Category Archives: Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM

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

The Apostasy of Joshua Harris: Reversible or No?


by Standerinfamilycourt

“But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.   For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”    – 1 Timothy 6:9-10

Boy, has this event sparked a lively social media war about whether or not Joshua Harris “was ever saved to begin with” between the Arminians and the Calvinists! This kind of conversation is actually healthy and thought-provoking, as long as it stays reasonably civil between brothers, so to speak. That said, don’t be surprised to find both camps at least partially wrong when scripture is looked at objectively, and is compared accurately with the speculations that abound on both sides. This situation is not too unlike the occasion when Jesus rebuked BOTH the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai.

Many Christian periodicals and bloggers have weighed in with their “take” on the apostasy of Joshua Harris (and the faith-questioning  expressed shortly thereafter by Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson).      Aside from the positions taken by observers on the presumed validity of their original regeneration,  much was also said that was worthwhile (and true enough) about following the celebrity culture of modern Christendom with emotions / feelings pre-eminent, rather than a craving pursuit of the word of God.     It was not for nothing that the Apostle Paul said, “imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

Quite amusingly, a slew of divorced and remarried people vigorously applauded Harris on social media for dropping the “legalism” he allegedly reflected in his famous book.  Some publicly confessed cohabiting before marrying their first spouse, but virtuously “waiting” after they divorced that spouse before they entered into their adulterous remarriage with a “Christian”.

And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’   But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’   I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
– Luke 18:9-14

(SIFC will leave it to the readers’ imaginations just who was calling whom a “Pharisee” after being informed that according to the rightly-divided word of God, they are still married to their original spouse.)

Since the devil has managed to cause at least one covenant marriage to be severely bruised and violated in these defections, and nothing “standerinfamilycourt”  has reviewed to-date has adequately dealt with the role of the Holy Spirit in a once-regenerated apostate’s life, it was clear there would eventually be a post on these events in
“7 Times Around the Jericho Wall”, but SIFC decided to hang back for a bit, reading up while the others wrang their hands over Harris’ post-announcement fling with the LGBT community.    Harris’ famous book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”  was not familiar, either before or after its renouncement by the author.     A facebook comment expressing hope that his covenant wife would stand and pray for him was met with a derisive response from someone who follows Mrs. Harris on twitter:  she had reportedly been showing her own New Age propensities for quite some time.   (SIFC will need to take the gentleman’s word for it, not personally being on twitter.)

These words of the current pastor of Harris’ former megachurch in a communication to the congregation were insightful…

“Today after I got the news, I read through Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and found it quite grounding. Several times Paul mentions former Christian leaders ‘swerving from’, ‘wandering from’ or ‘making shipwreck of their faith. So while this is sad and confusing, it isn’t new. Christian leaders occasionally veered from faith at the very beginning. Paul said some had gone off-course theologically. Others behaved in ways that violated Christian conscience. For others it was greed. In every case, Paul’s hope was for redemption and restoration.”

1 Timothy 1:18-20
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.

Note, too, that Paul never once claimed any of these particular individuals were false converts. Doing so would essentially deny that the individual involved was indwelt with the Holy Spirit at the time of their regeneration.    The Apostle did not appear prepared to declare such in any of the cases he mentioned. Along with 1 Cor. 5, this makes the 2nd time Paul talks of “handing a believer over to Satan” in hopes their soul will be saved in the end.    An unbeliever doesn’t need “handing over” because Satan already controls them, and it would be cruel to use his kingdom authority do so without the Holy Spirit indwelling them.   I like to counter the toxic Calvinists out there by saying, “once saved, guard your heart!”

Joshua Harris’ online biography states that four years ago he left the pulpit of the megachurch he founded to go back to school and then became a marketing consultant – actually, quite a suitable second career for a megachurch founder!   He then had several years to be influenced by the world on a daily basis, and to develop a love for money, worldly success, corporate culture (and apparently, the ideologies of gender disorder).    Reportedly, his covenant wife followed him on this worldly path.   

“For in the case of those who have once been  enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,  and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance,  since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”
– Hebrews 6:4-6

“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.
– 1 Corinthians 7:14

Sadly, at this point in time, Joshua Harris does not appear to have a believing wife.    Shannon Harris does not appear currently to have a believing husband.     That doesn’t mean God is not actively pursuing both.     Neither does it mean that either or both of them were “never saved to begin with”.     It is interesting to do a deep-dive into the Greek word translated “unbelieving” in 1 Cor. 7:14, because in a one-flesh, God-joined union, this points to the one-flesh state being a spiritual weapon by which the seed of the woman will crush the head of satan after he has bruised the man’s heel.     The context in 1 Cor. 7 does point to a converted spouse and a spouse who has not been converted, however, the broader meaning ….

*apistos  ἄπιστος  –  literally, “faithless”  or “not faithful because unpersuaded”

[4102 pístis (from 3982/peíthō, “persuade,” “be persuaded”) – properly, persuasion (God giving His persuasion about what pleases Him); faith.   The root of 4102/pístis (“faith”) – 3982/peíthō (“to persuade,” “be persuaded”) – signals the core-meaning of faith in the Bible: “the Lord’s inworked (inbirthed) persuasion” (G. Archer)]

…means that the counsel in verse 7:14 could also apply to once-believing spouses who have declared themselves apostate.   False doctrine and bad influencers can come along later and rob us of our prior conviction.   That sort of event, however, does not and cannot ever remove the indwelling holy spirit, if He indeed indwells.    Notice how close the English word “apostasy” actually is to “apistos”,  but that root word in Greek is actually aphistémi  ἀφίστημι .    Although before Christ, the Holy Spirit came and went but He did not indwell, the Hebrews had a word, shobebשׁוֹבֵב  ) for “backslider”.

If it weren’t for the many empirical restorations of repented prodigal spouses who return home, first to the cross, and then to their one-flesh spouse, and if not for the parable Jesus told of the prodigal son (who was, after all, a child of his father both before and after his sojourn in the Far Country),  Hebrews 6:4-6 would be an absolutely terrifying verse to everyone who loves an apostate or backslider, especially their prodigal spouse.    We all thankfully know of many cases where it did not actually turn out to be “impossible” to renew the person to repentance,  and as Jesus Himself stated, “with man this is impossible, but not with God for nothing will be impossible for God.”  

So, was the writer of Hebrews actually “blowing smoke” when he cautioned that apostates cannot be restored to the kingdom of God?  Or is it that the Calvinists are right about a faulty regeneration?   There are actually three possible explanations for the discrepancy between that Hebrews passage and what many of us blessedly experience.     The first possibility is what the Calvinists are quick to claim in all cases:   the person actually wasn’t regenerated, and thus, wasn’t indwelt with the Holy Spirit until some point in time after they supposedly “fell away”.     We have so many harlot churches with pulpits occupied by wolves and “hirelings” that we cannot discount that possibility for a certain percentage of the cases.     However, those who insist that this circumstance is always the case like to cite 1 John 2:19, which (in context) speaks of antichrists in the last days:

They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

The Calvinists give this verse their own spin, as if it said, “so that it would be shown that none of them were ever of us.”   John goes on to clarify, however,

Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.  (verse 22)

…..which makes a great segue into the second possibility for the discrepancy presented in Hebrews 6:4-6, which is the context around whom the writer was addressing, and why they were being issued that holy caution.    As John the Apostle was warning, this, too, has to do with denying and specifically renouncing the identity of Christ.     The epistle to the Hebrew believers living in Rome under the reign of terror of Nero was written because these believers had an offer outstanding to return to good standing in the Jewish synagogue in Rome, and thereby escape the horrific persecutions Nero was imposing in his all-out war on Christ-followers.    But there was a big problem:  in order to return to the synagogue, each individual believer had to renounce the deity and Sonship of Christ.

Therefore  everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
– Matthew 10:32-33

Based on what Jesus said about the “unpardonable sin”, this would also have to be a permanent renouncement.      SIFC didn’t hear of either Harris or Sampson saying anything that approached such a renouncement….

HARRIS (7/26/2019, on twitter):   “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.” By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”

SAMPSON (early August, 2019 on Instagram):  “Time for some real talk… I’m genuinely losing my faith.. and it doesn’t bother me… like, what bothers me now is nothing… I am so happy now, so at peace with the world.. it’s crazy / this is a soapbox moment so here I go xx how many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it….”How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it….”Christians can be the most judgemental (sic) people on the planet – they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people… but it’s not for me. I am not in any more.”

[    SIFC:   Marty Sampson, we should all note, was never called to follow or place his faith in “Christians”, he was called to follow Christ.   We may have to concede this particular case to the Calvinists, after all.]

