reducing the role of the judges from discretionary to purely administrative. Similarly, legislatures may not delegate powers reserved to them to another branch. There used to be individual legislative divorces enacted as special laws in the legislature which fell into disfavor in case law. Yet “no-fault” unilateral divorce laws are essentially legislative divorces in blanket form, with the states’ family courts administering them in a way that generally does not require judicial discretion.
When any state’s divorce statute eliminates objective fault-based grounds for divorce and declares that the court “shall” * grant a contested divorce upon administratively-valid petition, with no discretionary consideration of the facts in the case as they relate to allegations about undefined terms such as “irreconcilable differences” or “the best interest of the child / children / family”, a violation of Article 3 has resulted. Under this exacting standard, it is reasonable to argue that even mutually-consenting “no-fault” divorce is unconstitutional on these same separation-of-powers grounds, even though fundamental rights of neither spouse would be violated under a strictly consensual divorce law, whereas the fundamental rights of the children of the marriage, and the objective state interest in limiting the cost of services to families, might still be compromised. (Hence, in this blog, use of the term “materially-constitutional” will refer to a state statute where the fundamental 1st and 14th Amendment rights of neither spouse is violated, and both spouses receive equal protection under the law, taken as a whole.)
* Existing Texas statute uses the term “may” instead of “shall”, but under the heavy-handed influence of the Texas Bar Association, their “family courts” consistently administer the law as though the judges have no independent discretion to deny unilateral divorce petitions. Texas is presently considering HB922 and HB926 (formerly HB93 and HB65, respectively), which will remove non-consenting no-fault grounds, but leave all other divorce provisions except the very brief 60-day waiting period unchanged.
Because of the high cost of serving (or mitigating societal ills from) broken families, a few states have experimented with opt-in “covenant marriage” laws (Arkansas, Arizona, and Louisiana) while maintaining all their regular divorce-on-demand machinery for those who don’t opt-in. Since there are no 1st nor 14th Amendment protections for those who don’t opt-in at the time of the marriage, these states don’t qualify as having constitutional divorce statutes. These states have extremely low rates of voluntary participation in these measures, and Arkansas in particular remains among the states with the highest divorce rates.
“Standerinfamilycourt” cannot possibly be familiar with key provisions of all of the various state divorce laws, though the “model” UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act) provides a general roadmap, and various state-by-state tables are available which capture the variations in how the “no-fault” model was enacted and / or implemented in any given state. Not too long ago, a comrade in the effort to repeal unilateral grounds for divorce pointed out that there are two states, Mississippi and South Dakota, with consent-only “no-fault” grounds. Knowing how deceptively the historical practices around “no-fault” laws have developed in the various states (sometimes, even despite well-meaning original statutes), and seeing the relative divorce rates in those states compared with other states, SIFC was skeptical, and so, purposed to analyze both of these state statutes in detail to see to what extent this was likely to be true, as the laws were applied to real families. Texas, for example, will not have eliminated forced divorce on “no-fault” grounds simply by passing HB922, because existing law will be unchanged in a crucial provision that allows either spouse to file (purportedly) fault-based grounds based on living apart for 3 years, even if the filing spouse has refused to live with the non-filing spouse (who did not consent to the separation and therefore was not actually responsible for the alleged fault). Could there be a similar situation going on in Mississippi or South Dakota?
With somewhere between 75% and 80% of divorces nationwide opposed by one of the spouses, typically, a state’s divorce rate correlates with barriers to finalizing a divorce, such as the length of any waiting period or statutory living apart period required. Yet, neither Mississippi nor South Dakota figure in the states with the lowest divorce rate — both states are pretty much “middle of the pack” in their rates of marriage “dissolution”. Both states appear to have had their consent-based “no-fault” laws in place for a considerable length of time, not as a result of the sort of repeal that is being sought in Texas. According to 2017 statistics from the American Community Survey, South Dakota ranks 9th highest with a divorce rate of 13.59 per 1000 married couples of all ages. Mississippi’s rate is somewhat lower, at around 12 per 1000 married couples, as compared to states with the highest rates at 17-19 per 1000, and states with the lowest rates at 5-7 per 1000 married couples. If unilateral divorce is indeed restricted to fault-based grounds in these two states, why isn’t either state’s divorce rate in the lower ranges?
Why would South Dakota, for example, still rank only 33rd out of 50 states in protecting families, if unilateral “no-fault” divorce is restricted by statute ? We’re about to find out. Before looking at the state specifics, we need to reflect for a moment on the coercive power of the state bar associations in shielding the lucrative divorce trade, also in controlling all three branches of state government, and the degree to which the state budget benefits from Federal Title IV-D funds from court operating rules and from legislation that confiscates children from the families those courts have shredded. Then we need to look at whether other provisions in the divorce law which deprive law-abiding citizens who want to keep their families together of their due process and fundamental rights are counterbalancing the consent-only provision. There is also the religion factor, which layers over all of the other factors in law. States with the lowest divorce rates (sadly) tend to have the smallest “conservative” Protestant and Jewish populations, and a typically-higher Catholic population. Lastly, there is the dwindling marriage rate among younger citizens due to a law-driven deliberate preference for cohabitation, and ultimately causing the “per 1000 married couples” measures to disproportionately consist of divorced and remarried older citizens, especially in states where non-consensual “no-fault” grounds are the only grounds available. The map below shows data for those age 30 and under, where Mississippi likely has a higher young marriage rate than South Dakota, and a bit higher consensual divorce rate in that young age bracket.
