Category Archives: citizenship

It’s Been A Long Ride, Zuckman, But It Seems We Have “Irreconcilable Differences”


(Photo credit: Isaac Steele)

Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.  – Luke 6:26

We haven’t had the actual breakup yet, Mr. Z, but it seems all but inevitable that it’s coming.   Obviously, it’s not you, it’s us.

So, here “standerinfamilycourt” sits again in “Facebook Jail” for 30 days on a “fifth offense” (which you didn’t even bother to identify).    That means, in practical terms, that the community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional can only be updated on the platform of your competitor, MeWe, until the end of the third week in May.   It also means that UDIU can disappear without notice from Facebook at the very next deemed “offense” (but as I’ll explain below, that was already at unavoidable risk of happening soon anyway under a new algorithm that’s coming).

All of the aforesaid official “violations” have occurred in matters external to our community page, and on issues external to our campaign to abolish unilateral, forced divorce laws, or to warn people that the wages of adulterous remarriage following man’s divorce is death (unless repented by exiting the union).   That content turns out to be not nearly so “offensive” to the tech Overlords as heretical statements challenging the New World Order (NWO) state religion: CCP-Dominant Globalist Technocracism in more general terms such as “vaccine” noncompliance, environmental debunking, rejecting “Critical Race Theory” as inherently racist and sexist, and wearing face-diapers as destroying (what’s left of) our immune systems for no health benefit.   None of these things is a topic for our pro-family pages, however, other than incidentally (parents’ rights, etc.).

When we first met many years ago, you were willing to show our page to anyone who wanted to see – and all to their friends, as well.   You were willing to let SIFC shell out a few bucks to get blog posts and other material “boosted” to an even larger audience, typically in the few thousands.   It was a win-win situation, or so we thought.  That is, it was win-win until the 45th U.S. President Donald J. Trump took his oath of office, threatening your societal dominance, and you suddenly decided this business arrangement was “political advertising” for which we must henceforth “register”.   Since it seemed a 1st amendment violation to “register” in order to maintain an ongoing commercial agreement, we continued to use your service and you continued to take our money without our actually registering as a “political advertiser” — as if we were some sort of lobbying firm abusing the democratic process by bribing officials (the way you routinely do).  Then, one day, you noticed that you had been disobeyed, and you banned us from the “felony” of boosting posts, henceforth and forevermore.     By then, your vengeful campaign of shadow-banning all views that displeased your “woke” corporate sensibilities, or that might re-elect the President, was well underway, but our number of page followers still continued to grow.
(
By that time, we no longer wanted to “monetize” your own nefarious political plans anyway, without yet even realizing how dastardly, unlawful and abusive those plans were.)

Then came …. “the trainings”.   Facebook started offering them to group page administrators, framed as all “good news”.    SIFC smelled a rat, and instead relied on a third-party consultant’s version of the training aimed at maximizing “organic” reach and exposure, to see how the ramp-up in “shadow-banning” of socially-conservative content would impact Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional, our community page.    The first round of such trainings came shortly before the 2020 election cycle kicked in for the U.S.    It turned out that at that time, we were already doing a lot of the things the marketing consultant recommended, and though we were still hit by the algorithm change, we had already been so severely targeted in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory, losing to Zuckerberg political spite a good 80% of our “reach” (our 800+ page followers’ ability to regularly see our posts in their “feeds” so that they can “like”, “reshare”, and comment),  the effect on our page reach from the last algorithm change was still relatively mild through 2020 to today.    Not so for the remainder of 2021, however, with the latest algorithm change reportedly being rolled out over the next few weeks.   (To be clear, we don’t push political parties or candidates on this blog or its social media pages.    We’re politically independent here, but we do unabashedly and unapologetically push biblical family structure and biblical morality on these pages.)

So, SIFC attended an updated independent marketing reach training this past week, just before landing again in the Facebook “slammer” ….and learned all of the following:

1.  The average reach for all Facebook group / “business” pages is only 1 to 2% of opted-in page followers.   We’re still averaging a bit better than that under the algorithm that’s about to be replaced, but in our early days, it was more like 30-50%, and some of our posts were able to go semi-viral.

2.  A flag like this will be put on any page that features content the Overlords, or someone complaining, find objectionable (purportedly, diminishing their individual “FB experience“).   In other words, some of us will be getting what amounts to a “snowflake” flag when they click the “Follow” button.    One thing that the Zuck horde has invariably found objectionable since 2016 is any such page having a noticeable following or viral posts.   We have been guilty on more than one occasion of the latter.


3.  You plan to ramp up your shadow-banning that allowed pages like ours with a loyal following to fall through your distraction cracks up to this point.    To “correct” this, you plan to push us down in our followers’ feed priority if we regularly re-share the excellent materials from others that makes our page so rich and creates a “digest” that is valuable to our followers.    You plan to shadow-ban us unless we create “original” content on a daily basis.   You plan to shadow-ban us if any of our admins have personally run afoul of your so-called “Community Standards” anywhere in your system.  You plan to algorithmically shadow-ban us, we hear, if we don’t respond to each and every commenter on each and every post.

4.   You plan to use this newly-revised algorithm to take things even a step further, we hear, for “recidivist” page owners and admins who are social media “ex-cons”.   What legal right have you, Mr. Z, to take our page down without notice, or even an explanation going forward, just because someone, anyone complains to you of being ideologically offended?    Don’t you know that people were ideologically offended by Jesus Christ – who walked on water?
(Yes, indeed,  it’s not you, it’s us. )

5.  Your use of washed-up ex-CNN political hacks as “fact checkers” deliberately spreads far more disinformation than our page could ever inadvertently accomplish.    This is no excuse for shadow-banning.   Provide actual evidence to us that we misposted, and ask us to take in down.   Problem solved.

Okay…. so we don’t currently add much to your revenue model (by your own action choices, we remind, not ours), except a small-but-loyal advertising audience for other sponsors.  It’s not like we made this choice – on either level.  You unilaterally cut off this steady revenue offered to you by us, some 4 or 5 years ago.      You are now willing to cut off your revenue nose to spite your other-sponsor face by deliberately cutting us off from our mostly church-going page  followers (the “deplorables”).    Since there are now quite a few fish in the sea these days when it comes to social media platforms,  SIFC agrees with you that there’s just not much left in our long relationship.     Hence, this divorce, if and when it comes, will be by mutual consent.
————————————————–
To our page followers (many of whom run Facebook group or community pages of their own), we wanted to give you a heads-up that there is more than a potential chance our page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional,  will disappear from Facebook entirely in the near future with no notice, and almost a certainty that you will think it has disappeared, even if it actually hasn’t, because you may no longer see it in your news feed by next month, and will have navigate there yourself.    We wanted to give you an advance opportunity to understand all the reasons why, take a few quick steps to possibly delay this happening,  and where to go to find us again if or when we do “disappear” from your social media experience (and you miss us).

“Standerinfamilycourt” is on a 5th violation of Facebook’s so-called “Community Standards”, with the very next “offense” permanently shutting down personal wall and (potentially) all associated pages.    Meanwhile, there is a gene-manipulation treatment out there which the FDA unlawfully approved on an “emergency” basis, given the number of effective treatments that objectively are available, and the less than 1% population death rate among those who contract the Wuhan Flu.    This is not technically a “vaccine” by the prior established definition, but an unlawful label achieved through financial corruption.    That “vaccine” is literally killing thousands of people in each country where it’s being pushed, and ushering some of those thousands prematurely into hell, or permanently maiming them in this life.   With the exception of the French brand, Sanofi, that “vaccine” is produced on the backs of aborted fetuses, despite much propaganda that this isn’t the case.    That “vaccine” was the obscenely-lucrative brainchild of a man who thinks there are too many people in the world.    Several highly respected immunologists around the world are warning that millions more “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” people will die next fall and winter due to the intentional destruction of their natural immune systems and due to viral particle “shedding” from the “vaccinated” to the “unvaccinated”.  The U.S. government, while currently not the only one, is in the hands of perhaps dozens of people whom all the international forensic cyber-evidence shows, conclusively, were not legitimately elected   They do not have the consent of the governed, and they will not guarantee the citizens of the U.S. the republican form of government the U.S. Constitution promises.   The media propaganda around all of these issues is coming straight from the Chinese Communist Party, and is disseminated daily by bribed national traitors.   Every statement just listed in this paragraph, though demonstrably true, violates Facebook’s “Community Standards” and is sure to thoroughly offend most of their target audience for paying sponsors: hence, irreconcilable differences.   Since there’s no monetization involved, there is nothing to split in our parting, just “custody” of 800+ aggrieved page followers.

Even so, SIFC (as an individual) cannot conscionably remain silent online about any of these issues, even though they are not normally carried on either the blog page or the social media community pages.   We must nevertheless have a functioning constitutional republic in order to continue to make any appeal that unilateral, forced divorce is unconstitutional.    There is very little the nation’s leaders actually do these days that is constitutional, including bring the true insurrectionists to justice in order to secure the republic’s survival as anything but a banana republic.

Some suggested intermediate actions (also a good idea for similar group pages to adopt):

1.   Go over to MeWe, where we’ve been running parallel since January, knowing that this was coming.    Sign up and hit the follow button over there.    On May 1, there will be a poll on MeWe asking what alternative free speech platforms our followers are on.
Could you do SIFC the huge favor of responding to that quick poll?  We’ll also keep people updated over there about what’s happening on our Facebook page.   We’ll be on MeWe (and at least one or two other platforms) when and if our page is banned entirely by Mr, Zuck.  We will soon try to get parallel running going on Gab, and possibly one additional platform such as Frankspeech.

2.   Go to our Facebook page header where the “follow” button is.   Use the drop-down menu and select “See First” .   This is old advice but is increasing in its importance with the new algorithm.

3.  Please message our FB page if you ever see the  “snowflake” flag when attempting to hit the “Follow” button on our page.

4.  Try to drop some sort of comment or other interaction on our posts, if you possibly can.   SIFC will try to be more diligent in the future (for as long as we’re up, anyway) to timely acknowledge your comment in some way.    This may help keep our posts in your feed.   SIFC won’t be allowed by FB to respond until late May, however.

5.  Other marriage permanence group page owners: if our content is appropriate for your page you can snapshot / paste (for “original” appearing content), or reshare  our MeWe content (and especially this blog post) to your page.   Try putting its actual link in the comments section rather than the body of the post on your page, and explain to your page audience why in the body).  One of the most obnoxious and damaging features of being forced to spend  time in the “Zuckslammer”, for something entirely unrelated to our community page, is the inability to let people know why our page was forced into dormancy, as well as engage in appropriate “troll control”.    Thirty days is an eternity on social media.

6.  If other group pages (standers, parents’ rights) want their materials shared on UDIU, feel free to use the “post to page” feature, since it will start to harm “organic reach” for both of us if we re-share.    Best to wait until SIFC is “sprung”, however, to make sure it can be moderated and seen.    Try not to include a direct link, in the body of the piece, that navigates away from FB – SIFC soooo apologizes for this request, but doing so reduces distribution under the planned new “alg”.    SIFC is unsure at this point whether posting the external link in the comments section is a good workaround, we’ll just have to try it and see.   (Be sure to also share material on our MeWe page!)

7.  Subscribe to this blog “7 Times Around the Jericho Wall” (www.standerinfamilycourt.com) for email notification of new posts, and as a fallback connection to our social media pages.    Scroll down to the bottom of any blog post, and click “notify me of new posts”.

To sum up, Mr. Z & company has been on a long political crusade to isolate conservative voices from one another if they refuse to self-censor, and to prevent the concentration of the conservative message by any and every means available:  reputational smearing, shadow-banning, false accusations and permanent banning, demonetizing, rewarding snitches and trolls, difficult-to-implement or expensive operating conditions, etc. etc. etc. versus the original operating model.   As many of our social conservative peer groups have complained, it’s increasingly about dominance, control — shoving aside the values, culture and morals of America’s founding fathers to make a wider berth for cultural Marxism, and eventually, full-on communism.    Their vision cannot coexist with strong families, biblical values, the rule of law, nor the values and promises in the Bill of Rights.

If we just lie down and take it, however, they win.

Are they servants of Christ?—I am speaking as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.   Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent adrift at sea.  I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers;  I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.  Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.   –  2 Corinthians 11:23-28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Count of God’s Gracious Blessings During the CCP* Virus Crisis

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

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!

 

Is Satan Running Out the Clock on Reforming “No-Fault” Laws?

by Standerinfamilycourt

“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,  and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.   Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.   Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left.”

So far during the pandemic and unconstitutional lockdown response, “standerinfamilycourt” has focused on completing a couple of stalled blog posts on other topics started earlier, while observing, praying and reflecting, knowing this one is going to be difficult to write, and impossible, really, without the Holy Spirit being the guest author.    How much more time do we have, if any, for the life work of removing the jackboot of “family court” from the necks of our nation’s covenant families?

As this post is being written,

– a few U.S. states are coming out of lockdown

– protests are robust in most of the U.S. states that are not easing their house arrest orders, and are running out of factual excuses

– thousands of dangerous violent and sexual offenders are being released from jails and prisons against the wishes of most citizens

– the jail space thereby freed up is being used to jail citizens who violate gubernatorial “emergency” regulations to exercise their fundamental rights to attend church services in their cars in the parking lots of their churches, along with mothers who dare take their child to the local park, or perform personal services in order to feed their children.

– evidence is emerging U.S. “deep state” actors in various Federal health watchdog agencies broke laws to assist the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with bio-espionage plans, even financing the effort with nearly $4 million of U.S. taxpayer money after the necessary lab research was halted and banned in the U.S., and (get this) government officials and influential corporate figures personally holding several related patents!

– Chinese-made surveillance drones hover over the skies of our leftist-run cities, such as Elizabeth, NJ

$3 trillion has been added to the already-staggering national debt, amounting to about half of the expected additional outlays for the year 2020

– 30 million people have lost their jobs as a result of the media-fanned panic, driving unemployment figures upward from 2% to 20% in the span of six weeks time

– a strong push is being orchestrated worldwide to make a yet-to-be developed, test  or approved vaccine, preferably containing a “digital certificate” to contain overall immunization status, compulsory for all citizens by the end of 2020.