Some of us are old enough to remember Bob Dylan’s brief season of discipleship ( Gotta Serve Somebody) before reverting back to Judaism.     The fact is that many prodigals who are still trying to fill a God-shaped hole in their heart with any number of tempting God-substitutes have various reasons for being blinded and deceived, and when this happens, few actually renounce Christ, so much as they attempt to “hide out” from Him for a season.     We tend to call this “falling away” or “apostasy”  or “deconstruction” (as Harris would have it), but often what they are doing is either testing their limits with the Father, or seeking to “own their own faith” after being brought up all their lives in a Christian home.    As long as they don’t run out of time on this earth before the Hound of Heaven catches up with them, the result is often redemptive.

A few perceptive Christ-followers commended Harris for “owning” his season of backsliding rather than faking , “reinventing” or “redefining” the terms of his discipleship from behind the pulpit.

As Christian Post contributor Will Vining put it in an August 10 commentary,

The reason I commend Harris is how he handled his departing. As I mentioned in my last article, A Warning Against Progressive Christianity, the progressive Church is full of those who made the same journey as Harris. The main difference between Harris and the progressive Christian is one denounced God and left the faith, the other molded God into the god they wanted, thus making an idol.

Those who attempt this contribute to the sometimes well-earned reputation for hypocrisy in the church.     SIFC said a hearty public “amen” to that, but added that we should all pray that those hounds of heaven pursue him  and Marty Sampson relentlessly, and for the sake of their respective covenant families, that season would be mercifully brief.

Peter also had some chilling things to say about apostasy in the form of backsliding, and made it clear that he neither believed in “once saved, always saved” nor subscribed to the idea that true believers “never” fell away:

For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”  – 2 Peter 2:20

This blog post was mostly written before SIFC got a chance to read Dr. Michael Brown’s take on these two high profile “fallings away”, and believes he also provides good insights why we should still intercede and not give up on people who have taken up residence in the Far Country:

Can an Apostate Return to the Faith?

Joshua Harris has departed the faith, he says, to go pursue friendship with the LGBT community, but we all need to keep in mind God’s power to make this process work in reverse even more frequently, bringing apostate people back from that world.     The Mainwaring family is just one great example of this, out of several.   Listen to Doug’s personal testimony (starting at about 3:30) from  2014:

Mainwaring (who returned to his estranged wife and the Catholic faith):  “…kids deserve both a mom and a dad in the home.   For that reason, I have as much problem with no-fault divorce as I have with same-sex marriage, and it took some doing, but after a dozen years of being apart, my ‘ex’ wife and I pulled our family back together again.   And that was over 3 years ago now, and we could not be happier, and I want to say again tonight, I LOVE MY WIFE!”   

Guarding our hearts is the deliberate process of finding out accurately who Jesus is, and rediscovering that fact as many times in life as necessary.    The fact that a practicing homosexual could fall in love with Jesus again made falling back in love with his God-joined, one-flesh life companion a comparative “cake walk” even with same-sex attraction.


He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”   Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”   And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

What “rock”?   The foundational, divinely-revealed, Spirit-whispered unshakeable conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, of course!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Sorry, But Forming A Committee To Flout God’s Sexual Ethics Started Long Ago…With Heterosexuals

by Standerinfamilycourt

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.
–  Ecclesiastes 1:9

The American Psychological Association achieved the political coup of the century in 1973 when homosexuality was removed as a disorder from the  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.    Homosexualist political activism had gained steam after the 1969 Stonewall bar raid and riot, and had established an extremely loud voice with the APA by 1971, coercing a questionable reliance on the since-discredited Kinsey Reports, and grossly downplaying the public health and self-destructive effects of sodomy in defining what constitutes a diagnosable emotional disorder.

In the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City [], gay and lesbian activists, believing psychiatric theories to be a major contributor to anti-homosexual social stigma, disrupted the 1970 and 1971 annual meetings of the APA….There was also an emerging generational changing of the guard within APA comprised of younger leaders urging the organization to greater social consciousness [2]. A very few psychoanalysts like Judd Marmor [5,52] were also taking issue with psychoanalytic orthodoxy regarding homosexuality. However, the most significant catalyst for diagnostic change was gay activism.

The opponents of the activist influence on the APA board’s 1973 recommendation forced a referendum vote of the membership:

“Psychiatrists from the psychoanalytic community, however, objected to the decision. They petitioned APA to hold a referendum asking the entire membership to vote either in support of or against the BOT decision. The decision to remove was upheld by a 58% majority of 10,000 voting members.

“It should be noted that psychiatrists did not vote, as is often reported in the popular press, on whether homosexuality should remain a diagnosis. What APA members voted on was to either “favor” or “oppose” the APA Board of Trustees decision and, by extension, the scientific process they had set up to make the determination.”

This travesty, as we all now know, laid the groundwork for much false “science” to develop that later conferred “born that way” (contrived) immutability to said emotional disorder,  which in turn led to the societally-devastating ability to elevate a destructive behavior choice to a civil rights issue in many states and localities through SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) laws, and finally, a second layer of  redefinition of what remained of God’s definition (per Matthew 19:4-6) of marriage, by judicial legislation that culminated in June, 2015 in the Obergefell SCOTUS decision.    SOGI’s create a super-protected class of special rights that trump the fundamental constitutional protections of all other U.S. citizens.   And, if only, the APA’s authoritarian, virtue-signaling quest had ceased with its efforts to normalize sodomy….

But, alas, the APA has continued to “evolve”, as more homosexual activists actually started to infiltrate its ranks to ensure that the faulty DSM removal decision is never reversed but instead, continuously enforced and reinforced.   Per an article yesterday by Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins,

“Division 44 is also called “The Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (SPSOGD).” Division 44 was founded “in 1985 by a group of pioneering LGB psychologists and their allies,” and one of its primary purposes is to “promote the development and delivery of affirmative psychological services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and gender nonconforming and queer people.” In the service of this purpose, last year Division 44

‘formed a task force on consensual non-monogamy (CNM), in recognition of relationship diversity, which intersects with sexual/gender identities in interesting ways. ‘

‘Consensual non-monogamy’ is a euphemism for adultery, sexual infidelity, or polyamory.”

It should be pointed out this idea was hardly new to the APA!   Following shortly after the natural passing of the 16th century Reformers, (who also were notoriously discontented with biblical sexual ethics, specifically with God’s definition of marriage as regards lifelong indissolubility), were a group of 17th century clerics and Members of Parliament in England who where determined to gain a durable edict doing something about the “legalism” of Divinely-compelled monogamy, so in 1643 they convened the Westminster Assembly.

While it would be misleading to paint the assembly as not being concerned with an array of issues relating to the rule of King Charles I, a Catholic, there was also much humanistic animus against the indissolubility of holy matrimony, seen as a “Catholic” teaching, instead of more properly as Christ’s teaching.    So what do you do when a government is in charge that won’t cooperate on liberalizing the sexual ethics of the day, but insists on biblical sexual ethics?   Why, you form a committee of pseudo-experts (of only one persuasion), and you challenge that authority based on “social science” and “enlightment”, of course!    After all, the house of the adulterous monarch founding the more “reasonable” Church of England had been put down, and royal descendants of his discarded covenant wife had been given the upper hand, promising to reverse all that Reformation “progress” after barely a century.    In the name of nonconsensual serial monogamy, something had to be done!

Parliament finally passed an ordinance to hold the assembly on its own authority without Charles’s assent on 12 June 1643.[20] It named as many as 121 ministers[a] and thirty non-voting parliamentary observers: twenty from the Commons, and ten from the House of Lords.[22] The Assembly was almost entirely English; Parliament appointed Englishmen for the counties of Wales, but the French stranger churches (churches of Protestant refugees from Catholic France) sent two ministers in place of any from the Channel Islands.[14] Many of the divines were internationally recognized scholars of the Bible, ancient languages, patristics, and scholastic theology. Many were also famous preachers.[23] Most of these theologians had retained their positions in the Church during the tenure of William Laud. Some had been ejected from their churches or cited by ecclesiastical courts for their views. Some had fled to the Continent, and one to the American colonies.[24] Nonetheless, they all considered themselves members of the Church of England and had received episcopal ordination. Most were conformists, meaning they agreed to follow the Act of Uniformity 1558 and the Book of Common Prayer.[25]

The Assembly was strictly under the control of Parliament, and was only to debate topics which Parliament directed. Assembly members were not permitted to state their disagreements with majority opinions or share any information about the proceedings, except in writing to Parliament.