In a picture where there are many “moving parts”, restricting to consent-only “no-fault” grounds most likely offsets other factors in keeping that state’s divorce rate lower than it would otherwise be, and improvements on other battle fronts (notably, the behavior and doctrine of the church) would catalyze with adopting a materially constitutional statute in lowering that state’s divorce rate.
Here is a summary table of the specifics of each state’s consent-only “no-fault” grounds, and surrounding statutes influencing the net degree of family protection. Mississippi appears to have enacted its “no-fault” law in 1972, while South Dakota’s base “no-fault” law was enacted in 1976, and modified in 1985, possibly to add back the mutual consent feature.
In this table (click on document to expand), red shading indicates provisions in the law defective enough to override all or most benefits from requiring mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds such as “irreconcilable differences”. Yellow shading indicates cautionary areas (“it depends”), and green shading indicates provisions that are materially consistent with Bill of Rights fundamental protections for the non-offending spouse and innocent family members. Demonstrably, most of the green and none of the red is associated with key provisions in the Mississippi statute, making it the most protective toward rightful families, of all the family codes in the nation, whereas South Dakota has left a few “back doors” open, whereby a unilateral divorce may ultimately be obtained without an innocent spouse’s consent, if traditional back-up allegations are pursued to exploit longstanding vagueness of definitions in the statute, such as “mental cruelty”.
“standerinfamilycourt’s” Conclusions:
Obviously we see the old adage, “the devil is in the details” when we take a close look at the consent-only “no-fault” divorce laws, with a critical eye to whether they nevertheless still effectively function as unilateral laws with delayed timing–by which people can still be manipulated by determined “family law” practitioners who, in the larger picture, continue to have an enormous financial conflict of interest with the true best interests of the family and the objective best interests of even the state.
South Dakota’s divorce statute is obviously better than that of 48 other U.S. states, but it still contains perverse financial incentives that boost the divorce industry at everyone else’s expense, and that encourage divorce coercion, because marital fault is not considered in either child custody (hence, still subjecting the citizens of the state to Title IV-D abuses) or in property division. Additionally, definitions of “abuse” as an alternative ground for divorce in the statute remain more vague than in Mississippi’s statute, which is a problem because “mental cruelty” has long been the next reliable “go-to” when other unilateral grounds are not available. Finally, the provision for defaulted, implied consent in South Dakota creates a weaker law than in Mississippi, and opens the door for process service abuses, which is also a potential issue with Texas’ HB922, as currently drafted.
All things considered, Mississippi comes the closest of all 50 U.S. states to having a substantially constitutional “no-fault” divorce law that is only unilateral when it comes to fault-based grounds. Among the best features of Mississippi’s statute:
-> No potential for abuse of a non-consenting spouse via default judgment provisions (rather than explicit appearance via joint petition, or service of process compliance).
-> 60 day waiting period, even with written mutual consent.
-> Some consideration of marital fault in property division, if the consenting parties cannot agree, and the offended spouse would be at a disadvantage.
-> Strong consideration of marital fault in child custody decisions
-> Fairly explicit and actionable definition of physical and mental abuse, in terms of defining severity, extent, duration and other terms that in most states are vaguely defined by intention. Limited “back door” available by resorting to cruelty allegations if “no-fault” fails to secure a “dissolution” decree.
– >The abandoner cannot allege “abandonment” nor “living apart” as back-door unilateral grounds, if unable to gain the non-offending spouse’s consent to the dissolution.
(Had the case against “SIFC” been brought in Mississippi, instead of Illinois, it is highly doubtful the petitioner would have prevailed on any grounds. Had the case been brought in South Dakota, the petitioner would likely have had to resort to false charges of “mental cruelty” in order to prevail, or there would have had to be a risky strategy of process service fraud leading to a default in-absentia judgment that could likely have been successfully challenged upon discovery.)
Why should it matter to take a deep look at what’s working in states like Mississippi, as we seek to repeal unilateral “no fault” grounds in additional states, such as Texas? One big reason is to be prepared for the likely charge from the powerful “family law” lobby that these laws have not significantly reduced the divorce rate enough that the “threats” to women, gays, and abused spouses from repealing unilateral grounds for divorce is justified. Looking at the above map, this will surely become a more prominent challenge if and when the movement begins to pick up steam–and purely emotional arguments can no longer carry the day, as they do today. We need to be armed with facts that demonstrate exactly why having a constitutionally-defensible statute may not have had the impact we would hope for, especially as it relates to those “back doors” left open in some states. The second reason is to clearly recognize and target other barriers to family preservation that lie outside the law — for example, immoral church practices, which might become more susceptible to reform under a tighter law. The third reason is to gain important comfort that the state of Mississippi has managed to survive for 43 years, over the entire divorce-on-demand era, as the only state with a materially constitutional consensual-only “no-fault” law which powerful special interests have never succeeded in overturning in court based on “privacy” challenges.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. – Philippians 2:3-4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
by Standerinfamilycourt.com
SIFC Note: “CCP” stands for Communist Chinese Party