– evangelicals across the U.S. are getting into spirited online debates with one another about whether the Rapture will occur before the Great Tribulation begins, or at some point thereafter…

As if all this were not enough, significant credible evidence has also steadily emerged from various sources that a consortium of wealthy global elites, Big Technology interests, Big Pharmacy interests, Big Media, Communist Chinese leadership, and U.S. government agency insiders have been engineering this “pandemic” for the past few years in a centrally-orchestrated plan to remove our Constitution and our nationalist President by deliberately crashing our economy and keeping it artificially crashed until the upcoming Presidential election in November.    Here’s how one fairly well-informed Pastor Jones Northlake Baptist Church – Georgia described the plot and its timeline to his “virtual” congregation on a recent Sunday morning, in a 30 minute sermon with closing prayer.

Meanwhile, many state legislatures are out of session for the foreseeable future, and some court proceedings are being conducted via web-conferencing tools.   With “expert” predictions that the virus will return by next winter, who knows when these forums will be back to their normal operations?     Was it really just 12 months ago that Texas HB922 was under testimony in committee in the Texas House?   That day was full of obnoxious and unnecessary distractions, including a parade of gender-disordered individuals moaning about the perceived threats to their right to “marry” that a competing bill posed.   Yet those distractions seem to pale in comparison to the current lengthy, ongoing distraction from reform efforts.

Depending on the outcome of the November election, one of two unpleasant but likely scenarios threaten to further jolt the country.    On the one hand, if President Trump is re-elected, this aforementioned globalist consortium can be counted on to redouble and intensify  their efforts at espionage,  inducing treason and sabotage, possibly even triggering a multinational war, if necessary to accomplish their aims of restoring momentum to Marxist globalism.  It shouldn’t be too surprising to see one of their current leaders revealed as the Antichrist of the book of Revelation.   The pressures on families and individuals to merely survive will become as all-consuming as the last several weeks have proven to be, until and unless Trump can get the upper hand somehow.

On the other hand, if one or more of several boasted-of leftist schemes succeed in interfering with the electoral college or with the popular vote, to the advantage of Trump’s Democratic challenger, the plans to unravel our Bill of Rights will likely trigger a civil war with the constitutionalists.    John Zmirak put it this way in an April 24 article in The Stream:

“But today’s Democrats realized what 1860s Democrats didn’t. Open secession backfires. Especially when most of the private firearms in the country, and sympathies of the military, are with your opponents….

“They [ the Left ] sent a message, which they’re still sending now, with the extra force of the lockdown:

“We’re absolutely ruthless in our grasp at power. We’re willing to lie, hurt the country, slander the innocent as traitors, rapists or racists, and call our opponents murderers for disagreeing with us. You Christians and conservatives won’t go that far. So you will lose. You might as well make things easier on yourself and America, and admit it.”

Based on what’s been happening all over the country with the lockdown protests, “standerinfamilycourt” believes the Left seriously miscalculated what our constitutionalist patriots would do if the tables of circumstance were turned from 2016’s gracious outcome.   Videos like this one (SIFC full disclaimer here) have been cropping up lately with the cold calculus for a successful constitutional rescue and recovery operation.    Wars and rumors of wars….

Perhaps either scenario will lead to the kind of revival and repentance that will save our culture and way of life, and eventually result in peeling back all the anti-family legislation of the past 50 years as a result of the community-wide lesson-learned about our inescapable need for durable, traditional families as a matter of national security.   Or, perhaps this will be the beginning of the end for our 244-year grand experiment in maintaining history’s longest-running constitutional republic.

Yet… what if hundreds or thousands of the saints in the marriage permanence movement all disappeared on the same day, the ones now standing in loving chastity for restoration of their original covenant family,  as well as the ones with restored or never-threatened intact covenant marriages, leaving behind only their comrades in the movement who entered into “remarriages” while still having a living, estranged spouse, or the ones who don’t actually mind being “divorced”, but merely want 50% custody of their children and a break on their child support bill?   Some of us will be eternally relieved of our heavy cultural and legal reform burden on that day, while others of us will remain to find the movement ranks slightly thinned of those they consider “moralistic” Christians.     It could happen just before administration of the new chipped vaccine for the CCP virus becomes mandatory nationwide,  or this event might even become the final test that God uses to separate the sheep from the goats before whisking away His bride…and control of the government  of the United States becomes an irrelevance overnight, yielding to the One-World government the globally powerful instigators of this virus aspire to.   At that point, so will reform of “family laws” also become an irrelevance.   At that point, the wait will only be seven apocalyptic years before the government of Jesus Christ re-establishes the family law of Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:6 for the next 1,000 years.   In light of this, perhaps each covenant stander has time for little else now except pleading for the urgent redemption in Christ of the eternal souls of their friends and family members.

It’s not over until it’s over, so SIFC will carry on as the Lord instructs and enables, in the meantime.   We live in breathlessly exciting times, but we need to keep focused on the fact that those who follow Jesus know from the writings of the apostle John exactly how this story ends.    The next planned blog post will be about all the unexpected blessings from the “plandemic” world crisis, so stay tuned.

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise,  making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
– Ephesians 5:15-17

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

On Deeming Our Churches “Non-Essential”: A (Hopefully) Balanced Application of Religious Liberty Principles

by “standerinfamilycourt”

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.   Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.   Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake;  for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains.   If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.   But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake;  I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?

Why in the world do we have monitored stay-home orders, with fines and jail time attached these days?    What in the world happened to our freedom of association, much less our free religious exercise?   Is it not due to the political climate in which a vast majority of the citizens of the United States of America (or the UK,  Australia or most any other stricken nation) instinctively know they are not ready to meet their Maker, and are (justifiably) terrified of suddenly dying?    Is it not also partly due to the same sentiment in the hearts of most of our state and Federal policy-makers?   In the UK, there are even reports of surveillance drones, and of officials defacing public park spaces  as tactics to keep people inside and at home.

Not surprisingly, when pastors start getting arrested and jailed in the U.S. for holding physical instead of virtual church on Sunday, we’re finding it triggers two different kinds of outrage, even among evangelicals.   Disgruntled Camp 1 points in knee-jerk fashion to the First Amendment, to the commandment not to forsake the gathering of the saints,  Paul’s instruction to observe corporate communion, and the imperative of anointing the sick with oil and laying on of hands.

Says Matt Walsh: “Pastor Howard-Browne insists that his church took many precautions. Hand sanitizer was given out. Staff wore gloves. Congregants were spaced out as much as possible. They may not have all been 6 feet apart, but they were certainly better spaced than you will be if you wait in line at the grocery store.”  

(Debatable – seems a bit hard to visualize non-contagious spacing in a teeming megachurch, as shown in the video that triggered the arrest.)

Camp 2 points to public witness, and the commandment not to presumptuously put the Lord to the test.

Says Christian religious freedom attorney, David French:

“There exists within Christianity a temptation to performative acts that masquerade as fearlessness. In reality, this recklessness represents—as the early church father John Chrysostom called it—“display and vainglory.” Look how fearless we are, we declare, as we court risks that rational people should shun. In the context of a global pandemic followers of Christ can actually become a danger to their fellow citizens, rather than a source of help and hope.

“Or, put another way, reckless Christians can transform themselves from angels of mercy to angels of death, and the rest of the world would be right to fear their presence.”

Both evangelical camps make good points.    The environment for hostility against Christians was already fairly toxic on a purely ideological basis well before people started testing positive for COVID-19, and it’s not such a stretch to imagine that temporary emergency measures might one day morph into permanent shutdowns, if certain voices in the debate got their way.    In fact, the Mayor of New York City just this past week threatened a synagogue with permanent closure for holding services, as if he truly believed he had the constitutional authority to do so.

On the other hand, the Lord has not spared His (purported) flock from infection in shocking numbers, and from possible death, as a direct result of disobeying local authorities to gather, as noted by Mr. French’s account of events in his own state of Tennessee.   Similar reports came out of an Assembly of God church in  Arkansas and a Presbyterian church in Washington State in the past two weeks.

Regular readers of this blog know that the Assemblies of God has official doctrine that (contrary to clear scripture) permits pastors to occupy the pulpit who are in “marriages” Jesus called ongoing adultery.   In a sudden 1973 reversal of biblical doctrine on marriage that had been in place since the denomination’s inception, it became “compassionate” to descrate the sanctuary of the Lord with such “weddings”.    The same can be said of the Presbyterian church, not only with regard to remarriage adultery which is ensconced in its founding doctrine, but more recently with regard to sodomous “weddings”.    The Lord God’s hand joins neither.

Jesus had a pointed promise, not at all inconsistent with what has actually occurred, of what these practices would yield in the last days:

“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:

The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:

‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. 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.”

Meanwhile, an article in the New York Times pointed the finger at evangelicals, shrilly accusing Christians of responsibility for spreading the disease by a “hostility to science”.    If evangelicals have done so, they’ve done so spiritually, far more so than physically, as God’s wrath falls on an immoral nation from which the mainstream church has grown almost indistinguishable.  Far from contributing to physical spread of coronavirus, most churches now sit empty on weekends, while worship teams play to a livestream camera, and the pastor’s sermon is broadcast to the flock.   Tithing is by text.

Listen to what the Holy Spirit says in Psalm 91, a passage which reverberated this past week across social media:

You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
 Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.
A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.
 You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.
 For you have made the Lord, my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.
 No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.”

This is a very important conditional promise, simply because it is not possible to dwell with a sodomy or adultery partner (not even given the tallest stack of legal paper) and with the Holy Lord at the same time.   He stands as a witness, He declares to the “divorced” and “remarried” priest, with the covenant spouse of our youth.   Spare Him the excuses.   He knows who He has personally joined to whom.

And what of the church founded by Rodney Howard-Browne, the jailed Florida pastor?    He might not have a case under the Federal constitution for a couple of important reasons:

(1) The national RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) doesn’t cover his situation

(2) It wasn’t “Congress” who enacted the temporary orders that are infringing on the congregation’s right to gather.

Objectively speaking, the state does seem to have a compelling state interest in suspending large public gatherings to curb the spread of a highly communicable pandemic-level killing disease, and could probably succeed in proving that the temporary stay-home order is the least intrusive means of achieving that objective.   Florida is one of the states that has adopted their own RFRA.

All that said, Pastor Browne probably has a better case under the Florida constitution religious freedom clause, because it does not mention a legislature’s involvement.   It simply says..”there shall be no law prohibiting or penalizing…” 

The Florida constitution reads:

SECTION 3.Religious freedom.There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

Constitutional attorney David French is likely factoring elements of the legal case into the arguments in his article.    At the same time, it appears that Browne was quite deliberate in challenging the local order, as evidenced by the legal opinion posted to the church web page.

The following is a 1993-ish quote from our 42nd POTUS, courtesy of the Alliance Defending Freedom during Indiana’s 2015 RFRA fight with Amazon and the LGBT special interests:

Lord knows that the state imperative to safeguard the public from  hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more deaths by a quick-killing, highly contagious infectious plague should be an obvious compelling state interest.   Ditto for the mass unemployment that has resulted overnight – reported in the U.S. this morning as 6 million new unemployment claims – forty times the usual pace.  Under RFRA language, the key is whether a temporary restriction on large gatherings (especially of megachurch proportions) is “narrowly-tailored”, or the least burdening approach available to achieve that compelling public health interest.    On a short term basis, it seems the case can reasonably be made, especially where there’s hard evidence in an individual case  that the church was not even following safe distancing mandates, as evidenced in the March 29 video (if  you click there, don’t forget to come back and finish reading this–the worship, though crowded, is pretty awesome over there) of the River Church Tampa worship service that was livestreamed, and which led to the pastor’s arrest this week.

The head of one of the Christian legal defense funds (all five or six of which routinely refuse to defend an authentic believer’s religious free exercise right to not have their marriage forcibly “dissolved”) says he will be filing a suit this week or next in defense of the arrested pastor, currently released on bond.   The final thing to say about this Florida case is that it appears from a legal opinion, pre-posted the week before  on the church website, this pastor intended to be arrested, or at the very least, to lead a high-profile challenge against the stay-home orders, and this was evidently more of a priority than the lives and souls of the unredeemed passing through the church doors.
(In a very positive post-arrest development later in the week, the governor of Florida issued an order deeming church activities “essential”, as did several other governors this week.)

Contrast how a Texas pastor of a small marriage-permanence church felt led to handle the issue in the days before the governor of his state also exempted churches from being deemed a “non-essential” establishment.    Brother Sparks also feels strongly that churches have a biblical mandate to gather and meet, fearing God rather than men, but probably without the ulterior motives.   Churches that don’t do adulterous weddings, don’t take (non-widowed) “blended families” into ongoing fellowship, and regularly preach on Luke 16:18 don’t tend to become crowded, wealthy megachurches.   Neither do the saints in that small body tend to live in ongoing heterosexual sin, be it fornication or papered-over adultery.    His tiny congregation is meeting outside in the open air, while following the spacing guidelines of Caesar, honoring both God and Caesar.   They won’t be endangering and cutting short the life of a potential visitor to their service who is yet-unredeemed by faith.

Given that there have been recent arrests in the U.S. of people who were engaged by the Chinese government in bio-espionage activities, and given the Bill Gates role in the overall picture, and finally, given the emerging connection of viruses with implementing the 5G network in Asia, Europe, and major metropolitan areas in the U.S., based on reports leaking out from disaffected industry employees, the wise citizen will consider the distinct possibility that “this too” might not pass back to anything we would consider normalcy.    Restrictions on medium or large gatherings due to waves of plagues might become a thing on an ongoing basis.   Like the cartoon figure, Simon-bar-Sinister, too many out there want to rule the world, and it’s always been a certainty that satan does.   Keep an eye on the success or failure of those anti-body studies we’ve been hearing about, and whether or not our government chooses to reinstate tough espionage consequences that have been relaxed in recent decades.

Someone who has had their religious liberty violated in a profound. life-altering and lasting way, might be well-placed to see this debate over church gatherings in its proper longterm perspective.   The number one motive behind all of it begins and ends with godly concern for eternal souls, or the lack thereof.    If souls are the main concern, pastors don’t let the lambs in the flock die in remarriage adultery which will cost them their eternity, hence congregations don’t grow to a size where the gathering becomes a bad witness to the pagans who live in terror of being exposed to a proven killer.    If souls are the main concern, pastors will go out of their way to make sure the earthly body of a lost pagan soul does not become virulently infected as a direct or indirect consequence of his church’s activities.   The key thing to watch for in the coming weeks and months is how timely and equitably the restrictions on churches are lifted (at least temporarily) in the receding wake of the worst, not whether restrictions are temporarily imposed on churches in various locales.  That timely lifting of restrictions is what should be fiercely fought for based on the First Amendment provisions.

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!  

They Have Seen the Enemy, and They Only Think They Know Who “He” Is

by Standerinfamilycourt

Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!”