The result, four years later was a Calvinist triumph that became the staple for the harlot church, reinforcing its gross immorality in the 20th and 21st centuries, as if Jesus Himself handed it down.     One of the most harmful doctrines in the Westminster Confession is found in Chapter 24, which abused numerous scriptures to fabricate “biblical grounds” for man’s divorce and ecclesiastical permission to defy Christ and marry again while our God-joined spouse is still living:

“V.  Adultery or fornication committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.l   In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce,m and, after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.n

l Matt. 1:18-20.
m Matt. 5:31,32.
n Matt. 19:9; Rom. 7:2,3.

VI.  Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments, unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage:o wherein, a publick and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed, and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.p

o Matt. 19:8,9; 1 Cor. 7:15; Matt. 19:6.
p Deut. 24:1-4.”

Because of this landmark Reformation document, we now speak of “orthodoxy” instead of obedience to scripture,  and bow down low to what the majority think, rather than what Christ commanded.
This, of course, set a powerful example for future corrupt church leadership in the 20th century, (ironically, in 1973, the same year as the APA official redefinition-by-committee of long-established moral truth), and ultimately, this power lesson, walked out by the church wolves, was not lost on the sexually lawless pagans.   Sustaining  such “reforms” over time, however, requires that its advocates remain temporally “large and in charge.”

Social conservatives are fond of asking these days,  “if you change the definition of marriage not to require a man-woman union (of whatever sort  or duration, in circumstances short of incest), why is there any logical reason to limit it to ‘two’  or to ‘persons’? “

SIFC believes this is a valid question, but a deliberately myopic one.  The more revealing question is,  “if you change the definition of marriage from lifelong indissolubility (also a creational non-negotiable, according to Jesus) between a man and a woman,   how can you expect any other creational non-negotiable to apply?”    
It is this question that finds us at the true foot of the “slippery slope”.  One cannot only “partially” reject the teachings of Christ, consequentially or otherwise.

The Christian social conservatives complaining about the “slippery slope” and saying “we told you so!”  aren’t wrong in their sentiments. But they are loath to acknowledge where the slippery slope accurately began, because they rather hope to preserve part of that slope…the part that imposes biblical morality on others, but not on them.     It is a core mission of this blog to keep pointing out why that kind of a “strategy” will never work — namely, because God Himself will never allow it!    Church leadership is going to be required by the Most High to officially renounce the harlotrous doctrine of  WCOF Chapter 24, to excommunicate people in adulterous “marriages” with someone else’s discarded spouse who refuse to forsake those unlawful unions, and to cease creating new ones by undertaking vain “wedding” ceremonies in which God is no party at all.

Commentator Laurie Higgins correctly observes (while not necessarily considering #LukeSixteenEighteen violations “adultery”):

” ‘Consensual non-monogamy’  is a euphemism for adultery, sexual infidelity, or polyamory. Leftists must paint sexual immorality with a glossy finish if they’re going to deceive people and advance their socially destructive ideology.”   

From God’s perspective,  it doesn’t matter whether polygamy is concurrent or consecutive, nor does He consider polyamory any more immoral or abominable than either form of polygamy, even though a good 60% of  His “church” is these days engaged in one of them.  Furthermore, if the next stronghold does indeed prove to be civilly legalized or decriminalized pedophilia, and this in itself doesn’t trigger his final judgment on our land,  the legalized sexual abuse of children will simply be an escalating form of judgment where several prior escalations have fallen on deaf ears, despite the loud (and also unheard) outcry of that harlot church doing the complaining.

A worthless person, a wicked man,
Is the one who walks with a perverse mouth,
 Who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet,
Who points with his fingers;
Who with perversity in his heart continually devises evil,
Who spreads strife.
Therefore his calamity will come suddenly;
Instantly he will be broken and there will be no healing.
– Proverbs 6:12-15

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

by 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

A few weeks ago, SIFC wrote about the potential impact of badly-needed divorce reform on the nation’s mothers.   In many ways, that was a hard piece to write, because women consistently file over two-thirds of the unilateral “no-fault” petitions that shred their own families, year in and year out.   They always have a heart-tugging excuse, usually involving some degree of what they perceive to be abuse, from which the children “must be shielded at all costs” (including the violent destruction of the family).   When they take up with another man shortly thereafter (as though that behavior wasn’t even more abusive of the children), it’s only “coincidental” and “he’s who God really had for me”.

Writing that piece felt a bit like saying, “Outlawing your unilateral rebellion against God (and your husband), will benefit you by saving you from God’s wrath.”  In many cases, that’s the actual truth.    On the other hand, when speaking of fathers who give “family courts” permission to shred their own families, such men would be a much smaller proportion of the petitions that have historically been filed.  This law has always been a militant feminist contrivance, and a vehicle for social Marxism, rather than for freedom and human thriving (which, incidentally, God specifically set men in charge of, not women).

Dr. Stephen Baskerville stated quite profoundly that the ultimate goal of the Leftist “social engineers” is to sever fathers from their families.   In fact, according to Dr. Baskerville (@ 7:23-8:33), the only legitimate reason for government to presume to regulate God’s holy ordinance is to preserve its original purpose – to firmly glue fathers to their families for life.

We explained in that earlier piece what a desirable reform in the law would look like, and we repeat it here:

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 due process and 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.

In many ways, the benefits to fathers from these reforms, are made obvious just by looking at what “family courts” routinely do to fathers, and imagining those things being undone.   Totalitarian family policies are never good for anyone, but on average, fathers as a group have been hit with the most severe overall human suffering resulting from them.

Benefit #10 –  Men would no longer need for fear that marriage will wreck their life and literally criminalize what used to be universally-expected fatherly and husbandly behavior in civilized societies.
We all owe our first loyalties to the eternal kingdom of God, and not to the civil laws of men when they directly conflict with God’s law.   St. Augustine expressed this in his writings, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also evoked this 5th century thought in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, when he wrote:

“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’  The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’

“Now, what is the difference between the two?  How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law… “

State policies designed to do anything but encourage national repentance and sustainably raise future citizens...(namely, to instead try to fiscally “manage” the whirlwind consequences of legalized immorality) have degenerated to the point where lawyers deliberately whip up hostility between troubled spouses for their own future profit (which lies not in their reconciliation) , and where states act against taxpayers’ best overall interests in order to secure Federal Title IV-D funds from the men they slanderously label as “deadbeat dads” (although some women have also been finding themselves in this horrific nightmare, as well.)

Benefit #9 –  Dads could serve their country overseas when duty calls, with reasonable assurance there will be a family to come back to, instead of coming back to a perjurous “protective order”.
As unbelievable (and despicable) as it sounds, “family law” attorneys have been known to attend continuing legal education (CLE) classes – such as by this Texas Assistant D.A. – to learn how to abuse the domestic violence protective order system, and to coach their clients on how to gain leverage for their divorce petition settlement (children, property, etc.) through allegations centered around actual or fabricated  post-traumatic-shock syndrome (PTSD).   Tragically, this is routinely used against veterans whose spouse got tired of their deployments in the service of our country and found someone else.   In many states, the wronged spouse has no option to bring a counter petition where adultery (fault) is actually with the petitioning spouse, because that state’s law only provides for “no-fault” grounds, and because it (separately) bars all consideration of marital fault in either child custody or property division orders.   Many states have also repealed or gutted their alienation of affections” civil cause of action against spouse-poachers in recent years.

Benefit #8 –  Dads would have more authority and influence to prevent  a third party from endangering their children, and would no longer need a court’s permission to do so.
One of the most egregious human rights crimes against families (after the Title IV-D organized crime racket, of course) is banning marital fault as the key consideration in child custody decisions.
We can thank the Sexual Revolution, of course, for outlawing moral judgments on adults in the best interest of the character development of the children.    We can also thank the Sexual Revolution, therefore, for the high level of emotional damage to two generations of children (and counting).

If mom unilaterally divorces dad because he doesn’t make enough money to suit her,  won’t lose his beer gut, or whatever, and plans to shack up with whoever enticed her away, it should be a no-brainer that all other factors being equal, dad should get the kids, and mom should get supervised visits because of her immoral lifestyle.  
That’s the way it used to work, and there was nothing wrong with it.   The kids came first.     Unfortunately, as it stands, dad is even not allowed to tell the court about mom’s contributing adultery in the most evil of the states.   He’s barely allowed to tell the court that the new boyfriend is endangering the children, (and that’s if he’s lucky enough that mom didn’t invent some abuse charges and slap him with a restraining order so that he can’t even gain awareness of what’s going on with his kids.)   No, instead of the authority GOD gave him, he has to go through CPS — who stands to make the state a little money by selling the kids off to strangers called “foster parents”, bypassing dad altogether if he doesn’t happen to have 6-figures in cash to go to court with after he brings forward an abuse or neglect complaint.    When human governments come between a worthy father and his children, God will judge them severely!   In fact, that’s precisely why the analogous slave trade was such an existential threat to the viability of the United States (and other involved countries) to continue as sovereign nations.