He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.

– Psalm 2:1-4

For five years, our blog has flown “under the radar screen”, so to speak, steadily building a following while virtually all of the “haters” were people who professed to be in the church, and who smeared us as “graceless”, “Pharisees” and “legalists” for calling their non-widowed remarriages and “blended families” what Jesus consistently called them:  continuously adulterous households.
Oh, we had the occasional LGBTQ(xyz) “troll”, primarily on our Facebook page, but with only one memorable exception,  those encounters were as fleeting as they were typically obscene, and rarely did they ever carry over to anyone else’s publication space.   Apparently, that’s beginning to change, as it inevitably had to if our efforts were ever to grow effective enough to contribute to meaningful engagement in the larger idolatrous, adulterous and sodomous society that has arisen as a direct consequence of what author Maggie Gallagher once famously called The Abolition of Marriage.

Not too long ago, one of our “nextgen” marriage warriors pointed out an article he came across in Patheos, from July, 2019 that was apparently triggered by one of our guest bloggers’ offerings:  “What Happened When A Covenant Marriage Stander Wrote His State Legislators About Forced Divorce”, by octagenarian Billy Miller.
SIFC remembers congratulating Billy upon noticing how unusually high the readership was showing for this piece, according to WordPress’ built-in statistical tracker.

Evidently, our readership had a bit of “unexpected assistance” from a rather contemptuous source, unbeknownst to us, namely, from the article entitled Why Complementarians Hate No-Fault Divorce.   It seems we quite innocently committed the high crime of using the taboo “p-word” in this May, 2019 post, referring to our guest author as a “family patriarch” (in the traditional sense, never intending the highly-“triggering” feminist / Leftist connotation).   In our circle, being a patriarch is an honorable, hard-earned lifetime achievement, as it has been up until about 5 triggered minutes ago, in the sweep of human history.

“Standerinfamilycourt” readily admits to being a “complementarian” because all authentic followers of Christ are bible-believers who believe the account of Moses (and the Holy Spirit)  in Genesis 1 and 2… SIFC also readily admits to being white, and to believing that sex is “assigned” at conception – not birth.

Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’  God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth’….Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’  Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.   The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.   So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

No one can possibly be a follower of Christ and not believe the authority of the account in Genesis, because Christ immediately referred back to it in Matthew 19:4-6 when challenged by the Pharisees concerning the permanence of marriage, in His declaration of the lifelong indissolubility of the God-joined marriage bond He makes in Matthew 19:8.     All that does indeed make us “complementarians”.   We know that God created two sexes and gave them a joint job to perform in the Garden.    We also know that it was the very first feminist rebellion against God that caused the sexes to have unequal treatment in the world, with both winding up suffering as a direct consequence.    That’s precisely how it always works with a one-flesh, God-joined entity!     (Perhaps a more accurate and objective title for our critic’s article would have been:  “Why Cultural Marxists Hate Due Process and Biblical Marriage”.)

Interestingly, “standerinfamilycourt” (as opposed to our recent guest blogger) remained rather invisible throughout the opposing blogger’s retaliatory rant, and as a result, covenant marriage stander Billy Miller took most of the editorial “heat”.    However, around the same time as Billy’s guest blog was running on “7 Times Around the Jericho Wall”,  so were some of the following titles, all of which apparently went unnoticed and unread, hence unmentioned, despite the enemy reconnaissance visit and the additional fodder that was on offer at the time:

Death of a (Postmodernism) Sales(person): The Sad Passing of Rachel Held Evans  (May 8, 2019)

Pet “Parenting” Trend: How Has “No-Fault” Divorce Contributed?
(May 10, 2019)

Top 10 Ways Mothers Would Be Helped If “No-Fault” Divorce Laws Were Reformed   (May 11, 2019)

Top 10 Ways Fathers Would Be Helped If “No-Fault” Divorce Laws Were Reformed  (June 10, 2019)

The “Equality Act” Is Unconstitutional For All The Same Reasons “No-Fault” Divorce Is: So Why Is Nobody SHOUTING The “U”-Word? (June 3, 2019)

Sorry, But Forming A Committee To Flout God’s Sexual Ethics Started Long Ago…With Heterosexuals (July 9, 2019)

These, of course, would have all been conspicuously on display at the time our detractor googled us up, right there in the lefthand sidebar.   But apparently, we learn from this that self-absorbed narcissists don’t always notice their surroundings.   This…even though SIFC was deemed to be a blog owner who apparently qualified, in this counter-blogger’s estimation, as belonging in the class she dubbed, “More Serious Backlash Against No-Fault Divorce” (SIFC is sincerely flattered, by the way), right along with the likes of Al Mohler and S. Michael Craven – whom she rapaciously called a “twit”.   Apparently, she assumes her position is unimpeachable, and thus impervious to impact from objective scrutiny.  Or…perhaps she’s blowing a lot of hot air about how she perceives the “threat” to the UNFD ideology and regime (enough to superfluously justify writing her piece to “rally the troops”, but evidently not enough to warrant much study of those who dare to publicly disagree with her).   Had she but dug a little deeper, she would have soon learned that this blog stands far, far to the right of either of those two Christian gentlemen!  She would have also learned that our combined faith and secular community’s objections to unilateral, so-called “no-fault” divorce laws run far deeper than a simplistic belief in  “complementarianism”…and (commensurately), our efforts go well beyond writing articles she doesn’t like.

By contrast, “standerinfamilycourt” does believe in knowing something about the critics and obstructionists of meaningful family law reform, and what’s behind their rabid ideology, one which requires utter totalitarianism to sustain.    Our detractor goes by the nom-de-plume, “Captain Cassidy”,  and further discloses herself to be an atheist / feminist by the name of Cassidy McGillicuddy.    She tells us she was raised Catholic, converted to Pentecostalism in her mid-teens, married a preacher, and deconverted after college.    She blogs about “religion, deconversion, video and tabletop p gaming, psychology, modern culture, and other such topics at Roll to Disbelieve. Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr–or at her community’s official forum at RolltoDisbelieve.com!”    SIFC, of course, also goes by a nom-de-plume, but does so for biblical, prodigal spouse-honoring reasons that would otherwise limit the impactfulness of this blog’s content.

Recent events point to the undeniable success of her “deconstruction” movement, which has, of late, successfully removed some of the weak and wounded sheep and would-be shepherds from the flock of the harlot church, but to find out what actually happened to “the Captain’s”  estranged preacher-husband (who apparently had the bad judgment and disobedience toward scripture to marry an atheist), it would take a bit more searching and reading that will have to be deferred for now.    Invariably, estranged spouses who are also estranged from God will tell you how abused they feel.   She clearly thinks being able to ditch her marriage, along with the rest of her family’s fundamental constitutional protections, is the greatest thing since sliced bread,

“…Divorce represented women’s only real escape from intolerable marriages.  However the men controlling most countries’ legislative systems had long ago ensured the difficulty of obtaining that escape…”   

(SIFC would add the unmentioned undercurrent here, “…escape…with any of the family assets or with deleterious custody of children”), but we’ll have to leave the speculation about the “Captain” right there for now, so that we can address a limited selection of several erroneous points and misrepresented historical presumptions she highlights, endeavoring to do so in fewer than 6,000 words overall.   For now, it’s best to remind everyone that just because an individual mortal does not believe in the authority of scripture nor in the existence of its Author, this does not exempt any such mortal from its operation nor from His eternal rule.

Opines Ms. McGillicuddy in her opening:

“For a while now, we’ve been talking about complementarianism, 
a sexist ideology held by mostly by right-wing Christian culture warriors.  One major plank of that ideology involves a vicious hatred of  no-fault divorce.     Today, I’ll show you what that plank looks like and why complementarians hold to it so tightly. Then, I’ll show you why, 
in their eyes at least, they really should hate no-fault divorce.”

  SIFC:   Our perspective is….if only it were actually true that “one major plank of ‘that ideology’ involved a ‘vicious’ hatred” by the evangelical establishment of a legal regime that systematically strips all innocent spouses, male and female, of virtually all of their Bill of Rights protections.   Unfortunately, our experience is that the group she is demonizing is actually all too fond of unilateral, forced divorce with the bulk of the spoils going to the marriage spoiler, and with guilt-by-accusation, no questions asked.  Many (but not all) are themselves sequential polygamists, or relatives of serial monogamists, who would really not like to see divorces return to a fault-basis, or to require mutual consent.   Too messy, too expensive, and too publicly accountable!   Other evangelicals talk a great game publicly, but take money from deep-pocketed Marxists, whose global aim to break down the traditional family those global financiers profoundly share with Ms. McGillicuddy.    Our other perspective is…this breathed-upon dust-creature just called the Maker of all heaven and earth a “sexist ideologue”!   But we do agree whole-heartedly with “the Captain’s” last statement, even if we can’t quite align with her reasons for it…right-wing culture warriors should absolutely hate (so-called) no-fault divorce…at least, of the sort that does not require a mutual petition to effectuate.

Continues “the Captain”….

“Back in the 1970s, right­-wing Christianity began to morph and evolve into the superpoliticized, superpolarized juggernaut that we know and loathe today.  Initially, the leaders of this end of Christianity 
sought to end the advances of the Civil Rights Movement. Outside of the Deep South, however, most people rejected hardcore racism.
After a short period of flailing around, those leaders hit upon hardcore sexism instead.  That sexism manifested as bitter, vehement  opposition to abortion rights.”

SIFC:  (…Penned as if abortion magically spares black and Latino women in the womb.)   Apparently, murdering pre-born black and brown women for sexual convenience is not “sexist” or “racist”, in the blogger’s estimation.

Penned as if “some religion” morphed, instead of conscience-laden human beings asserting their God-implanted conscience.   Penned also, as if only one ideology has “morphed” into a de facto religion.

“…However, it wasn’t enough for some Christians. The leaders of the
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and groups like it needed to stem 

a rising tide of female leaders in their denomination. Feminism whittled
away at their male privilege. OH NOES!!!”

 

SIFC:   Speaking of “oh no”, apparently “the Captain” is unaware of the May, 2018 feminist-faced, Soros financed-and-instigated Dallas coup-d’ etat in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, leaving them now more acceptably “woke”.   However, that’s probably not enough for some anti-Christians.

“….Eventually, they figured out how to stop women’s advancement dead in its tracks.”

 

  SIFC:  Oh really?   “standerinfamilycourt” assumes that assertion depends on how “advancement” is defined.    SIFC was a young, married adult during most of the 1970’s, who struggled to get an education and establish a professional footing in a male-dominated work world that was just as much about family connections and classism as it was about racism or sexism.   After filing a successful EEOC equal-pay complaint in 1976 that eventually benefitted many in that firm, SIFC went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees financed by employers, raised a family under Christian complementarian principles, launched a daughter who came by those same life successes far earlier, with far less effort 25 years later, and blazed the trail for two generations of professional careerists….meanwhile, the so-called “women’s movement” moved far afield from economic issues in the classic Marxist bait-and-switch.     SIFC can assure the readers that today’s workplace looks nothing like the chain-smoking, skirt-chasing, profanity-laced workplace of the 1970’s.    On the other hand, it seems “the Captain” might not quite be in her 60’s yet, and might be relying more on media accounts of “how things were” than actual lived experience.    Or….she could be defining “advancement” not in terms of economic opportunities, but in terms of sexual autonomy, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.   Either way, the SBC was a colossal failure at curbing either form of “advancement”, if indeed that ever was their express intent.

From here, “the Captain” goes on to regale us with her interpretation of complementarianism.    Much of this is predictable, coming as it does from the keyboard of a professing atheist, and not especially noteworthy.    That said, SIFC would be remiss not to highlight this straight-faced assertion, and let the bespoke speak for itself:

“….Though their belief defies established scientific consensus in any
number of directions, like there being more than just two genders, complementarians think these differences have a biological basis.

Therefore, even non-Christians need to be forced to adhere to   the supposedly ­divine plan.”

SIFC:  Silly us !!  Therefore, it must follow that the only remedy for “legislating morality” (on a biological basis) is to legislate IMMORALITY, right, Captain C?   And, technically, what actual “consensus” can you objectively point to –  in all these directions, inquiring minds want to know?   That of the APA, perhaps?

“….Within marriage itself, complementarian men secured their power­bases. Their idolized doctrine granted them complete dominance within
their homes. Husbands blatantly privileged their lei
sure time above their wives’ own. Many began ruling their households with iron fists–financially and emotionally abusing wives without hesitation or
hindrance.   If any wives complained, men had complete 

assurance that their churches would always take the men’s sides.
This one doctrine granted the men of the culture wars everything they ever wanted.

Everything in the world…..

“Divorce represented women’s only real escape from intolerable marriagesHowever, the men controlling most countries’ legal and legislative
systems had long ago ensured the difficulty of obtaining that
escape.  They created the system, then gamed it to the point where women couldn’t meaningfully escape their grasp.
In many areas, women had to jump a lot of hoops to gain a divorce–including gaining the permission of their husbands to end the union.   If a husband felt amenable to the breakup, things ran smoothly.  If not,
however, he could make his wife’s life hellish. We can see hints of that hell in “get abuse” among
Orthodox Jews.  Men, of course, have always had a much easier time  jumping the hoops their fellow men have set in place;
these hoops exist for the have­ nots, not the haves.
(Incidentally, abortion runs along similar lines.  Anti­abortion laws affect poor women most.) “

SIFC:  Oh my, where to begin with this diatribe!   In the Captain’s defense, first of all, she has plenty of pseudo-Christian allies who are more than happy to buy into her jaded view of married life and men.   Here, however, is GOD’s view (just in case He might actually exist):

“In the same way [as Christ whowhile being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness…] you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior…

“You husbands in the same way [as Christ whowhile being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness…], live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

By now, we can probably count on the Captain’s head exploding, but the point is, that whatever she imagines was going on in the traditional home and in the 1970’s-1990’s church, it cannot be legitimately blamed on authentic Christ-followers.    And, given that society was by any measure considerably less toxic to our offspring, pre-1970’s than now, neither can it really be blamed on a supposedly “toxic” state protection of the family from that era, and earlier….but SIFC is jumping ahead a bit.    (The “poor women” most impacted by legalized abortion seem to be the unborn ones who never see the light of day, and a few who do live, maimed, to see the light day and tell the world about it. )

Continues “the Captain”….

“Most states had a list of reasons they considered virtuous enough for a woman to gain a unilateral divorceAdultery, desertion, and physical abuse often featured on these lists. The law required women to prove beyond reasonable doubt that one or more of these things was
happening.   And they had to prove it in the context of a humiliating civil court trial….”