Benefit #7 –  Dads would no longer be financing their estranged wife’s illicit subsequent household.
When mom gets custody of the kids in a unilateral forced divorce, dad gets to empty his wallet, regardless of his own fitness as a parent. The court applies a formula to determine how much he pays, and generally it can (and often does) go up, but if his circumstances like health or employment take a hit, there’s no guarantee in a lot of states that the amount will ever go down until the last child is 18. If he doesn’t pay up, the state often can come after any licenses (including professional licenses) that he holds, can publish his name in the paper as a “deadbeat”, and can even jail him for a period of time. If dad holds all or most of the family retirement funds, a “QDRO” (qualified domestic relations order – in a system that bars consideration of marital fault, a.k.a. – “license to steal”) is drawn up to give a good chunk of it to mom (again, without regard to consideration marital fault in a most states),  and if dad was lucky enough to have vested traditional pension benefits, he ludicrously winds up paying mom by the month some day to live in her ongoing immorality.   Responsible Christian husbands sorrowfully dread that this is potentially paying their wife by the month, by court order for life to die in her ongoing immoral state, and thereby have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.   This is the exact opposite of the responsibility God assigned to authentic covenant husbands, and a man might prayerfully consider declining to cooperate with pension QDRO’s and enduring the humanly lawful consequences of civil disobedience, as suggested by St. Augustine and MLK, Jr.

Folks, what the state has actually done here, in banning moral judgments against the petitioner, is facilitate and incentivize spouse-poaching!    (That which is financially rewarded in public policy, you tend to get a lot of, but who wants to live in that kind of a society?)

Benefit #6 –  Dads who save for their children’s education, will have better assurance that this is where the funds will actually go.
For countless corrupt attorneys, obtaining the initial divorce decree tends to function as the “loss leader”,  knowing that the real paycheck for them comes for the next several years following that that “dissolution” when the conflict over the children may continue until the last one reaches age 18.     It is not uncommon for the non-custodial parent to complain that they’ve spent $200,000 or more just to secure the right to see their child enough to carry out their rightful parental role following a forced divorce.   Where does this money come from?  Typically it comes from retirement assets and college savings plans that were supposed to benefit the children.   Instead, the funds must be diverted to attorney fees and court costs. 

Benefit #5- Dad’s wife will no longer be incentivized by “family court”,  nor rewarded for, filing a divorce petition against their innocent husbands.
Texas Family Law Foundation’s chief lobbyist recently testified before the (liberally-skewed) Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee, that requiring mutual consent to access “no-fault” grounds, as HB 922 (2019) and HB93 (2017) would have done, deprives the petitioner of their leverage.  So far so good, since one would have to be brain-dead not to realize allowing the petitioner a little less “leverage” is not quite the evil thing Mr. Bresnan painted it to be.    Where he drifted off into outright falsehood is claiming that non-consensual “no fault” grounds of today’s status-quo in Texas “provides a level playing field”.    We’re frankly not so sure Mr. Bresnan’s nose was finished growing, two weeks later!   Yes, the leverage will shift as a result of requiring mutual consent for “no-fault” grounds.   The U.S. and state constitutions demand that it shift, because what we have now is anything but a level playing field.    But despite the special interest bellowing and subterfuge, it won’t shift nearly enough until “living apart” grounds that accrue in Texas three years later, to the benefit of the abandoner and forced upon the innocent spouse when the latter were neither consulted about the separation nor were they remotely supportive of it.   (There was no 2017 nor 2019 bill addressing back-door “no-fault” grounds via willful abandonment.)

Benefit #4 – Dad’s covenant family will have a much better chance of surviving the apostasy of the family pastor.
Not only is contemporary “family law” a wildly lucrative business model that its beneficiaries feel must be protected at all costs, so is the operation of some local churches – sadly.    Churches don’t tend to become mega-churches by being too choosy who they take money or volunteer efforts from, or how much sin they take onboard right along with the sinner(s).   If that means ignoring or obfuscating God’s word concerning the no-excuses indissolubility of original holy matrimony, or concerning the ongoing adulterous nature of all remarriage while an estranged original spouse is still living, or concerning the clear biblical qualifications for pastors and deacons, so be it!    (After all, we don’t want to be “Pharisees”, do we?)    In fact, most seminaries today teach future pastors an apostate gospel when it comes to divorce and remarriage, and most contemporary English bible translations have been crafted to back that apostate gospel up accordingly.   Indeed, Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox together created an origin point for that false gospel, which was relatively easy to do when the masses were illiterate and bibles were too expensive for most people who could read at the time.    Hence, most pastors today reject what Jesus made clear in the original texts, that humans have no power from God to “dissolve” holy matrimony, and there are no “biblical exceptions” to this.  Such pastors have blinded eyes when it comes to seeing how their performing an adulterous wedding over mom and her new boyfriend (likely, another living woman’s legally-estranged husband) absolutely crushes the souls of the covenant children of the real marriage(s).

Dr. Ryan Anderson, co-author of  “What is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense” (2012) famously said, “the law is a teacher”.   This was not exactly original, he borrowed this observation from St. Paul, but logically extended the application of that scripture from the Apostle’s original thought:

“Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”  – Galatians 3:24-25

Dr. Anderson argues that even an immoral law takes on an air of pseudo-righteousness when it has police power and court decrees behind it, because we are usually raised to respect civil authority…(indeed, some Christians go so far as to apply Romans 13 to blatantly immoral civil laws.)   This legality in the eyes of men gives pastors a lot of “cover” over time to forget souls and give people what their flesh wants, especially if carnal believers are now in the majority and what they want has been temporally legal for a long time.  True disciples who challenge them  based on God’s word can then be pasted as “dividers of the brethren” and treated roughly.    This actually happened to a 15-year old girl from Canada who visited a Missouri apostate church full of divorced and remarried folk, and spoke up while there about one such couple, according to the account of her marriage permanence pastor, Phil Schlamp (see sermon 5, @ 33.50).   Something similar, but much more severe happened to a covenant wife when a megachurch in Florida colluded with her prodigal husband to stage an “incident” on their premises and had her falsely arrested for “battery” a few years ago when she simply quoted scripture in the pastor’s office challenging the church for installing this adulterous man as a deacon and agreeing to his adulterous wedding to a harlotrous woman in that church.    “What about my husband’ soul?” she asked this hireling.   Although Jesus would firmly disagree, he responded:  “There’s no such thing as an adulterous marriage.”   This prodigal husband tragically died of cancer, still in his sinful union and without Christ, a handful of years later.

The closer man’s laws can be brought to reflect God’s laws, the better it is for avoiding corruption in both families and pastors.

Benefit #3 –  Dads will be far less  likely suffer alienation from their children if they themselves lead a morally upright life, rather than having  routine “family court” abuses remain entirely out of their control, as it is now.
Even with the most moral civil laws that can be drawn up, there’s no stopping mom from leaving if that’s what she wants to do.   At best, there’s only economic deterrence from doing so, and moral protection of the children from normalized exposure to her adulterous or sodomous partner.   Under current law, when mom leaves, the kids are going to be exposed to her immoral life choices regardless of who gets custody.    It behooves dads to realize that heavy-handed government was never delegated any authority from God over a man’s children that would exceed his own authority over them.   The best interests of the child is meaningless drivel in a pagan courtroom, with judges driven by illicit Federal subsidies to break up families, and by enforcing coercive sexual autonomy in favor of selfish people.    However, if despite the profoundly immoral environment, dad lives before his children a godly example, and continues to teach them right and wrong from the bible, he is occupying the territory God assigned exclusively to him.   God will “have his back” in it, and will move mountains in his behalf.    Just remember, if you don’t want your son running after another woman should his future wife divorce him, don’t do so yourself.