SIFC:  Actually, most states had a list of causes of action deemed compelling enough, beyond the Petitioner’s presumed “right” to unfettered sexual autonomy, to warrant destroying the lives of potentially innocent spouses of either gender, and the children of the marriage, by pulling the financial, relational and social rug literally out from under all of them without due process.   Those laws required petitioners of both genders to prove by a preponderance of the evidence (not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, as this blogger wrongly claims) the charges they were bringing against a fellow citizen of the United States of America who, up to then, remained under the protection of the Bill of Rights and state constitutions.   (That’s actually how a constitutional republic functions and sustains itself, Captain C.)

“….Often, one or both spouses committed perjury to prevent or smooth the entire process!”

  SIFC:   And of course, we all know that the advent of a $50 billion a year industry, that U.S. taxpayers subsidize to the tune of more than $120 billion a year, has magically and forever banished perjury from the halls of “justice” we know today as “family court”.  Wink, wink.  

From there, Ms. McGillicuddy launched into a decidedly myopic and “party-line” debate about the effect of unilateral family-shredding-on-demand on the historical divorce rate in the United States:

“Christians often blame no-fault divorce for the rising divorce rate.
After reviewing the available resources, for the skyrocketing divorce rate­ going on around that time.   However, Cambridge’s Law and History Review disagrees.
  their scholars think the opposite.  No-­fault divorce, that journal 
tells us, ‘followed rather than led the long­ term rise in America’s divorce rates.’  People had already noticed that rise before
 the “no­-fault ‘revolution’ of the 1970s.”

SIFC:   As if these were the only “scholars” to weigh in on the matter!   It’s just like the bunch that gratuitously points to the declining suicide rates among women, who can now have their cake and eat it too, while completely mum on the rising suicide rates of their husbands (who are often deliberately alienated from their children’s lives, falsely accused on leverage-motivated restraining orders, and jailed when they cannot meet exorbitant and rising child support demands that under the Federal-state payola scheme known as Title IV-D, their earnings can never support), and their sons, who are often abused in mom’s subsequent immoral relationships.    The fact is that there are “scholars” who are fixated on justifying and enabling the narcissistic desires of adults, and there are other scholars who are quite appropriately measuring and documenting all the vile impacts of state-sponsored unilateral family-shredding on the next generationand never the twain shall meet.    Sadly, it was not until the mid-2000’s that anybody studied the systemic impacts of fundamental due process denial on the marriage rates of younger adults, especially the children of divorce.  It wasn’t until the early-2010’s that an  impeccable 30-year longitudinal study was released that documented adult child outcomes by family structure, which (among some other culturally-inflammatory findings) concluded by regression analysis that step-parent “blended” families fared even worse in generational outcomes than single-parent families.    Clearly, these vaunted Cambridge scholars overlooked some of the most pertinent “available resources”.

People these days have noticed that the main reason the divorce rate has leveled off in the U.S. (and other western countries with no-fault divorce), is that far fewer married households are being formed in the first place as a direct consequence of the practices of today’s “family courts”, particularly during the years of childbearing and rearing age.   When fewer than 50% of all children are being raised in an intact, married home these days, and increasing social media exposure catches up with the unspeakable routine evils of “family courts”, the kids don’t grow up dummies, but realists.

As for the Cambridge “scholars” disseminating the 50+ year old opinions of the National Association of Women Lawyers (given how obscenely lucrative and politically powerful the divorce industry became – powerful enough to push aside the basic fundamental rights of nearly a million people each and every year for 50 years), it must be recognized that these are hardly “disinterested” parties putting forth their “study results”.    It should also be noted that an educational institution quoting NAWL hardly constitutes “scholarship”, any more than self-selective, self-reporting “surveys” of homosexual households constitutes “social science” around gay parenting.

Onward to the criticism (with which “standerinfamilycourt” heartily agrees, actually), of the appeasement experiment that the states of Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona undertook with the “covenant marriage” option, and its predictably poor uptake, human nature being what it is:

“Seeking to regain their power, however, has proven difficult for complementarians.   Few people in or out of their tribe care to revive the dark days of at fault divorce….And as I expected, horror stories soon ­emerged from the women caught in these kinds of marriages….”

SIFC:  Setting aside for a moment the egregiously-overlooked fact that a good many “complementarians” are not males, nor are they bourgeois or white, but many are accomplished professional women of all colors from a variety of states beyond the “bible belt”, and setting aside the obvious fact that the Captain is herself a “culture warrior” for societal moral anarchy, let’s have a look at the poor, feckless gals she says were “caught in these kinds of marriages” (although the link she pasted in about the statutory covenant marriage experiment  does not say a single word about even one “entrapped” wife).     Reading this shrillery conjures up the bizarre vision of a shotgun (statutory) covenant nuptial – where the bride-to-be must have been forced at gunpoint, or through blackmail or misrepresentation, to sign such an encumbering document as would require her to submit to counseling before both marriage and before any grant of man’s divorce, and to forgo the one-sided fiction of  “irreconcilable differences” as a legally-valid ground…but only in that particular state.  Unthinkable!!

SIFC: There are several far more astute and equally unflattering things to say in rebuke of that three-state “band-aid” experiment in preserving consecutive polygamy while pretending to be doing something meaningful to preserve traditional families, but that will have to be the topic of a future post.)

And with that, it came time to beat up on our friend, Billy….and on the good Dr. Al Moehler….on the grounds of the “serious” escalation of backlash against court-forced family-shredding for any reason, no reason or for a made-up reason, upon demand.    She taunts Billy for seeing some kind of “bogey-man” when he made this perfectly-true observation on our blog page…

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. . .”

…while herself remaining oblivious to the effect of her label, “The More Serious Backlash Against No-Fault Divorce” and what all that says about her own bogey-man perceptions.    Does she really feel threatened by an elderly gentleman, with no money to extensively lobby with the big-leaguers, taking time to send an email to each member of his state legislature telling them the due process side of the argument?    We get the impression she feels very threatened, actually.   And if there’s any doubt she sees all Christ-followers as oppressors and “bogey-men”, she makes that unquestionably clear by the end of the post, even though she has the most oppressive and well-financed lobby in U.S. history squarely in her corner for the foreseeable future.   Or, could the Marxist enemies of the natural family actually be seeing the cracks in their own empire as a result of the courageous, both those of faith and of no particular faith, speaking up and taking the persecution for pushing back…even exposing the evil underbelly that (frankly) can’t be hidden from public view forever?

Famously, the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women opposed the 2010 enactment of unilateral no-fault divorce laws in that state, based on the well-documented 40-year track record of being anti-woman.   Marcia A. Pappas, President, NOW NYS, Inc. Lillian Kozak & Gloria Jacobs, Co-Chairs of NOW NYS, Inc. Domestic Relations Law Task Force wrote in 2009, in a paper entitled“No Fault Divorce Legislation Hurts Women”:

“The National Organization for Women, New York State, Inc (NOW-NYS, Inc) strongly opposes no-fault divorce legislation that has been introduced in our Legislature.  Opposition to unilateral no-fault divorce has been our long-standing position with strong support from the entire NOW body…. There are myriad reasons why spouses choose to stay in a marriage or to divorce. This is true for battered women a well as women who have never been battered. No-fault divorce takes away their options, it allows the spouse with no grounds, batterer or not, to obtain a divorce over the objections of the less powerful spouse without negotiating a divorce settlement….There is much need for change to the current Domestic Relations Law before we send the weaker party and the children afloat on the sea of no fault induced poverty, as was the case in California, the first state to introduce no-fault divorce….
In addition, as reported in the Domestic Violence Task Force report previously referred to: “experience from other states shows that where grounds are unnecessary, domestic abuse [and other grounds] may be treated as tangential and therefore irrelevant to the allocation of marital resources…”

Baptist seminarians are the “scary guys” to the Captain, but prominent feminist leaders pointing out the hard facts…that removal of fault from the justice system more often than not sends women and children to the poor house…apparently isn’t scary at to this believer-hating blogger.

Of the really scary guy, Dr. Moehler, she says….

“All these nutbars fully share that blithering, foam­flecked, full­throated HATRED for no­fault divorce.  I’ve seen plenty of Christian men furiously rant about their hatred of women’s rights right up to and
including the right to vote. But most of their vitriol goes to no­-fault divorce.”

As we pointed out earlier (and last year), this really scary guy stood completely aside, fearing for his own denominational job, while another guy, whom she would no doubt deem even scarier than he, was booted from the helm of another major SBC seminary, and stripped of his retirement benefits at age 75, on ginned-up allegations, with not a scrap of evidence thereof produced in proof, and no due process to speak of.   It’s really “scary” to the Captain Cassidys of the world whenever due process is imposed, but she doesn’t even realize that she can take comfort in the fact that even evangelical women, occasionally forgetting that they are the mothers of sons for whom they’d normally like to see the benefits of due process, can become rabid “foamflecked” feminazis who scare the bejeebers out of men at the top of a denomination, especially comfortable men whose organization has literally been purchased by socialist global financiers who also see the biblical family as standing in the way of their power-grab.   Truth be told, much of the harlot church is fully in bed with her comrades, even if it’s only passively.    The Captain seems to be shadow-boxing against a mis-identified enemy.

Dr. Moehler and S. Michael Cravens were actually echoing the sentiments of the New York State Chapter of the National Organization for Women in 2009, when they vigorously opposed enactment of the last-to-be-enacted state unilateral no-fault divorce law on the basis that these laws had in reality impoverished women, far more often than “empowered” them.

“Captain Cassidy” ends her manifesto with this delusional assertion:

“If Christian-­dominated  American society had not turned divorce into a hellscape for women, an at­-fault  divorce system likely would have remained in place indefinitely.  Remember this, next time Christians whine about their lost power.”    

It should be noted, that far from “whining”, church leadership of either gender is typically nowhere to be seen when government social policies affecting families at the very root are on the line, and especially while the Sexual Revolutionaries are out in force at pivotal political moments.    They’ll purportedly go to jail as the persecution cost for not officiating homosexual nuptials, but go right on doing weddings over unions Jesus consistently called continuously adulterous.

(Picture credit:  Jaime H. Rivera)   

There’s plenty of documentation that the implemented Marxist strategy to bring down our constitutional republic by moral corruption long pre-dated this marital “hellscape” Ms. McGillicuddy alleges, and there’s zero evidence that anything but adherence to good, old-fashioned morality and individual self-sacrifice for the common good would have curtailed these well-orchestrated designs of the leftist social engineers.   This makes her assertion that were it not for troglodyte Christian husbands, “at-fault divorce would have remained in place” (as if enforceable marriage contracts were perfectly compatible with designs for sodomy-as-marriage, and as if there had ever been a groundswell of grass-roots demand for suddenly-unenforceable marriage contracts, rather than the elitist, special-interest legislative and judicial cram-down that actually occurred)…. absolutely laughable.   For a far more revealing and accurate account of those historical events (sans the demonization of Christ-followers — who have a fundamental right to follow Christ, by the way), SIFC recommends the book, “Stolen Vows” (2001), by Judy Parejko.

“Standerinfamilycourt” would be remiss to conclude this rebuttal without pointing out the Captain’s evidently-irresistable impulse to liken her every perceived threat from “patristic white male Christians” against the unfettered sexual autonomy vehicle of man’s “divorce”, to threats against the unfettered sexual autonomy vehicle of murder in the womb during all nine months (and shortly thereafter, of late).   SIFC counted no less than seven such impulses, punctuating each of her major arguments, and proving that if one has no respect for the sanctity of life, neither will there be any respect for the sanctity of holy matrimony, and vice versa.

To be sure, we are commanded by Christ to treat the vilest, most narcissistic individual critic of His saints as one of His precious Image-Bearers (even if that would purportedly insult them), and treat each of them in a way that leaves the judgment  to God for their acts flowing from the dark condition of their hearts, while praying for their eternal best.  May there be top-to-bottom healing in that ruptured McGillicuddy family.   This does not, however, mean that we let their toxic ideology go publicly unrebuked and unchallenged when it is indisputably harming all of society and threatening our constitutional republic (which all such people actually hold in contempt), in both the short and the long term.

The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, But the righteous are bold as a lion.   –  Proverbs 28:1

www.standerinfamilycourt.com 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!   

 

 

So What (ELSE) Has 50 Years of “No-Fault” Divorce Gotten Us?

by Standerinfamilycourt

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 2:16-19

On August 13, 2019, author and family law reform activist Beverly Willett achieved the noteworthy milestone of having an accurate, objective article  about the legal and societal debacle of unilateral (so-called “No Fault”) forced divorce ,”What Has Fifty Years of No-Fault Divorce Gotten Us? “,  published in a Washington D.C. secular media weekly, despite the graphic, unflattering details she offered up.  Kudos deserved, kudos gratefully extended to Beverly for her hard work on this piece.     The Washington Examiner’s publisher had announced in 2013 that it would seek to distribute the weekly publication to at least “45,000 government, public affairs, advocacy, academia and political professionals.”  The publisher also asserted that the Examiners readership is “more likely to sign a petition, contact a politician, attend a political rally, or participate in a government advocacy group than those of Roll Call, Politico, or The Hill.”
You can bet “standerinfamilycourt” applauded as Beverly did some extensive, long-overdue cultural myth-busting in that great piece.

[ SIFC Trigger warning, for anyone thinking of clicking on that August article, who already suffers MGTOW-ish sentiments and high blood pressure:   there’s a gratuitous embedded song and interview by Pistol Annies (I guess to appease the feministas) that “standerinfamilycourt” found hard to suppress from auto-playing:
“a feel-good divorce song that was ‘needed’ — Ah broke his heart and Ah took his money” (isn’t that special?)   This has zero relevance to Beverly’s piece other than to illustrate her points,  and is best experienced with zero sound , while scrolling resolutely down.]

Among the frank and excellent points that Beverly made  in the actual article:

(1) the 14th Amendment due process violations involved, including “the plaintiff’s obligation to assert grounds, the defendant’s right to be heard, including the right to cross-examine and call witnesses, and offer evidence, and the right to impartial decision-making.”

(2) Oversold reduction in animosity or acrimony, which was postponed in cases with children until after the decree, but turned out to be a predictably-hollow “merit”, since the theft of property and parental rights were still involved anytime a divorce is forced (as it is some 80% of the time), and revisits would go on and on until the kids aged out.

(3) The skyrocketing divorce rate, followed by the later avoidance of marriage by those who were stung in childhood and learned firsthand how harsh and one-sided our unconstitutional  “family laws” are.