Benefit #2 – Dads will have a restored legal basis for discharging the higher duty God has charged them with, as the spiritual head of the (biblical, covenant) wife and the covenant children (a basic Bill of Rights protection:  the free exercise of religion).
There is an Old Testament story that is very sad, because it demonstrates how seriously God takes a father’s assignment from Him, and doesn’t take excuses for shirking this responsibility based on the surrounding environment.   We read in 1 Samuel 2 about the priest, Eli who had two grown sons who were also priests in the temple of the Lord, but abused their priesthood by being sexually immoral and misusing the animal sacrifices brought by the people.   The two sons are described as “worthless men who did not know the Lord and the custom of the priests with the people.”   And why was that, if their father was a judge, and a priest of God who lived with them?
Scripture doesn’t elaborate any further, but clearly the implication is that their father had not very faithfully carried out his responsibility to train them.  In fact, the implication in the next chapter is that Eli did a better job of training Samuel, who was sent to the temple as a boy to serve there.   Scripture tells as that Eli sharply rebuked his sons as adults, but by then it was too late to change either their behavior or their ultimate fate in posterity.    Another man of God came to Eli with God’s pronouncement of judgment on the house of Eli:   Why do you kick at My sacrifice and at My offering which I have commanded in My dwelling, and honor your sons above Me, by making yourselves fat with the choicest of every offering of My people Israel?’  Therefore the Lord God of Israel declares, ‘I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father should walk before Me forever’; but now the Lord declares, ‘Far be it from Me—for those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me will be lightly esteemed.   Behold, the days are coming when I will break your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your house…all the increase of your house will die in the prime of life….This will be the sign to you which will come concerning your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: on the same day both of them will die.” 
The story picks again up in chapter 4  when the adult Samuel is now in charge (rather than either son), Eli is now 98 years old, and Israel is in the process of being defeated in battle by the Philistines.   Both “priestly” sons died in battle after the Ark of the Covenant was misused then captured by the enemy.    A man came to inform old Eli…“When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and  his neck was broken and he died, for he was old and heavy….”    The Lord held Eli responsible for failing to teach his sons properly as boys, and wasn’t taking any excuses.  Today, under the Messianic covenant, every household is a mini-church and every father of that home a priest.   Today the cutting off of manhood is taking a very different form, but the overall effect is the same.    Blessed is the man who asks the Lord to do battle for him to make a way through and around our immoral family laws, so that he can carry out this priestly and fatherly duty, despite the outward circumstances.

Benefit #1 – Dads will have a reduced risk of falling into the sin of remarriage adultery and forfeiting their own soul by dying in that immoral state.
For those who don’t follow our blog on a regular basis, we make no apologies for regularly talking about heaven and hell here.   It’s truly regrettable that we have to do so, because God really gave that job to His shepherds, most of whom have not only rejected the responsibility, but also rejected an enormous body of biblical truth-telling in order to appease the Sexual Revolution and keep warm buns with full wallets in their pews.    We make no apologies for not leaving God out of the “no-fault” reform debate, nor out of the more general “culture wars”.   We don’t think, due to the demonic nature of this fight, that the war can possibly be won any other way.    You won’t hear much about “natural law” around here.   Instead, you’ll hear about God’s law!

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 is 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.

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 fathers (and future fathers) are temporal but extend to the 1000th generation, according to God’s word. The #1 benefit to fathers of biblically-moral family laws, however, is eternal.

Happy Father’s Day to those who can celebrate today with their children.  Joyous Fathers Day to those whose messy circumstances lead them to find extra comfort in the Lord, and greater dependence upon Him.

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,
And the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
– Proverbs 13:22

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

The “Equality Act” Is Unconstitutional For All The Same Reasons “No-Fault” Divorce Is: So Why Is Nobody SHOUTING The “U”-Word?

by Standerinfamilycourt

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
– Matthew 5:11-12

From the start of the first century church, intense persecution has always proven to be a powerful purifier of the true church, and an accelerator of the kingdom of God.     That’s the good news.    The rest of this post will be about the bad news that lies ahead as a direct consequence of those who should have, failing to stand up for the religious freedom of embattled innocent spouses when their 1st and 14th Amendment protections began to be trounced 50 years ago in the “family courts” across the land.

Since all persons in the jurisdiction of the United States of America are (theoretically) entitled to the God-given inalienable rights to free religious exercise and right-of-conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to seek redress of grievances by the state, life, liberty and property, equal protection under the law, due process under the law, both procedural and substantive, there is no way of lawfully enacting a Federal statute that curtails these founding liberties but only if they interfere with the sexual autonomy of homosexuals, abortion-seekers and the like.    Doing so unavoidably creates a super-class of citizens with superior rights to everyone else.   Unless it’s done by the constitutional process for constitutional amendment, it is decidedly unconstitutional.   It is only being attempted because our national leadership is smugly satisfied that the rule of law derived from built-in separation-of-powers has been rendered sufficiently inoperable to overturning it.   Today, as a result, we have a great many enacted unconstitutional laws wreaking tyranny over the lives of the politically-disfavored, due to the decades-old disconnection of the separation-of-powers mechanism through collusion among power-holders, in favor of special interests.    In fact, the enactment in the 1970’s of unilateral divorce laws was probably the most impactful of these.

Moreover, “family court” provided the perfect incubator to prove that totalitarianism could go effectively unchallenged, regardless of the human rights violations regularly honed in “family courts” across the nation.    Who knew that despite even more strongly-worded protections in many state constitutions, the family law lobby and the feminist groups could cause both courts and legislatures in 49 of the 50 states to march in lockstep for five decades?     This also proved without any doubt that a state or Federal Constitution could contain all sorts of vestigial protective language that the judiciary could decide ideologically (and unilaterally) whether or not it would ever be enforced, depending on the clout of the political class involved and varying with the prevailing, changeable social morality.

Up to now, this erosion in constitutional protections in the name of the Sexual Revolution primarily impacted about a million or so “Respondents” to unilateral forced divorce petitions each year in the U.S.    Following enactment of the so-called “Equality Act”, all non-homosexual citizens, and especially practicing Christians, will join these divorce “Respondents” in being stripped of their fundamental rights if they in any way interfere with someone’s sexual autonomy.    Back when the sexual autonomy involved was primarily (but not exclusively) heterosexual, the majority didn’t mind this, and didn’t see it as the threat to our constitutional republic that it actually represents.    No Christian legal defense ministry would touch divorce challenges…by policy (and would routinely deny there was a religious free exercise threat involved in them).    Neither would most other types of large ministries or state family policy councils that purportedly stood against all challenges to religious freedom and the biblical family in their mission statements.   A small few FPC’s would occasionally undertake very quiet activities on this front, but not enough to be effective in the time frame before the present threat emerged, and certainly none that entailed significant resources or any publicity.

Just recently, Texas Values (an arm of the marriage-permanence-lukewarm Dobson political organization) plastered the blogosphere with “Save Chick-fil-A” (from franchise exclusion at Texas airports), but published not a word about HB922, a bill that would have repealed non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce.  This FPC sent a very inexperienced and poorly-prepared junior analyst solo to the May 1 committee hearing for that important bill, while the family law lobby sent its most senior person.    In 2017,  Texas Values’ director testified very effectively, but committed no media support that year or 2019.     The semi-annual Texas legislative session has now adjourned.  Chick-fil-A was saved.  Texas families weren’t so fortunate this time.

Now that this is being done for the special benefit of transgender homosexuals, instead of just for the special benefit of heterosexual adulterers and abandoners, the majority of society still might not mind, so long as the only losers are Christ-followers.     But there’s strong evidence that this time, the tyrannical impact is going to be much, much broader, impacting female athletes, racial minorities, women in the workplace and more.    Arguably, it could lead to civil war, and probably should lead to civil war if enacted.   Otherwise, the 240-year American experiment has died an ugly death by sexual appetites and the emotional disorders they spin off.    It probably goes without saying that if the (In)Equality Act is enacted and signed into law, the unilateral divorce reform movement will face substantially longer odds of ever succeeding, before the nation folds into a grotesque version of Orwell’s  “Animal Farm”.

“…all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others…”

Other than religious freedom complaints, why aren’t others declaring the “Equality Act”  unconstitutional before it passes?   Enacted legislation, despite its obvious unconstitutionality, is exceptionally hard to reverse, as the unilateral, forced divorce quagmire has unquestionably demonstrated.

If U.S. citizens ever started to demonstrate that they can and do read the Constitution for themselves when bills are in progress, perhaps fewer unconstitutional laws would be cynically passed by rogue legislatures.   Just maybe the oath of office mouthed by the people we’ve elected to various offices, to …“protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America (and the individual states) from all enemies domestic and foreign” might start to mean something again.   Sadly, however we are becoming a society virtually illiterate in such things, and one which is increasingly willing to elect representatives to high office who are equally illiterate in them.

Judicial Watch is a very effective organization that has also been all over exposure of this malicious legislation, with attorneys who argue before the Supreme Court.    “standerinfamilycourt” left this comment with regard to their May 24 post:

This proposed law is unconstitutional for all the same multiple reasons that the unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws of 49 out of the 50 states are unconstitutional, and that’s far from a coincidence! The Left has been methodically honing their skills removing the fundamental rights of parents and Christ-followers in the “family courts” of the land for 50 years, come September.

What they’ve learned over this long trial is that our own hypocrisy and fondness for sexual autonomy has shut everyone up who would otherwise defend embattled parents and innocent spouses. They’ve also learned that powerful special interest groups can make our appeals courts inaccessible to ordinary citizens who have no access to Christian legal defense ministries nor to so much as the media resources of state family policy councils for the purpose of sustaining a complaint of unconstitutionality, even if a law is blatantly so on numerous counts.

Knowing how hard it’s become to get even the most blatant unconstitutional law related to the Sexual Revolution overturned in court, can’t the constitutional attorneys in this battle (at the very least) start calling a spade a spade, and use the “U”-word instead of merely complaining about the law’s too-obvious intent? Couldn’t they encourage everyone else to? After all, every member of Congress casting a vote, as well as our POTUS have taken an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, domestic and foreign. That means that nearly 200 Congressfolk (so far) have violated their oath of office – and that ought to be a BIG DEAL to all of us! Our POTUS recently stopped short of committing to veto the “Equality” Act. In other words, Trump’s still considering whether he must keep his oath of office.

Just some thoughts,

“standerinfamilycourt”

 

We can count on President Trump never to sign such a bill, right?   We all better hope so!   “standerinfamilycourt” would like to suggest, however, that we not take such an assumption for granted.    Nor should we take for granted that any reprieve afforded in 2019 by a presidential veto will necessarily be permanent, even if Trump is re-elected.  Trump did take a positive step last week to curb the religious freedom fangs of homosexualism, just as the “Equality Act” was sailing through the House of Representatives on its way to the Senate.    Yet, reprieve-wise, we remain an unrepentant nation under God’s advanced judgment, where church leadership has not moved an inch on reversing the desecration of His full definition of holy matrimony, and where escalating chastisement appears to still be necessary from His hand if there is to be any national repentance that will redeem our constitutional republic.

Two unrepentant years have elapsed since the election of Donald Trump, while the disappointments described above have continued in the Christian community throughout that particular reprieve.    
Not one single pastor with a congregation in all of Texas was among the witnesses May 1 in Austin supporting HB922 (or its companion HB926 which would have extended the waiting period for “no-fault” divorce to six months).     Yet, the next week, a Dallas pastor performed a mass wedding for cohabiting couples in his church willing to go through 90 days of premarital counseling, many of whom likely were already married in God’s eyes to someone else.

At the end of May, Trump came out with a tweet pledging to use foreign policy to pressure other countries to “decriminalize” homosexuality.   Fine, if that means refraining from executing people for their same-sex attraction.    But the reality is that both sodomy and adultery ought to be restored to their well-founded illegality in this country, based on the fraudulent judicial manufacture of the so-called “right to privacy” for which the Constitution has not been duly-amended by its citizens to ratify this piece of 1970’s legislation-from-the-bench.  Same-sex attraction, for that matter, needs to be reclassified as an emotional disorder, reversing the heinous political action that occurred in 1973 to remove it from the diagnostic manuals of mental health professionals.

Why should we be shouting the “U-word” preemptively here, and holding our elected representatives responsible for doing so as well?  Because every elected Federal official in the process has sworn an oath of office to “defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.”    If we defer to the ideological black-robes, as if they were the only ones qualified to detect violations of fundamental rights such as these being enshrined in the Federal statute, we lose the opportunity to hold our elected policymakers responsible for carrying out their oath of office to defend our Constitution from its domestic enemies.    Enactment will prove way too late to do that!   Go tell your Senator and this POTUS that you expect them to honor their sacred oath to uphold the Constitution and vote against / veto the so-called “Equality Act”!

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.  – Proverbs 29:2

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!

 

 

Legislative Learning Curve: The Fate of Texas HB 922 To Scrap “Insupportability” Grounds

by Standerinfamilycourt

This will be a good news / bad news account of the third consecutive unsuccessful try in Texas to restore fundamental constitutional protections to “Respondents” sued by their own spouses in “family court”.     Re-introduced into the 86th Legislative Session by Rep. Matt Krause, HB 922 would have limited the “no-fault” grounds for divorce to cases of mutual consent and have required cases where the spouses do not mutually agree to the divorce to submit proof of existing fault-based grounds, while HB 926 would extend the waiting period for “no-fault” divorce to 180 days.   Testimony for these bills occurred at a very late evening hour on May 1, 2019 with just 2 business days’ notice of scheduling.    More about that unfortunate circumstance follows below.

The latter bill extending the waiting periods made it out of committee on Thursday, May 2 and still has a remote chance of being scheduled for a floor vote in the House in time to go to the Senate before the 2-year adjournment.   During the 85th legislature, this bill made it out of committee unanimously (versus 5-3 this time), but was killed by adverse lobbying of someone in the Calendars committee.   HB 922 was killed by the Democrat-dominated JJFI committee, and will need to be re-introduced in the 87th session in 2021.    It also passed out of this committee in the 85th session but met the same special-interest lobbying fate before it could come up for a floor vote or proceed to the Senate.

This blog post will be something of a post-mortem:  what went well, and not so well, and will shine some light on some long-festering process issues in the Texas legislature that has, over time, made legislative reform of family laws a bit of an uphill battle structurally.    Family structure activists are not deterred, even though the demographic trend in Texas points to an even more liberal-dominated legislature in 2021 when it next convenes.

Is a Constitutional Amendment Needed to Allow the Texas Legislature to Convene Annually?
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) 46 state legislatures meet annually today.  The remaining four states—Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas—hold session every other year, each in the odd year.   Illinois convenes annually but holds approved, pending bills open for two years, rather than require them to be reintroduced each session, which seems to be a cost efficiency to the taxpayers, not to mention, a bit of a safeguard against the effects of voter fraud and rapid demographic change (such as via unchecked illegal immigration) in elections, and possibly curbs the sort of Calendar Committee chicanery the Texas House is bloody infamous for.  In each span between legislative sessions, committee membership changes along with the makeup of the House, with a definite recent “bluing” trend in this (once) deep-red state, as people move into Texas from economically-failing liberal states losing several large employers each year.

The frequency of legislative sessions is set by the Texas Constitution, which reads as follows:

Sec. 5.  MEETINGS; ORDER OF BUSINESS.  (a) The Legislature shall meet every two years at such time as may be provided by law and at other times when convened by the Governor.

Hence, any change would require passage of a measure to put a statewide referendum on the ballot to change Article 3, Section 5.   This actually brings up one key example of the effect of biennial legislative sessions in Texas:  we are coming up next month on 4 years elapsing since the capricious Obergefell decision legislated a “right” to gay “marriage” from the Federal bench, and nullified all of the DOMA (defense of marriage) amendments passed by citizen referenda  a decade or so before, in numerous states.   Although a bill, HJR 64 was debated to put the DOMA repeal measure the ballot in the fall, astonishingly it still sits in committee, with only three weeks remaining in the session.   It appears that both the Texas marriage statute and the Texas constitution will continue to officially define marriage as being only between one man and one woman well into 2021, the 6th anniversary of Obergefell, since the constitution must be amended before the statute can be changed.

As the moral fabric of society has continued to fray, at least in part due to the societal destructiveness of divorce-on-demand, so has the legislation load perceived by citizens and their state leaders as necessary to manage all of the ever-worsening symptoms from this disease, now in its 3rd and 4th generations since enactment (boomers, gen-X, millennials, nextgen).    The NCSL article cited earlier makes this interesting observation:

In the early 1960s, only 19 state legislatures met annually.  The remaining 31 held biennial regular sessions.  All but three (Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia) held their biennial session in the odd-numbered year.  By the mid-1970s, the number of states meeting annually grew tremendously—up from 19 to 41.”

Gun rights activist Rachel Malone provided  her Facebook followers this statistical breakdown of Texas bill activity as of May 1 or so:

722 bills passed by the House (693 are HB’s)
640 bills passed by the Senate (632 are SB’s)
37 bills passed by BOTH chambers (but some still in process / conference)
16 bills sent to Governor

In the past 6 sessions, an average of . . .
– 6,363 bills were filed
– 1,382 bills were passed by both chambers (trending downward to the 1200’s)
– 1,342 bills were signed by the Governor / went into effect
389 bills died in Calendars (about 25% of the bills sent there)
– 258 bills passed the Senate but died somewhere in the House
– 368 bills passed the House but died somewhere in the Senate
– 11 bills died on the House floor
– 0 bills died on the Senate floor

How does this compare with other populous states that meet annually, such as Florida and California?  A good topic for study!
In the meantime, anyone can see that there’s basically only a 5% chance per biennial session that any bill in Texas would make it to the governor’s desk, including (apparently) a SCOTUS-dictated matter from 4 years ago– and plan their activist activities accordingly.

The power of life and death is literally in the hands of the Committee Chairman’s scheduling choices
Attorney Harold Dutton has been the Chair of the Juvenile Justice and Family Issues committee for the past several legislative sessions.   He is a man with a very checkered family life of his own, and has apparently treated this standing appointment as a personal fiefdom, according to a 2007 article in the Houston Chronicle.  The Chair of each House committee controls the hearing calendar for that committee, a fact which is absolutely key to the difference in what occurred this year with HB’s 922 and 926.