(4) Increases in poverty, suicide, depression.

(5) The national normalization of adultery.

 As much as all this is for a writer to get a typical reader’s arms around, we all know that Beverly’s piece just scratches the surface, and writing about much more of it would have caused her readers’ eyes to glaze over.     Unfortunately, what was expedient to leave out for the general audience who has been fed 50 years worth of myths has even further future implications for the very survival of our constitutional republic.    Hence, SIFC picks up where Beverly left off, to point out what else it’s important to recognize easy, sleazy divorce has cost the nation.

So what else has 50 years of “no-fault” divorce gotten us?

*  Metastasizing erosion in due process, now impacting many other segments of society than just discarded spouses

This shouldn’t be surprising.   We’ve observed very frequently and very accurately that the breakdown of the family was planned and orchestrated decades before the laws could be passed that enabled the fragmentation we have today, and that the nation’s “family courts” have served as a testing ground for how much degradation in constitutional protections citizens would be willing to trade for increasing levels of sexual autonomy.    The family has always been the natural buffer limiting the need and the feasibility for state control of people’s lives.    This limit has always been unacceptable to some of our power holders.

We saw with the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings how little regard some of our sitting Senators have for due process staples like “innocent until proven guilty”, if due process stands in the way of ideological “sacred cows” such as abortion-on-demand (which always takes a human life without due process), or protecting women from (even self-perceived) “attacks”.     Patriots were relieved when Mr. Kavanaugh was confirmed despite the orchestrated and fabricated smears, none of which were proven with any actual evidence.    But the takeaway from that episode remains that plenty of elite power-holders don’t share the values of our nation’s founders, hence anyone who shrugged and rested easy just because that particular skirmish was won last year, wasn’t paying attention.      And sure enough,  the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the ABA is lobbying to relax due process in cases where sexual assault has been alleged, by requiring that the accused prove his innocence rather than the accuser prove his guilt.     After all, nobody has missed the absence of full due process in “family court”, and the ends justify the means, right?     Any resulting change in the laws for prosecuting sexual assault will obviously be unconstitutional,  but guess whose members are in charge of ruling on any appeals that the falsely-accused might pursue?     Once again, this reflects 50 years’ experience gained from unconstitutional divorce law challenges being summarily dismissed without fear of SCOTUS intervening, at least in heterosexual cases.

* Rogue political involvement by professional associations

Licensed professional associations once had a noble tradition of ethical codes and standards of practice that were developed and enforced in the public interest.   Unfortunately,  feminists and other sexual activists started infiltrating those organizations in the post-war period, and started coming to power in the 1970’s, which is how an American Bar Association-sponsored “Uniform Marriage and Dissolutions Act” model legislation (UMDA) that was so contrary to the Constitution and so contrary to sound public policy gained enactment so quickly in so many states, as the ABA also saw to it that “family law” attorneys ran for election to state legislatures and got appointed to the relevant committees, despite the obvious conflict-of-interest.

At about the same time, homosexual activists were infiltrating the American Psychological Association, with the strategic goal of getting homosexuality declassified as an emotional disorder, which occurred in 1973.     These events are connected by the fact that both professional groups shared a common goal of breaking down the nuclear family as a powerful institution.    Both of these professional bodies have grown wealthy and powerful enough to destructively marshal the media and make bribes masked as “donations” to block the reforms that would restore our society and constitutional republic.   Such reforms, of course, would topple their financial and ideological empire.

Anyone who doubts that unilateral “no-fault” divorce was but one element of a centrally-orchestrated plan for Marxist social change that already existed in 1969, or that much of it would necessarily be accomplished over a few decades, initiated by subterfuge, should do some deep reading here (see especially, pages 6-8).   Just as the collective of mental health professionals knew, or should have known in the early 1970’s that there was no scientific basis for reclassifying homosexuality as naturally-occurring,  so the collective of practicing attorneys knowingly advanced a grossly unconstitutional model law.

*  Substitution of “family courts” for the guaranteed due process of criminal courts when domestic violence is alleged

Although many states did not enact UMDA verbatim, but instead chose to keep a mix of fault-based grounds, along with the no-fault grounds, some states did get rid of all of their fault-based grounds to leave “irreconcilable differences” (or its equivalent) as the only available grounds.    False allegations in divorce cases was a complained-of issue, and the idea was to cut out the need for an evildoer to lie to the court in order retain assets and at least partial access to the children.    The consequences for the innocent spouse and children were trivialized and dismissed, often heinously virtue-signaling that there was “no such thing as an innocent spouse”.     During this time, many state laws criminalizing adultery were also dismantled or reduced to a slap on the wrist.

Unfortunately,  the new regime encouraged even worse and more damaging forms of perjury in the form of fraudulent protection orders to gain assets and child custody.     Some rogue attorneys encourage this even when there is no provable abuse, precisely because constitutional due process is uniquely circumvented in “family court” and nothing will have to be proven in exchange for the financial and parental “club” that can now be unwielded over the “Respondent”.   They also know that even having a jailed actual physical abuser can make it tough for attorney fees to be either earned or paid, so they wheedle their clients to route through no-fault “family court” to keep family dirty laundry “private” for the sake of the (typically confused and bewildered) kids.     Obliging the attorneys does not present a conscience issue for non-Christians or for most adherents to the Westminster Confession of Faith (which unbiblically endorses divorce and remarriage for adultery and “abandonment”), so it’s easily sold even to some people of faith.   But what does the bible actually say about personally bringing one’s spouse before a pagan civil judge?     What does the bible actually say dissolves a marriage, and leaves somebody free to “remarry”?   Who does the bible say should “bear the sword” against actual wrongdoing?

* Strengthened hand for Marxists and others who have always objected to the Bill of Rights

Anyone with a serviceable knowledge of U.S. history knows that Marxists have always existed as a minority group in our country.
In the past they were kept on the fringe due to most Americans’ abhorrence of the havoc Marxist leaders wreaked in other countries, persecuting and impoverishing their own citizens, until most of those systems collapsed.    Today’s youngest voters either were not taught that chapter of history or have no one surviving in their lives to educate them.    Indeed, the violent, black-hooded thugs who call themselves “AntiFA” do so because they object to the First Amendment.     Most of us know from a 1926 article in Atlantic Magazine that unilateral “no-fault” divorce enactment quickly followed the Bolsheviks into power in Russia early in the 20th century, and caused so much societal chaos that Stalin later had to scale it back a bit.  In 1959, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly said in a speech:

“We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”

Unilateral “no-fault” divorce transfers some measure of family assets to the state and a disproportionate share to the offending spouse and the attorneys.    It transfers God-given authority over the upbringing of children directly over to the state.   It requires a measure of totalitarianism to sustain itself, and hence it persecutes anyone who believes and who states on the witness stand that only God alone has authority to “dissolve” a marriage, and He does so exclusively by physical death.   It suspends virtually every Bill of Rights protection imaginable for the “Respondent”:  right to jury trial, right to seek redress of government grievances, rights against unwarranted search and seizure of financial records, rights against compelled speech (in some states), right to free religious exercise and association, just to name a few that Beverly Willett didn’t already mention.   Again, some younger voting adults are shocked to hear that it wasn’t always this way with our divorce laws or that we didn’t always have the resulting societal fallout such as active shooters a couple of times a month, since it’s all they’ve ever witnessed.

* Continued, escalating erosion in parents’ rights

“Family Court” also pioneered the pushing aside of parental rights without due process nor equal protection under the law, and where typically the only “offense” committed was wanting to keep the marriage together, which then gave rise to the Father’s Rights / Parents Rights Movement, endless allegations of parental alienation countering the often-false allegations of “abuse”, and finally, MGTOW.    Solomon was wise enough to know even he could not split the baby in half (though he suggested it to make a point and to ferret out the truth)….neither can an administrative function posing as a judicial function pretend to do so.   Today the child becomes the tug-o-war rope in a system where his or her “best interest”  boils down to judicial lip service, and where the chief aim is to shred the home at all costs as rapidly as possible, in the interest of unfettered sexual autonomy (and a years-long future fee revenue stream arising from the severance).

In due time however, such a toxic system, which more typically exposed children to the often-immoral post-divorce home of the Petitioner (since objective fault could no longer be taken into account in most states in deciding child custody and visitation), and where perjured accusations often took over via restraining orders, or created two immoral homes in “amicable” situations, the damage could not possibly stop with the legalized no-cause destruction of once-married homes.    Enter children born or dragged into cohabiting homes, where the legal profession had no issues with setting up the same rules for the even-more-inevitable severance game.    Enter the single household “with benefits” – and children in-tow.   Enter the homosexual home  and the polyamorous home.    Enter a generation of young people with gender dysphoria whom government leaders now declared “were born that way”, and whose identity derangement must be humored with surgery, opposite sex bathroom privileges, and court-compelled parental sponsorship of the dysphoria, lest the child revert to the state as a ward of the foster system from which the purloined children may now be trafficked for filthy Federal lucre.

As recently as 2017, even intact married families found themselves fighting in court for custody of their own biological children if they were not willing to consent and pay for gender transition procedures, this recalcitrance being judicially deemed to be “child abuse” and a risk of suicide, while the much higher risk of suicide in post-transition individuals was ignored.    As it now stands, several Leftist state legislatures have passed laws mandating that LGBT “history” and pornographic “sex education” be taught in all grades of public school, many of them also mandating no prior notice to parents and no parental right to opt their children out.    In the earliest case, more than a decade ago, one kindergarten father in Massachusetts was literally jailed for asserting his parental rights over his biological son’s education.    In many other situations, children are routinely confiscated and placed in the foster system on allegations of “medical neglect”.      There is a bottom-line for why all of this is happening to parental rights:  we eventually were no longer raising enough solid citizens over the past few decades to execute positions of responsibility with sound conscience and appropriate sense of the true and sustainable public interest.

But what happened to the landmark SCOTUS rulings that once hedged-off parental rights as fundamental rights?    Part of it was arguably the changing landscape for households where children were now raised, as discussed above, making parental rights across the board far more difficult to guarantee on a practical basis.    The other part of it was a fruit of unilateral “no-fault” enactment being so fiercely and corruptly protected in rogue state courts whenever constitutionally challenged, in part, due to what now follows….

It’s become impossible to move off this parental rights topic without briefly mentioning the culmination of all of this evil, the little-known State-Federal piracy partnership in “family-court”-trafficked children, which began with perverse Federal legislation in the late 1970’s.   In its simplest terms, states (many of whom incur annual taxpayer-borne transferred social costs north of 10-figures resulting from their unilateral “no-fault” laws) have been offered and paid per-head Federal subsidies for every child they place in foster care, without regard to how their inventory of children for that nefarious purpose was sourced, in a program called Title IV-D of the Social Security Act.   SIFC again refers readers to the detailed sources of this information, while here noting the takeaway that significant, perverse financial incentives arising after many of these landmark SCOTUS rulings which once guaranteed and reaffirmed parental rights,  today actually reward individual states for usurping the fundamental parental rights of the vulnerable, and these are enabled by widespread corruption in the periodically-elected state level judiciary function.


* The birth of new “fundamental rights” that bypassed the Constitutional amendment process, to be handed down from the bench in order to neutralize and supersede original Bill of Rights protections.

Believe it or not, our founders “overlooked” providing us with a “right to privacy” in the Bill of Rights.   Instead, their design called for freedom of association in the First Amendment, and protection against unwarranted, unlawful search and seizure in the Fourth Amendment.   At the same time, many of the ratifiers of the Bill of Rights explicitly warned that this Judeo-Christian blueprint for a constitutional republic could only sustainably govern a “moral and religious people”.   This was sufficient for a couple of centuries in protecting other founding fundamental rights such as free religious exercise, property rights, the right to life and liberty.   Unfortunately, most of these interfered with the “right” to take an unborn life, or to take property in furtherance of the Sexual Revolution.    There was not a fundamental right to be found that was robust enough to protect and foster unfettered sexual autonomy, and in the 1970’s most citizens would have been too classically-educated and too close to the shedding of the blood that had upheld international challenges to our founding fundamental rights, to ever consent to changing those rights at the ballot box.    No, getting past this solid barrier was going to require a bit of “judicial” relaxing of separation-of-powers  as had just worked so masterfully as the “legislative” relaxing of separation-of-powers which had recently ushered in “no-fault” divorce.     Of course, the “right to privacy” was instrumental in declaring a fundamental right to feticide in 1973, and to sodomous relationships in 2003 (hence, also to adulterous relationships), but in another 1973 case involving a pornographic movie house, the high court said this…”Our prior decisions recognizing a right to privacy guaranteed by the 14th Amendment included only personal rights that can be deemed fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty . . . This privacy right encompasses and protects the personal intimacies of the home, the family, marriage, motherhood, procreation, and child rearing . . . cf . . . Pierce v. Society of Sisters; Meyer v. Nebraska.”

SIFC would argue that parental rights were already well-covered under the concept of ordered liberty without creating a named  fundamental “right” to disordered liberty, or libertinism.     It can reasonably be argued that when a deemed new “fundamental” right materially interferes with the basic fundamental rights named by our founding documents, the courts have gone too far in interpreting the 14th Amendment.    In other words, when special rights or super-rights are created for a certain group of behavior choices that override the most basic fundamental rights of other people, there is by definition no longer equal protection under the law.

* Dulled will and ability to discern between symptoms and the disease actually causing them.

A very important discipline in business is root cause analysis, because managers have a vested interest in accurately stating problems, then applying disciplined techniques to systematically “peel back the onion” to arrive at the correct root cause before investing in and implementing a solution.    If this is not done objectively, only the symptoms will be treated, and not only will the problem recur, but serious resources will be wasted.   Sometimes in business there is non-cooperation or even active interference with this process by individuals who have a vested interest in not having the true root cause identified and effectively addressed.   Stepping back, many of the societal evils we routinely have today, we rarely experienced prior to the 1970’s.   Something that changed in the early ’70’s has caused most of the serious woes for our nation.