Not that Rep. Dutton had all that much to fear in terms of a repeat of the 4-3 party line committee approval that occurred in 2017 for HB 93, the predecessor bill to HB 922, since the Democrat majority on that committee was now 5-4, with 100% turnover in the rank-and-file members.    But just to be on the safe side, a bill filed in January was not scheduled for a hearing until May 1.    Two business days’ notice of the scheduling was given after business hours on the Friday before.    The hearing was scheduled on a day when there was a very heavy agenda on the House floor, typical for this point in the year when the session’s calendar days are dwindling, so the hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. didn’t actually start until after 7 p.m.   That was tough enough, but these bills were heard alongside a litany of bills whose numbers indicated they were filed substantially later on, including an albatross of a bill opposed by an army of LGBT activists: HB2109 which sought conscience-based protections from liability for wedding officiants to recuse themselves from certain weddings.    This testimony was, of course, prioritized to lead off (and, cynically, it set the political tone for) the entire evening.   

SIFC expects that Chairman D was giving himself high-5’s for preventing the parade of constitutional law attorneys who testified in 2017 before his committee that Texas’ divorce law is profoundly unconstitutional, and replacing that with a literal Gay Pride parade twice as large.    Despite the bills being introduced for the 3rd time by a practicing constitutional attorney, and despite ever-faithful veteran constitutional attorney Shelby Sharpe reprising an abbreviated portion of his 2017 testimony (given only 2 minutes this time instead of 3 minutes), and despite another family law attorney echoing the unconstitutionality with handouts to the committee,  what wound up resounding from the testimony was the technically-true but woefully-incomplete declaration of Texas Family Law Foundation head lobbyist Stephen Bresnan that “no court in the United States has ever found  no-fault divorce to be unconstitutional.”

The final injury came in the departure from the room of most of the GOP members shortly after the gay rights debate, which ended around 8:30 p.m.   After powerful reprise testimonies by Kristi Davis and Jeff Morgan and a few other excellent witnesses, none of them got any questions from the committee members, mostly because there were few or no Republican committee members present any longer to give them a hand.   Ditto for when Texas Values Sr. Policy Analyst Nicole Hudgens was peppered by feminist committee members with repetitive ideological “questions” she couldn’t quite handle to everyone’s satisfaction (partly due to coming off as being a bit unprepared).     Last time, executive director Jonathan Saenz testified in favor of the predecessor bill.    Whereas the victim witnesses got no questions, Ms. Hudgens’ 2-minute debut testimony evoked 6 contentious minutes of questions from the remaining committee members.

Another pivotally-damaging moment in the testimony questioning….

Rep. Callani to Ms. Hudgens:   “Why do people get divorced?” (@1:57)

Texas Values’  Nicole Hudgens:  “There are a number of reasons you can get divorced, but you have ‘insupportability’ which is no-fault divorce but this is not talking about…in the case of abuse or in the case of neglect..others, this is simply talking about ‘no-fault’ divorce…”

Rep. Callani:  “Right, but what do you think the reason for that is?”

Hudgens: (pause) “It can be a number of reasons.”

Callani:   “Just one of them”….(after longer Hudgens pause)…”Like a reason that people would get divorced…other than abuse?”

Hudgens: Other than abuse?”  [Way to affirm Callani’s pet ideology there, Ms. Hudgens!]

Callani:  “So in your work for the Texas Family Law Foundation….”

Hudgens:  “That’s Texas Values”

Callani:  “OK, Family Texas Values…and you’re against divorces…so when…what types of divorces have you seen being…that were insupportable…what was their reason for wanting to get divorced?”

( SIFC:   Noooo, Nicole, please don’t assent to her rhetoric again!!   Proper response:  “there can’t be any ‘insupportable’ marriages in the legal sense because the term has not even been objectively defined in the statute.”   Legislator lecture coming in….4, 3, 2, 1… )

Hudgens: “There could be a number of reasons.  We’re for government promoting a policy that keeps families intact as much as possible, so…it could be a number of reasons…right now you can just get divorced for pretty much any reason.”

Callani: “All I want you to do is just give me one reason why people would get divorced.”

Hudgens:  “A lot of people would say ‘it’s complicated’…”

( SIFC: Callani could easily have gone in for the kill right here, but she was having herself a ball playing like a cat with her helpless prey….)

Callani:  “But what do you think is complicated about it?”

Hudgens:  “One person says they don’t want to be in the relationship anymore….”

Callani:  “So if that’s reason, if this bill were to pass, it defeats the whole purpose.”   (She didn’t say of what, but it’s clear that she believes in the “force people to stay married” dogma.)

( SIFC:  While every question couldn’t have been anticipated, less than two minutes invested in a Google search would have produced this fairly accurate study information, courtesy of AARP, which places “abuse” far down the listand would have put up a far better fight against Callani’s media-driven assumptions…the fact is that the vast bulk of divorce is driven by adultery, and in a lot of cases, deliberate spouse-poaching in older, more affluent couples with older kids, and often grandkids….creating massive retirement problems, and rewarding the offenders while severely penalizing the non-offenders.   If this kind of informed content had filled those 6 minutes, they would at least have had something substantial to chew on, and it would have raised the opportunity to educate the committee on at least two important points that almost never get talked about!)

(Please click to enlarge)

Perhaps the most harmful moment that carried the evening, as a result of the GOP lawmakers all leaving the room, is the patently false statement by TFLF lobbyist Bresnan which went shamefully unchallenged because nobody remained present who was both entitled and motivated to debunk it at that point:

Bresnan: “And the third thing I’d like you to consider is leverage.  If I’m in a relationship with someone and they can’t leave without my permission,
I have extraordinary leverage over them.  I want the kids, I want the car, I want the house, I want the business.   I want everything.   If you want out bad enough, that’s what you’ll give me.  Right now, people are on an equal basis and they can dissolve their marriage, and in no way should you allow the law to..uh..change the leverage in a relationship.”

But suppose GOP Rep. Faithful had been in the room, wide awake and on the ball — despite it being 9 p.m. by then (since the liberals somehow managed not to take a dinner break, no doubt because of the wherewithal for campaign contributions that were on the line here)….

Rep. Faithful:  “that’s certainly an interesting point of view, Mr. Bresnan.  Let’s probe that a bit further, if you don’t mind.   Do you think it’s really necessary, in the best interest of the family as a whole, for the idea of “leverage” to be a zero-sum game, where the petitioner has 100% of the leverage and the respondent has zero percent?   How do you see this as being an ‘equal basis?’  The AARP has rightfully been growing concerned because the most recent studies show that due to the effect of no-fault divorce laws on younger adults opting not to marry at all, the only growing category of no-fault divorce is what is commonly called “gray divorce”, often where a couple has been successfully married for decades.  Often these divorces leave an innocent spouse, who wanted to save their marriage, with half or less of their retirement savings, 401K’s, IRA’s and pensions.  So, AARP published a 2004 study report showing that the chief driver for these gray divorces is adultery and / or the selfish desire to marry someone else, and the divorce petition filer is typically the adulterer.   Let me ask you:  should the adulterer have 100% the leverage over an innocent spouse who has done nothing substantial to harm the marriage?   Should they get the house, the business, the kids?   Could you tell us how that is good for society, Mr. Bresnan?

Of course, back in December, following the disastrous 2018 mid-term election results which reflected the changing demographics in Texas, Rep. Krause tried to warn us (privately) that there “would be little appetite for” family law reform in the 86th session.    He was a little reluctant to re-introduce the bills, but thankfully was persuaded (late).    The video feeds showed him  looking a bit disengaged, overtaxed and disinterested throughout the May 1 committee proceedings, and he apparently did little to encourage his conservative peers to stay in the room when their pushback against commercial / special interest testimony was absolutely crucial.  

Taking the picture as a whole, SIFC believes it was still right to keep re-introducing the bills despite the formidable obstacles to enactment rehearsed above.    William Wilberforce did this before Parliament for more than 20 years, across the entire spectrum of political circumstances, in order to engage the uphill battle to abolish the slave trade.  The activist community can do a much better job of supporting Rep. Krause’s political courage by taking all of the following steps:

(1) praying for Dutton’s defeat in 2020.  He’s been over the JJFI committee for far too long, and was morally ill-qualified for that pivotal Chair to begin with

(2)  making a lot of off-session visits to allies for educational purposes, especially Texas Values, but also sympathetic family law attorneys like Cecilia Wood (who seems as well-informed as anyone).    Ideally, we’d be visiting those same committee members with educational materials, but historically each session typically sees new faces under Dutton on that committee, so perhaps the only solution is to see all incumbent Reps in the off-session season, and from Nov. – Jan. 2020 visit the newly-elected (who are likely to wind up on the committee).   This means Jeff Morgan, who has purposed to focus on enlisting the support of the state’s churches in the off-season, will need a lot more hands.