Activists in the marriage permanence community are often frustrated by endless traditional “pro-family” activist hand-wringing over symptoms in a decaying society who has kicked the nuclear family slats out from under itself,  symptoms such as the rising cohabitation rate, the school and church shootings, child-trafficking,  clergy sex abuse cases, the abortion rate, the opioid crisis, the push to legalize marijuana, the bathroom privacy issues, Chick-Fil-A getting kicked out of the local airport, judges being persecuted for declining to officiate gay weddings, and on and on.  On the one hand, these are all emotional issues that are powerful short term fundraisers that get staffers and rent paid at the nonprofits who champion conservative cultural issues.  By contrast, appealing for funds to support public activities to end peoples’ absolute “rights” to terminate their marriages at-will and legalize their planned or existing adultery is at best a  longterm proposition which is going to offend some significant donors whose wealth derived to some degree from the current system.    Even if research funds to gather and publish data are socially acceptable (providing that, they point only to divorce in a generic sense), any research funds that might potentially lead to correlating adulterous remarriage as a systemic root cause seems far out-of-bounds for now.    The problem is that evidence is growing by the day that this hamster-wheel cannot keep turning like this forever before the nation literally comes down around our ears, with God allowing it.     Civil war and foreign invasion cannot be fended off forever once our Constitution has been rendered sufficiently inoperable.   From Caliphate-loyal, ethics-immune members of Congress to “sanctuary” cities and states to  huge corporations officially pushing First Amendment-destroying legislation, there are bad actors working fervently toward these things with growing success every passing day.

* “Do Something, Anything” mentality.

John Stonestreet of Breakpoint.org recorded a podcast in the wake of the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio mass shootings that is very astute.     Desperate times indeed call for desperate measures, but that still does not justify unstudied knee-jerk reactions.    As noted above, these cries are typically for “do something that doesn’t gore MY ox.”    Ban guns, so I personally don’t have to repent from my adulterous remarriage or reconcile with, or make restitution to my rejected covenant family (which just might contain a wounded potential mass shooter).   Ban guns, so the practice of commoditizing and commercializing the acquisition of other people’s children to validate an immoral household, does not have to cease.

John’s podcast points up the growing threats to two additional vital provisions for sustaining our constitutional republic, our decreasing practical ability to uphold the 2nd and 4th amendments represented by the currently-favored knee-jerk reaction to mass shootings:  Red Flag laws.   He points out that doing the wrong thing can make many things substantially worse, even if the intent was good–and that the result may prove intractable or irreversible.   We’ve been denying, suppressing and altering truth in this way for five decades, actually, and it’s become a very bad habit for both citizens and leaders.
The very same can fairly be said of enactment of “no-fault” unilateral divorce laws that began on September 5, 1969.   When will we as a nation learn our lesson?

Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed..

Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Before becoming more sensitized to the abusiveness of “family laws” for those parents still with minor children in the home, and where the petitioning spouse has a lesser income than the so-called “Respondent”, this blogger stood on the sidelines of the gun debate and didn’t have that much of an opinion when it came to banning certain weapon types, “standerinfamilycourt” confesses.    Why would any non-military citizen ever need a flame-thrower or an AK-47?    When SIFC was only ten years old, an opportunity arose to fire an M-16, back-to-belly with a very stout sergeant bracing the effort.  The “kick” that resulted was absolutely stunning, and resulted in a lifelong conviction that a gun in the house would more likely do harm to self and loved ones than to any intruder.    Prayers go up constantly for a son who trained and qualified for concealed carry, with precious little ones in the house, SIFC having personally lost more than one young companion to household gun accidents where somebody got careless in years gone by.   But I digress.     At that time, the entire Constitution and national border sovereignty were not literally hanging by a timely-elected POTUS (er…thread).

Thanks to “no-fault” laws and the related widespread abuses of restraining orders by the legal community, many more innocent people have been charged with either emotional or physical “domestic violence” than have ever been guilty of either.    Red Flag laws will mean that these people who have already have suffered the stripping of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, their Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Amendment rights, along with their contractual rights under Article 1, Section 10– all through NO FAULT of their own–now additionally stand to lose their Second Amendment rights as an after-the-fact result, in yet another situation where nothing has to be proven, only an allegation made.

A word or two about the Fourth Amendment before moving on:   all divorces, whether fault-based or “no-fault” require the exposure of private financial records, in this case without a warrant being required.    How can there be any “probable cause” if the only “crime” alleged is “irreconcilable differences”?    There can be no warrant without actual charges being leveled against person, as opposed to a relationship, can there?    “Family Court” uses those disclosures not only to keep the Petitioner as financially whole as possible after filing for the unilateral shredding of their own family, but also for purposes of determining how much of the family assets can support legal fees both pre- and post- decree.    Perhaps most egregiously, forced financial disclosure is used to help determine which spouse to grant primary custody to in a way that leaves the spouse with the most assets on the “outs” –  to further enhance future legal fees.   Our Constitution says this stuff is none of the court’s business unless probable cause of a crime exists.

SIFC wishes the Fourth Amendment violations associated with unilateral “no-fault” divorce stopped with forced financial disclosure.    Unfortunately, the violations can extend even to deeply humiliating bodily invasion, if any sort of sexual abuse is alleged in some “family courts”, even under so-called “no-fault” grounds.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville described this in his April 29, 2019 address to the Ruth Institute’s  annual Summit for Survivors of the Sexual Revolution.     Activist Jeff Morgan also recently interviewed a Texas man who was subjected to the same.    Delicacy and brevity would have us move on, but the curious should give these a listen, but keep in mind that “no-fault” laws enable such things to be triggered without any evidence of probable cause.

* Corrupted churches and apostate denominational doctrine.

Churches had a clear choice to make after September 5, 1969.   Option 1 was to get involved and educated, much as they did with so-called gay “marriage” and abortion, and do whatever was necessary to fulfill their citizenship obligation to resist the clear constitutional incursion and frontal attack on the families in each congregation; to stand publicly against unilateral, forced divorce in the Lord’s power.   Option 2 was to haul out the existing doctrine on the sanctity of marriage, do the economic math around attendance and giving, then grab a red pen and decide whether existing doctrine could withstand, without alteration, the impact on both attendance and giving that opening the divorce floodgates would soon precipitate.     Unconscionably, most churches and denominations chose Option 2.

Church history tells that the very need for Option 1 had its genesis in the acts of the 16th century “Reformers” including Martin Luther and John Calvin in ignoring God’s word (Matthew 19:6,8) to hand jurisdiction over marriage to the civil state in the first place.    The seeds for apostate marriage doctrine were sown both in the various writings of these reformers, and then ratified in the heretical Chapter 24 of the Westminster Confession, which denied the absolute lifelong indissolubility that Christ repeatedly taught, and fabricated in substitution a humanistic doctrine that allowed man’s divorce for adultery and liberally-defined abandonment, as well as (ironically)..apostasy.     A little more than 200 years after that, the obvious disconnect between actual scripture and the WCOF, along with the growing mass-literacy rate and availability of bibles prompted the Anglican church to sponsor a phased program of subtle text revisions, verse and phrase suppressions, and word mistranslations under the guise of “modernizing” and readability.   By the time the mid-20th century rolled around, a divorce attorney specialist could get by with calling himself or herself a “Christian” while passing a lie detector test and having most of the public believe him or her.    Approximately 50 years after this, the online technology emerged to actually detect and document what had happened to our bibles, but this was unfortunately not soon enough to head off the official marriage-related doctrine changes that occurred in the 1970’s in many denominations, and the waves of false teaching and apostate practice the churches had adopted in the meantime.

In a way that most sophisticated marketing organizations would roundly applaud, Christian media and virtually every denomination accommodated everything it did from that point forward to the “inevitability” of unilateral, forced divorce, as state after state enacted the UMDA “model law”.    Mainline churches already were willing to perform weddings over divorced people whose spouses were still living, largely due to the heresies in the WCOF, but conservative denominations voted to allow this for the first time in the 1970’s.     Even most mainline denominations did not allow divorced-and-remarried clergy until the 1970’s, but they also made this horrible change contrary to the direct counsel of scripture.    Both changes almost guaranteed that churches would never rise up to oppose unilateral, forced divorce laws (or even so much as describe them accurately in sermons and writings) even when the deleterious effects of their error started to emerge in the late 1990’s.   “standerinfamilycourt” would like to humbly suggest that had the churches chosen Option 1, God’s hand of protection would still be on this nation, and most of those deleterious effects would never have emerged.    Had the church chosen Option 1,  and exercised the many resistance actions that lay within her exclusive power,  “no-fault” divorce would have been sent to the dustbin of history decades ago.    Instead, many churches have recently gone on to either “consecrate” or otherwise sanction sodomous unions, including one prominent denominational leader who wrote a particularly cheeky piece just four years ago insisting this would never happen.

Choosing the cowardly acquiescence of Option 2 made biblical church discipline virtually impossible to administer thereafter.    As a new believer and newly-wed in the late 1970’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma, SIFC vividly recalls the sensational lawsuit of a “scarlet woman” against her Collinsville, Oklahoma church for attempting to apply biblical church discipline.  This woman was divorced, and it was discovered that she was shortly thereafter cohabiting with a boyfriend.    The pastor went to her privately and asked her to either separate or “marry” this man.    She declined, so the pastor asked her to leave the church.   She again declined, so that pastor publicly put her out of the church, all according to the instructions Jesus gave in Matthew, chapter 18, and Paul reiterated in 1 Corinthians 5.    The scarlet-lettered woman wound up winning a big settlement against the church for alleged public defamation, loss of reputation, pain and suffering.    Pastors and denominations all over the country took note, and started looking the other way at all sexual sin that the member didn’t readily repent of in the first private confrontation.   Obviously, a behind-the-pulpit papered-over adulterer lacks the moral authority to even open his mouth about most publicly-accepted heterosexual infractions in the first place, while they reproduce “sheep” (goats, really) after their own kind.   SIFC knows many faithful, standing pastors whose wife was literally poached from him by another pastor, and many faithful, legally estranged pastors’ wives whose husbands have run off and “married” another woman.

Churches stopped teaching that any remarriage at all was continuously adulterous, and that this adultery, even though legalized, sent people to hell who died in that state.    They started treating people as if they believed that only sodomous sexual sin, though legal, sent the unrepentant to hell.    This is a very important point because to this very day, most clergy and denominational leaders have an insufficient grasp of how serious a religious freedom violation forced-divorce constitutes to an authentic Christ-follower.

*  Corrupted public education systems that supplant the parents’ role.

The state of Massachusetts was an early adopter of sodomy-as-marriage several years before the Obergefell decision of 2015, and they were quick to mandate indoctrinating “education” in the public schools to reinforce its acceptance in the next generation, beginning in kindergarten.    Books with this objective were written to desensitize children to homosexual practices and they soon stocked public library shelves, if not also school library shelves in many states.    Back in the good old days, parents were deemed worthy of detailed advance notice when “sex ed” of any type was scheduled involving their child, and the court-protected right to opt the child out was honored.     These parental rights have disintegrated in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere since the legalization of sodomy-as-“marriage”.    Parents have been jailed in the U.S., as well as in other countries, for attempting to shield their children from homosexual indoctrination.   In some countries outside the U.S. private schools have been required to carry mandatory pornographic and LGBT-approved history courses, while homeschooling has been outlawed and home-schooled children removed from their Christian homes.   At least two European home-schooling families sought political asylum in the U.S. who were under threat of losing their children to the state in their home countries (initially denied by the leftist Obama Administration, but one case later granted by a judge).

Some might question the merits of connecting this development to the enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, as opposed to the Obergefell decision legalizing gay “marriage”.    SIFC has sought to demonstrate earlier in this post that universally cancelling the enforceability of the marriage contract and the rise of the LGBT political agenda were actually co-orchestrated back in the late 1960’s by the same group of Leftist elites, who viewed durable marriages and strong families as “oppressive” and a barrier to their aspirations for power.    Even gay “marriage” has been admitted by several LGBT activist leaders as never having been an end in itself, but was always aimed at rendering marriage itself an outdated historical relic.  Had unilateral “no-fault” divorce not been implemented, homosexuals would have no interest whatsoever in a marriage they could not easily get out of.

Even with the central orchestration of normalized adultery via divorce and remarriage, and normalized sodomy in all of its manifestations, part of the loss of parental control over the public education system is due to another feature of legalized family fragmentation as public policy:   we have gradually reached a point where society is  no longer raising citizens capable of wresting back control.     There would be no “Drag Queen Story Hour” at public libraries if a significant number of today’s young parents weren’t perfectly willing to directly expose their own tender children to homosexuals.

Conclusion
Patriots have been arguing for all 50 years since enactment began, that unilateral, forced-divorce laws are unconstitutional on many levels, and may well be the most unconstitutional laws ever passed.   Fifty years on,  it’s now becoming increasingly clear to the observant that these laws, if not repealed and reformed, are likely to bring down the entire Constitution for everyone else in the country — as planned and calculated some time before state-by-state enactment.   Beverly Willett pointed out in the Washington Examiner that,
“The Supreme Court has never recognized a fundamental right to divorce, but for 50 years state divorce laws have nonetheless legislated such a de facto right. “

Conversely (or perhaps perversely),  Texas Family Law Association chief lobbyist Steve Bresnan argued before a House legislative committee this past spring in opposition to HB922, a bill to make “no-fault” divorce available by mutual consent only:  “no state court has ever found no-fault divorce to be unconstitutional”  (even though the bill’s sponsor is a practicing constitutional attorney who lined up an entire parade of constitutional attorneys to testify about the multi-level unconstitutionality of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the prior legislative session.)    They’re both right, and they’re both right for nearly the same unfortunate reason, as pertains to the state and Federal benches.    Homosexuals are not about to bring a challenge to these laws, and for some odd reason, they’ve proven to be the only appellants who are consistently able to get their marital rights cases heard in either venue.

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.
–  Proverbs 14:34

Top 10 Excuses “Christians” Give For Living In Papered-Over Adultery

by Standerinfamilycourt

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.   –  James 4:4

August 29 is the traditional date that the martyrdom of Jesus’ older cousin, John the Baptizer, is recognized.    Traditional marriage champions, both Catholic and evangelical (or what few remain of them in either church), rightly point to John for calling Herod and Herodias to physically repent of their adulterous remarriage.    Jesus called John “the greatest of all those born of women”.

Our Catholic friends were particularly eloquent this year about the event where John sacrificed his head to warn two people, and everyone watching, from hell.   Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s brief video-chat focused refreshingly about what scripture suggests was going on in the daughter Salome’s heart, and in her mother Herodias’ heart.   Meanwhile, Bai MacFarlane shared a piece by James Hahn where he makes the point that it is actually normal for sexual immorality to result in all sorts of wanton disregard for human life, in order to get rid of the evidence of guilty sin:  “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin. She wished to continue, for whatever reason, to live in this sin and John the Baptist was a painful reminder day in and day out. So trapped by this sin was she that she forfeited the possibility of gaining even half of the kingdom. Instead, driven by hate and guilt, she chose to hold the head of the Baptist on a platter.”    

As Bai herself prefaced her post: “Separated-faithful spouses are a life-long voiceless reminder that marital abandonment and divorce are wrong. The perpetrators want separated spouses to shut up. On the feast day of John the Baptist, separated-faithful know they are in good company. (from James Hahn: “John the Baptist was murdered because of the sexual immorality of Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. Herodias knew that what they were doing was wrong and she no longer wished to be reminded of her sin).”

Herod and Herodias, of course, were papered-over adulterers.    What they had done was perfectly legal in the eyes of men.    The only thing is, the universal immorality of what they’d done cannot be papered over in the conscience, even with thick excuses.      Jesus said very plainly, then He and His apostles, along with their disciples,  reiterated many times and ways afterward:

“So they are no longer* two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no 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. ”   – Matthew 19:6,8

*The verb tense and mood of the original manuscript would more accurately read, “never again” for “no longer”, and would more accurately read “it has not ever been this way from the beginning”.   

John, of course, was serving notice to the king of Judea that his  “paper” expires upon his or her death, after which kingdom of God rules will govern his and her eternity.     In God’s courthouse,  Herod was still married to the daughter of the king of Petra, and Herodias was still married to Phillip.    

In five years of exchanging daily with all kinds of people on this topic, these are the rationalizations that emerge.   Some of them twist scripture and take it out of context to stand Christ’s meaning on its head.    Others are simply man-fabricated (as is the concept of “divorce” itself) out of thin air and antichrist humanism.

So, what are the Top 10 Excuses for living with someone else’s spouse instead of the only person on the face of the earth that God’s hand joined me or you to?

10.  The church says our first marriage(s) were never valid.

9.   My church says my first marriage which took place before I became a Christian doesn’t count.

8.   Deuteronomy 24 says divorce is recognized by God, allowed by Moses, and that I can’t go back to my first spouse.

7.   He / she never became a Christian and left me, so I’m not “bound”.

6.    He / she committed adultery, “breaking” the marriage bond.

5.   If my pastor was willing to do the wedding, it couldn’t be unbiblical.   Divorcing out would be repeat sin.   

4.   He / she was “controlling”.

3.    He / she abused substances.

2.   God wants me to be happy. and wouldn’t make me live the rest of my life without sexual and economic companionship.

1.    He / she was emotionally / physically abusive.

“standerinfamilycourt” does not yet have a ministry with the funds to poll people about such a sensitive topic as justifying the marrying of another person while our original spouse is still living, so the above is purely anecdotal.     Here’s a recent polling view shared by the AARP of the claimed causes of the divorce itself:

According to these statistics, the #1 single driver at 27% (as was the case with Herod and his brother Phillip’s wife, Herodias) is infidelity.  Nebulous cultural excuses like “growing apart” and “incompatibility” combine for another 37%, while domestic violence only comes in at 9% (and probably also includes emotional perceptions of “abuse”).   How blessed it will be one day when God has our society turning around because a good-sized slice of that pie reflects “repentance from a biblically-unlawful union to gain heaven”.

If churches did the job Christ charged them with of making disciples, at the very least, there would be far fewer biblically-unlawful legalized unions occupying their pews.  These post-divorce  “weddings” wouldn’t take place to begin with, and we’d be hearing far fewer excuses, along with a sharply-reduced demand for divorce which is driven (in part) by immoral church acquiescence.  But then, if churches today were doing the job Christ assigned to them, we wouldn’t be living, in the constitutional republic God established at the cost of much shed blood, under profoundly immoral and unconstitutional “family laws”.

He said,

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become lost its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”– Matthew 19:6,8

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Standers, Are We “Reluctantly Divorced”…Or Immorally Abandoned Under Force of Law?

by Standerinfamilycourt

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..”
– Proverbs 23:7

“standerinfamilycourt” has devoted the past nearly 5 years connecting the community of covenant marriage standers with other communities of Christians and social conservatives who are committed to peeling back the Sexual Revolution and reforming U.S. “family laws” in an example to the rest of the Western world.  Some of these allies are in differing faith traditions, and some of those individuals have a huge leg up on the stander community in terms of their national influence and basic ability to be heard politically.   Others are in “remarriages”, and some are in both situations.  This effort to find common ground for the common good has been met with “mixed reviews” on all sides at various times.   That’s OK with SIFC, who can handle it if some effectiveness is gained, and authentic covenant standers thereby gain a voice in the reform process they would not otherwise have.   Our brand of Christian discipleship has been pasted and smeared as a “cult” for long enough!  As for our reluctant (and sometimes embarrassed) allies, we hope Jesus’ voice comes through a bit clearer than if we were not visible in their lives and in their sense of mission.

For this reason, SIFC travelled to Lake Charles, Louisiana at the end of April to participate in the Ruth Institute’s “Summit for Survivors of the Sexual Revolution”.     You can read more about that terrific event  in this earlier blog post.   About a year or so prior to that, a post by “Ruth’s” founder,  Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, struck this “reluctant divorcee” as (well)… trivializing…and misrepresenting God’s truth.    She had referred to standers as the “reluctantly divorced” in some new pamphlets she was calling attention to at the time.     The Ruth Institute’s work and publications are important, both as the only significant, consistent national voice for repeal of unilateral divorce laws, but also as a well-published, well-respected social science organization, having this past year added an academic statistician to their staff.   Both terms. “reluctantly” and “divorced”, reflect offensively to many of those who, first of all, don’t believe we are “divorced” in God’s eyes, because our wayward and estranged spouse is still alive (Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39; Matthew 19:8),  and even if they weren’t alive, with full biblical justification, we would regard ourselves as widowed, not divorced.     Dr. Morse graciously asked at that time, what alternative label would be more acceptable to the covenant marriage stander community, so SIFC asked some standers in a social media private group for their input.   It proved to be a tough exercise to come up with something crisp and concise that was adequately reflective of the conscience violation experienced as a result of man’s laws being in direct opposition to God’s laws on marriage.   There was no male input volunteered at the time, but about five ladies offered input.    The common theme was “forcibly divorced against our conscience”.     The majority of standers did not seem to object to the “divorced” label, however, as much as they objected to the “reluctantly” label.    At least one of these ladies, if not two, had also been forced through an “annulment” by the Roman Catholic Church so that their “ex-spouse” could marry the adulteresses (who had coveted their husbands and broken up their homes) and take communion in that church.    The inquiry results were messaged back to Dr. Morse late in 2017.

Those who truly believe Christ’s words, “from the beginning it was never so!”  don’t believe that man’s various contrivances to disobey God and create distance or sundering, or legal attempts to sever the supernatural one-flesh (Greek: sarx mia) entity are actually real.     Those attempts constitute the heinous presumption to speak for God, the superior party in an unconditional covenant with the one-flesh entity which His hand has created between true husband and wife.   Although the Ruth Institute is a Catholic organization that retains some doctrine around marriage indissolubility, the Roman Catholic Church holds to a watered-down official version that allows for “annulments” , sometimes years or decades later, wherein they claim that some impediment not known at the time of the wedding caused God not to join or covenant with that union.   Many a spouse is “reluctantly” exposed to an even worse set of church papers making the false and presumptuous claim that God didn’t join their marriage for reason “x”–after all the persecution, larceny and perjury they endured in “family court”.     To such a stander, what’s being described as “reluctance” feels more like gang rape and moral conscience violation!     “Reluctance” is a response to something you didn’t want but eventually acquiesced to, (as one male stander put it).  One cannot conscionably say such a thing about gang rape without inevitably slandering and demoralizing the victim in the process.   In Dr. Morse’s case, we know the injury is not intentional, but is due to an “out-of-synch” frame of reference arising from personal theology and personal marital history.     As she publicly acknowledged at the Summit, she first learned of our movement and its general contours through SIFC less than 5 years ago.

#RuthSummit 2019 was all about giving a voice to those victimized by the social and political “narrative” of the Sexual Revolution.     As SIFC found out, however, there are limits to that voice in public if printed materials are in the inventory of said nonprofit, which are(unwittingly and unfortunately) bolstering one of the key tenets of that narrative.    In response to a post of one of the videos where an adult child of divorce (neither of whose parents, she reports, were actually “reluctant”) gave her testimony at the April Summit, under a banner that read “Reluctantly Divorced Panel”,  SIFC again commented about the offensiveness and inaccuracy of this label to some of those being referred to by it:

I’m thankful for Dr. Morse and all her efforts, but feel the term ‘reluctantly divorced’ seriously trivializes Christian standers. Standers stand in the first place because they believe Jesus when He said, “from the beginning it [man’s divorce] was not so!”
Most standers, by essence, don’t consider themselves “divorced” in God’s eyes, but rather immorally abandoned by both the law and their spouse.

I guess you could call *forcibly and morally violated* “reluctant”, but it’s kind of like saying someone was “reluctantly raped”. Would you say that to a rape victim? I sure wouldn’t!

Happy to have been in the room for Christy’s riveting testimony, and it made me so thankful that my husband and I raised our children to adulthood before the troubles started.”

This was not said on her page nor the Ruth Institute page, but on activist Jeff Morgan’s personal wall, without any idea that Dr. Morse would take it as a personal, hostile “swipe”, especially after our earlier exchange on the topic.    The PM that arrived the next day was unsettling, (in part: )

“…could you do me the kindness of not picking a fight with me in public? criminey. You’ve made your point privately…I’ve agreed with you in many ways. I cannot go back and retract all that material. Plz. I’m under enough pressure as it is. ” 

It occurred to “standerinfamilycourt” that perhaps this public statement could reasonably be faulted for not legitimately speaking for all covenant marriage standers, or a sufficiently large swath of them to have merited the comment.    That hadn’t been objectively tested, to be honest.  The comment was based on the open-ended input of the prior small group of ladies.  Out of a group page membership of 300-some, only those who agreed probably volunteered input, after all.    So….it was back to the polls to validate whether SIFC should have just let it go for the sake of feelings and friendship.

This time a formal poll with choices was set up on four different standers pages,  most of them open pages this time, including one UK page.     This has yielded some very interesting observations, and has this time had good input from male standers.  The following, from the most active set of responses was typical of the input from the other pages where the poll ran….

As everyone can see, a slight majority did say “No Big Deal”.    The second most frequent response was that quite a few were unaware of the issue at all.   Upward of a third of standers responding overall reflected a strong negative response to being labeled a “reluctant divorcee”, and one registered a mild negative response.      Those who responded that they were unaware of the label (who does that?) were invited to go back and make an additional selection.    So far, none have, so the implication is that this unaware group also did not feel that strongly about it, perhaps half of all covenant marriage standers who are standing for the marriage of their youth.    Those who also gave verbal comments about what they’d prefer as a label echoed the responses of a year ago,  responding a bit more negatively to the “reluctant” part (feeling that “forcibly” better reflected the conscience violation they suffered), than the “divorced” part of the label.   Those who felt “trivialized” or “demeaned” tended to object to both parts of the label.    Most of the really negative responses came from men, which is understandable, because they’ve been stripped of their God-assigned (and accountable) role toward their own flesh and blood (including scripturallytheir estranged and possibly “remarried” wife), while having done nothing objectively wrong to deserve this outcome.   One of the men commented:

I don’t like ‘reluctant’ It’s like we went along with it even though we didn’t want to.

I prefer Unwillingly Divorced.”

His comments drew 4 “likes”, out of a total of 13 responders in that group post.

Overall,  among the 4 group posts, there were 25 unique responses, breaking down as follows, by degree of perceived offensiveness:

Who Does That?  – 24%  (6 responses)
No Big Deal – 28%  (7 responses)
Mildly Annoyed – 4%  (1 response)
Demeaned  – 20%   (5 responses)
Trivialized   – 24%  (6 responses)

Due to varying beliefs, the covenant marriage standers are far from a monolithic group of saints.  Several interesting preliminary observations can be drawn from these results.   First, it appears that nearly 75% of this community is aware of and integrated with the activities and communications of external groups who are engaged in various aspects of “family law” and moral cultural reform, a very gratifying result, following almost 5 years of this blogger’s labors  behind the keyboard and in conferences.    Indeed, many in this community watched the #RuthSummit simulcast in April and several others have reported watching the videos.    Secondly, the ones who responded “No Big Deal” tended to be the ones who believe that scriptures like 1 Corinthians 7:11 make reconciliation with a repenting wayward spouse completely optional according to preference, should the opportunity present, rather than morally imperative per scriptures like Matthew 18:23-35, 2 Corinthians 5:18 (and others).    So long as they remain celibate until their prodigal spouse’s physical death, “they’re good with God”, in their own estimation.   For them, the sense of conscience violation from having a paper “dissolution” forced upon them is much fainter, even if their sense of personal injury remains very great indeed.  Thirdly, while close to 50% overall posted some degree of a negative response to the “reluctant divorcee” label, they were almost all men.  They are the ones who feel the most responsibility for their blocked role as the undershepherd of the family sheep assigned by God to their personal care, and they are the ongoing forgivers in the group.   It is interesting that all four of the respondents on the UK group page actually live in North America, where the process timelines for unilateral family-shredding are counted in days or months rather than the 5 years the process currently takes in the UK.     The sample responses, to the best of SIFC’s knowledge were all from evangelicals, with no currently practicing or nominal Catholics, and a small number of former Catholics responding.

One may rightly ask, “Is 25 a representative sample size with respect to all covenant marriage standers?”    We need to first clarify what a covenant marriage stander is, for those who don’t regularly follow this blog.    A covenant marriage, per scripture, is the marriage of our youth or its widowed replacement, without regard to any religious test, where there is no prior estranged spouse still living:  a never-married or widowed man with a never-married or widowed woman.    A covenant stander is someone who has  been declared “divorced” under the laws of men, but who is remaining celibate in obedience to Christ, even after their spouse “remarries” under the laws of men.    As shown above in the results, the actual motives for remaining celibate until widowed or reconciled can and do vary considerably, which impacts whether the term “reluctant divorcee” causes them injury and offense.  To answer our question about sample size, we need to first estimate how many of these there are in the online world.    An imperfect but reasonable way to gauge that is to estimate that covenant marriage standers have historically run about 10% of all religious standers, including those who “stand” for the subsequent “remarriage” of their personal preference, or for the most recent of them.    The largest marriage permanence ministries do not tend to filter out people who are standing for “remarriages”,  preferring a “wheat and tares” approach to running their ministries.   These typically have about 20,000 followers at any given time.

Based on these assumptions, a reasonable estimate of the total number of English-speaking covenant standers is around 2,000 globally, give or take.   The U.S. divorce lawyers tell us that of the slightly less than 1,000,000 U.S. civil divorces occurring each year, about 5% of them or 50,000 couples per year eventually reconcile.    As mentioned, there are significantly more noncovenant standers, hence noncovenant reconciliations of varying durations just in the U.S., and this is true regardless of the durability of the reconciliation.    It is somewhat possible that there are up to 5,000 covenant marriage standers just in the U.S.,  as an upper bound, which would include (and perhaps be dominated by) practicing Catholics who may still believe in some mitigating, extrabiblical doctrines such as “nullity” and “purgatory” which, in turn, would be directly relevant to their feelings about the severity of conscience violation.   Based on our estimate of the covenant marriage stander population, we only received a tenth of the responses (at best) we really needed for the results to be reasonably representative of all covenant marriage standers who are online, so we can’t claim these results as being scientific, only indicative of the justification to say something about the injuriousness of the “reluctant divorcee” label.  That indicated reliable sample size actually coincides with the typical size of most such group page (overlapping) memberships of covenant standers, so close to 100% group participation would be required to get there with scientific assurance.   Some of those groups do have a fair number of practicing Catholics in their membership who may not believe that dying while in a non-widowed “remarriage” necessarily sends everyone to hell, so may be less motivated to respond to the poll, or would respond “No Big Deal” if they did respond.   By no means were Catholics deliberately excluded.  The poll will be kept open indefinitely, and this post updated if results change as more responses are gathered.   This initial sample was gathered over about 36 hours’ time.    SIFC did not run this poll on Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional due to the large number of very “loyal” trolls and non-standers who follow our community page.

With all the statistical boredom out of the way about the impact of the reluctant divorcee label on the covenant stander community, adding to the trauma of at least hundreds of people who are praying for their spouse’s complete repentance and removal from legalized subsequent unions that could send them to hell as rebels against the kingdom of God,  “standerinfamilycourt” will now share the response given privately to Dr. Morse:

I honestly didn’t think about your printed materials inventory.   I was just hoping to raise some awareness.   I do realize there’s also some theological differences probably involved as well in this situation.  I didn’t do it maliciously, or with any intent to discredit you, only a strong sense that standers are being misrepresented in direct proportion to our belief of scripture.

“I’m sorry you were offended, Dr. Morse, but some of us have been suffering dignity blows on top of gaping wounds for a long time.  I hope you’ll give some thought to the point itself.  I must sing your praises in public in at least a 10:1 ratio. 

“Most sincere longtime standers do not believe human authorities have any say from God over marriage, and that He has never recognized divorce for anyone.  To hear a national figure repeatedly affirm the immoral civil law as “truth” and its impact as “mild and recoverable” is hurtful. And most of us wish others could see the magnitude of the religious human rights violation being forcibly “divorced” (that is, immorally abandoned with legal sanction) represents.  The ugly reality is we were the guinea pigs for everything happening now to everyone else on the religious rights front, but almost everyone remains clueless about that.  It’s like the famous Niemoller quote, but an extra line could be appended: 

‘…then they came for me…(but still nobody cared about the Jews…”)  …except God who is dealing with the whole nation accordingly and will not be appeased.’  

“This Equality Act…which we might get to dodge for another 2 or 6 years if there’s no national repentance, is literally going to be Congress doing to all other Christian consciences what was done to us by our state legislatures.  Time is getting short and we’re all under pressure.  I hope my sense of urgency at raising awareness can ultimately be forgiven.   Who knows how much longer biblical, pro-family voices will have a non-criminalized voice?   FB just shut down my advertising account today after almost 5 successful years, for submitting ads on a weekly basis that ‘violate their policies’ (many of which they approved and ran anyway, taking the money).”    [End of response]

The Ruth Institute certainly has no lack of pressure, engaged as it is with dividing time between longterm non-political activities aimed at chipping away at the root disease culturally, and a flurry of other activities managing and reporting the plethora of festering symptoms, including the significant fallout in the Roman Catholic Church, from which the bulk of that pressure currently emanates.    They manage to do a superb job with what they have to work with.  “standerinfamilycourt”, on the other hand, is lock-focused on going straight after the root disease politically and culturally, and feels most acutely the pressure from the ticking clock of history repeating itself, while ministering in the background to many of its most overlooked and discounted wound victims.    There isn’t going to be perfect congruence of efforts, but that needn’t prevent an effective working alliance nor should feedback feel threatening to either effort.   It is effective and necessary for “Ruth” to retain and build the support of Roman Catholic leadership, while finding some way to work effectively with the sola scriptura crowd that sustains the covenant marriage movement.

One of the featured speakers at #RuthSummit was Leila Miller, author of the book “Primal Loss” which gathered a lot of data about adult children of divorce who feel marginalized for cultural and political reasons to fit the false narratives that “children are resilient” and “parents deserve to be happy in their love life”.
Her 70 responses were heavily weighted toward trauma, hence she gained an influential platform through the Ruth Institute and Catholic media to speak out for them.     The trauma of covenant marriage standers from false labels and politically-correct assumptions is just as real, but that trauma doesn’t fit very well the counter-narrative that all children deserve to grow up in a home with both biological parents, no matter what.    That “no matter what” invalidly excludes concerns about the prior conflicting rights of covenant children and grandchildren at whose expense such an ideal necessarily comes, and with scripture-based beliefs about heaven and hell which may conflict with Roman Catholic beliefs or doctrines, or may even conflict with the dominant,  politically “safe” evangelical view of those things.   The very least someone pursuing an effective, engaged coalition can do is listen to this kind of inconvenient feedback without taking offense or presuming malicious intent.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
– 2 Corinthians 5:18

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce

 

Top 10 Ways Mothers Would Be Helped If “No-Fault” Divorce Laws Were Reformed

constitution-burningReaganby Standerinfamilycourt

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 not mutual 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 class of 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).

Some moms opt for lesbian relationships themselves after being rejected by a husband, thinking this relationship will be more stable than her marriage was.   Those relationships are actually shown to be more volatile than male homosexual relationships (which tend to be more promiscuous, and to survive longterm only on that basis).    In any event, the bad outcomes greatly compound when mom is setting that kind of example for her children.

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 annual taxpayer 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 separateBecause 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.)

Benefit #1 –  Fewer mothers (and their adulterous partners) would die on the broad road that leads to hell
It became culturally uncouth to speak of hell sometime back in the 1960’s, especially in churches, as if eternal moral consequences for persisting in wicked life choices were suddenly declared passe’ from On-High.    The Apostles clearly did not hold this attitude, nor did most of the 1st through 4th century church fathers, even when speaking of the born-again.

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 them anywhere 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!  

Death of a (Postmodernism) Sales(person): The Sad Passing of Rachel Held Evans

by Standerinfamilycourt

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,  so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.  – Hebrews 9:27-28

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019,  divorce law reformers were again in front of the Texas House of Representatives, testifying in an effort to get the repeal of unilateral  (non-consensual) “no-fault” grounds to advance from that committee, a bill identical to the one that had been voted out of the same committee two years before, whereupon that bill died a mysterious death before it could be brought to the floor of the full house for a vote, and before the legislature adjourned for two years.  This time, related bills under discussion, HB922 and HB926 occupied about an hour of the late evening 3-hour session for testimony, while one bill seeking to protect wedding officiants from (homosexualist) liability by allowing them to recuse themselves, where conscience before God would be violated, (HB2109) preceded this debate and took more than 90 minutes of that time.   During the discussion of the supposedly “homophobic” recusal bill, one recently-elected millennial lawmaker from a district north of Austin responded to the testimony of Cecilia Wood, a family law attorney of 32 years, there to testify in support of HB922 eliminating non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce, but also a supporter of the right to recuse from officiating weddings based on religious conscience, as follows (@ 8:30):

Rep. Talarico:  “Two comments and a question:  of course, allusion to the civil war (sic) important, but there was also a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war.  Second, you mentioned Christians staying home.  There are many Christians on this dias, including me who don’t hold discriminatory beliefs….”

“Woke” social justice writers like Ms. Held are largely responsible for the extrabiblical notions of young Mr. Talarico and too many of his generation:

(1) Belief that one can be a follower of Christ without embracing and obeying His teachings on morality and sexual ethics, as plainly described in the bible – both on a homosexual and heterosexual basis.

(2) The belief that biblically-immoral sexual behavior choices can constitute an “immutable” identity which can then be parlayed into valid comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1860’s and 1960’s that were based on race, biological sex and religion, i.e. “a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war…”  to pass prudent moral selectivity off as “discrimination”.   (It should be noted, however, that homosexualism is quickly becoming a sect of the larger secular humanist de facto state-religion of the United States ruling political class.)

(3) The asserted moral superiority of “social justice” Christianity over a holiness-based discipleship that better comports with the full teachings of Christ, the apostles and the early church fathers, especially in the area of sexual ethics.    The fact remains that this humanist pseudo-religion is the very antithesis of actual Christian discipleship in every respect.

(4) That false analogies (in general) are excusable for the greater “good”.

To this last point, a woman’s purported “right” to disobey Christ (such as by divorcing her husband in a pagan civil court) is obscenely compared with  Martha’s sister, Mary choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him, in the RHE illustration we’ve opened this post with.

While this testimony was occurring in Austin, TX, another kind of eternal tragedy was occurring in Tennessee in the Evans household, a covenant holy matrimony union of 16 years, with two children.


Dan and Rachel Evans wedding, 2003

The news site, AL.com wrote on April 19“During treatment for an infection, Rachel began exhibiting unexpected symptoms. Doctors found that her brain was experiencing constant seizures. She is currently in the ICU. She is in a medically induced coma while the doctors work to determine the cause and solution…”     By May 1, her condition was deteriorating due to brain-swelling after she failed to come out of the coma.   As reported by  CNN:  “…Over the next 10 days and transfers between three facilities, Evans was comatose.  Doctors began weaning Evans off coma medication Tuesday, but she did not return to an alert state during this process…Thursday [the coincidental date of the committee vote in Texas], Evans had ‘sudden and extreme’ changes in her vitals. A medical team found “extensive swelling of her brain” and took emergency action”.

That emergency action was unavailing, and she died on Saturday, May 4.   Out of respect for the Evans family and their grieving process, we will be publishing this blog a day or two after her funeral.

This is the sort of dias-sitting “Christians” that Rep. Talarico was referring to in his hearing remarks were, no doubt, influenced in great measure by the evangelical darling of CNN, the Huffington Post, and a host of other liberal publications, secular and evangelical.  SIFC has a grown, married daughter four years older than Mrs. Evans, who also started adopting RHE’s views around the time her writings gained prominence on CNN, and quoting similar homosexuality-sympathizing  “Christian” writers such as Jen Hatmaker.    This tragedy hits very close to home for that reason.   It’s normal for young adults who have been raised in Christian homes to go through a season of questioning, but in these evil last days, it can be eternally fatal to purchase a home there (and turn it into a real estate office, as RHE did, with the backing of crooked investors).    Hopefully, SIFC’s daughter is “just renting”, and moves to a home with a Rock foundation in time.

Mrs. Evans joined Soros-funded Baptist feminists (Karen Swallow-Prior, Beth Moore and an acclaimed homosexual journalist) in the leftist smearing of Rev. Paige Patterson, resulting in his removal from his leadership posts in the Southern Baptist Convention last year because of his fully biblical anti-divorce views which rejected the morally rabid  “abuse” doctrines of this evangelical feminist cult.   She was quoted by Baptist News Global at the time: “Patterson’s comments need a swift and thorough rebuke from the SBC and all Christians of good faith.”    At least indirectly,  Mrs. Evans was the epitome of the “rent-an-evangelical” cadre that Soros operatives openly bragged about recruiting.

SBC leader under fire for comments about divorce, abuse

The following was typical of her views on man’s divorce, finding purported legal “dissolution” a necessary “right choice” to prevent the exploitation of women, and imagining the true protection of women under the biblical leadership of her husband “legalistic”….rather than the metaphysical impossibility Jesus taught that divorce of an original holy matrimony union actually is.    In effect,  RHE was a popular writer because she excused hardness of heart, telling her fans what they wanted to hear – at a time when nearly 70% of unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions are filed by women, and almost nobody takes provable abuse through the criminal justice system, as the bible would instead direct.

…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!”   –  Jesus, Matt. 18:7-8

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.   – Romans 1:32

“standerinfamilycourt” would vigorously challenge the late Mrs. Evans’ assertion about the “purpose of Jesus’ words on marriage”.   Rather than protecting women from “exploitation by the system”,  those words were to protect society as a whole from self-absorbed individualism, and keep fathers firmly in authority over the generations of their families, per God’s design.

Challenging the authority of scripture on such a matter, and then (apparently) dying unrepentant is very eternally costly, at least according to one early church bishop who was martyred early in the 2nd century….

Meeting this fate while still very young illustrates the extreme danger of achieving broad influence and acclaim which is built on a foundation of sand.   It’s a mercy that God sometimes removes high-impact siren voices from our midst.   When He must do so while they are so young, it’s a strong sign of how many they were leading astray, and of His foreknowledge of whether they would ever repent.    Apparently, Mrs. Evans knew John Stonestreet of the Colson Center (Breakpoint.org) very well because they were from the same town in Tennessee, and (while he can’t quite bring himself to vocalize it), he is wondering if she ever repented before she passed into eternity last week.   We can only hope so.

We are bracing for the howl we’re going to get from the antinomians out there, as we did when remarriage adulteress Joey Feek passed away young and unrepentant in her “marriage” to another woman’s legally-estranged husband.    That blog post elicited comments from hundreds of people for days.    We didn’t write that piece to be “mean” to the divorced-and-remarried, nor will we apologize for reminding people that all of the apostles warned repeatedly about the possibility of wandering away from the faith, as directly evidenced by the levels of repentance, and spirit of obedience to Christ’s commandments, in the life under discussion.  If those who would take offense insist on doing so based on extrabiblical denominational dogma, their souls are in their own hands.   If the past is any indication, some will read this and insist that SIFC has “judged” and personally consigned these erring souls to hell, as if feeling deputized by God to do so.    This is irrational (to be as kind as possible in expressing it).    What SIFC has done is tell the audience what God’s word and early church fathers clearly said about similar situations.

“standerinfamilycourt”, as Mrs. Evans did, feels called to the role of a teacher of God’s word on the family, approaching it with a holy fear of God, and ever-mindful of the stern warning from Christ’s brother, James, about the eternal impact on the audience….

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!