(3) re-courting the constitutional attorneys who testified in 2017

(4) entreating Rep. Krause to file his bills on Day 1 of filing rather than in January, so that testimony in both chambers can occur by March

(5) prioritize the courting of Senate concurrent sponsorship

(6) recruiting the testimony of once-divorced couples who remarried each other (#somuch4irreconcilabledifferences)

(7) solidify ties now with the Constitution Party of Texas who might be able to help Jeff Morgan with some of the ground work over the next two years

(8) write Rep. Krause a heartfelt thank-you now, hoping for his re-election, and advising him how we will be doing our part to better support his efforts next session

For just one example of potentially effective connections, HB 2109, the wedding officiant recusal bill, which had six co-sponsors (Reps. FlynnBonnen, Dean, Schaefer, Springer and White) has already died on the vine this session, which really need not become a tragedy that leads to a similarly ill-considered Alabama-style reaction.  Would these gentlemen not be great candidates for some timely education on why the successful repeal of unilateral forced divorce would make their issue go away altogether — by quickly killing the demand for gay “marriage”?    This is before even mentioning the budgetary heroes and rock stars they would become over the next few years!   According to a 2008 study, unchecked unilateral divorce was costing Texas taxpayers almost $3 billion each and every year.   This might be a great conversation to have with these gentlemen even before this session adjourns at the end of the month, if their attention can be had during crunch-time.

The debate on HB 2109 was (in reality) about compelled moral approval for sodomy-as-marriage, and by extension, the morality of sodomy in general.   May 1, 2019 needn’t have become Gay Day in Austin, and it needn’t have been a Democratic committee member pointing out how this bill reflected a “fire, ready, aim” mentality
(Flynn testimony: “I thunk it up mahself”) behind it.   Passage of HB 922 (accompanied by the future repeal of Sec. 6.006 – forced divorce with a 3-year delay in redundancy of Sec. 6.005) would have made that whole debate moot and unnecessary.   Hence, there seems little reason why all six should not have been co-sponsors on Rep. Krause’s bills during the 86th session, and why they shouldn’t be courted by our team to become co-sponsors during the 87th session.

“standerinfamilycourt” is retired from corporate life, and lives several states away, but would have loved to spend part of 2018-19  in Texas for the reasons mentioned above.   Steps are being taken to find a way to monetize Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional so that the finances to do so, and to start working other states, become available in 2019-2020.    Prayers are appreciated for success and God’s direction in this fundraising vision.    We have a formidable adversary, but a mightier Lord, so it all boils down to: who’s hungrier to win?

Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.  For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
– Hebrews 10:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

 

 

 

 

#RuthSummit 2019 – How Did It Go?

by Standerinfamilycourt

For by wise counsel you will wage your own war,
And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.
– Proverbs  24:6

As soon as the speaker list was released, this blogger knew that this conference was simply not to be missed, come hell or high water (SIFC literally experienced a little of both before arriving there, but that’s a story for another day).    “Standerinfamilycourt” has always had the greatest respect and admiration for its sponsor, The Ruth Institute.   Many of the scheduled speakers have long been personal heroes (and heroines).   The trip to Lake Charles is easily 15 hours each way by car, but that was no obstacle.    This will by no means be a post about “buyer’s remorse”.   There is no question that some very important connections were made at the Summit, and much cross-awareness “landed” for the participants, SIFC included.

And, there’s no question that what transpired in that venue absolutely fulfilled the objectives for the gathering that the Ruth Institute promised in the promotional information…

“Discover why the Church has been right all along about marriage, family, and sexual morality!
Stories from:
  • Children of Divorce
  • Abandoned Spouses
  • Children of Same-Sex Parents
  • Refugees from the Gay Lifestyle
Learn what it’s costing: in child trauma, clergy sex abuse scandals, runaway government power, and more.”

 

But…a day after returning, some of us were still feeling the effects of a few unmet hopes, including the action-oriented hope that it would be considerably more “shirt-sleeves” and interactive in its format, at least for the sessions involving “activist” panels.    Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was careful to explain to participants that The Ruth Institute is not a lobbying organization (according to IRS rules for 501c3 and 501c4 educational organizations, TRI being the former).    However, the distinction seems to be more philosophical than strictly legal in how “Ruth” defines her mission and organizes the organization’s engagement with issues and social change.   For example, according to the website:

“In the summer of 2013, the Supreme Court’s decisions in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases signaled a new level of governmental commitment to the Sexual Revolution. Dr. Morse and the team at the Ruth Institute concluded that the opponents of natural marriage hold a commanding position on the legal and political fronts.  At that time, the Ruth Institute made a strategic decision to enter into the cultural and social fray in a new way.

“With Ruth’s renewed focus on the social and cultural arenas (as opposed to the political and legal arenas)…”

Tidy strategy, this is: hoping to drive culture change in order to ultimately reform the vicious “teacher” that this law has become —except that, all the signs of the times ( for example, 70 years elapsed since Israel’s re-establishment as a nation, the emergence in Europe of mandatory RFID chipping of corporate employees,  Russia’s renewed aggression, Trump’s  move of  the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple)  ….seem to point to the Lord returning and rapturing away His church long before such a strategy might ever come to fruition, after which, the bible tell us the influence of the Holy Spirit will be removed from society remaining on earth, and the Antichrist will have a brief reign that will make all of this moral concern seem wildly irrelevant anyway.    Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the U.S. has already been “given over”, as described in Romans 1 because heterosexual moral reform has been rejected, especially in the church, long before the Windsor / Perry / Obergefell decisions of 2013-2015.    Those of us who are impatient about the timeline of family law reform are impatient mostly because the souls of loved ones remain in serious jeopardy in the meantime.    Some of us want the drag queen fired as “teacher” yesterday, and a morally worthy role model hired in “her” place  for the sake of our kids and grandkids.  No society in all of recorded history has survived more than 3 or 4 generations in the utterly bankrupt moral climate we have now, almost all of it driven by nefarious family laws and institutional acquiescence to them.

What’s largely forgotten in that 2013 strategic thought process at TRI is the need to change not one, but two grossly sinful cultures that sprang from the Sexual Revolution, the sodomy-as-“marriage” culture, and the sequential-polygamy-as-“marriage” culture (still seen by most in Christendom as what TRI refers to above as “natural marriage”).   As our friend, Pastor Jack Shannon pointed out in his 2017 book, Contra Mundum Swagger, those heavily invested in the second culture (relying on either RCC “annulment” or evangelical hypergrace) tend to see the first culture as befalling them from out of nowhere, and by no fault (pun not intended) of their own, seeing it fatalistically as a “test” or “cross to bear” rather than as an immediate call to individual and collective repentance.     It was not lawful for Herod to have Herodias, his (living) BROTHER’S wife, and a man of God gave up his own saved life to warn their souls.  It is no more lawful today for a few of these repeal movement leaders to have their current mates, while SIFC has not shrunk back from warning them in various ways (and is probably not on the short list of suitable conference speakers for that reason alone).

The Lord may not continue to forbear for two or three more decades for culture to change, under a strategy of incremental influence, in order “ease into” legal reforms.   It might be different if we were not citizens of a constitutional republic that His extreme favor gave us in the first place, and which we are now basically squandering  when we fear reprisal, or fear suffering persecution and loss of comforts – steep costs that the early church joyfully bore in order to introduce the world to true Christian morality, though they had little or no formal voice to the Graeco-Roman government systems at all.
For anyone, with both a representative vote and a state of living estranged from their true, God-joined spouse, to compare a reticent approach toward contemporary government engagement with the example set by the early church is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Wrote Anglican church historian Kenneth E. Kirk in the 1940’s:

“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals?  Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage.   Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?

“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”

(Marriage and Divorce. 2nd ed. London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.,1948)

For the action-oriented participants (who would like to stay God’s hand in the timing of His finalized judgment), important collaboration items had to be relegated to the conference breaks, such as asking Fr. / Dr. Sullins how one might get important outdated research refreshed, or undertake a child-outcome study for a sociological group that has never been addressed before (children of biblical standers being segregated out from those of generic and incomparable “single parents” because the former are likely skewing that measure by their growing numbers and superior child outcomes from walking out biblical principles in the home).

Perhaps there’s no avoiding the fact that panelists addressing the hydra-headed issue of what’s being done to reform unilateral no-fault divorce laws (and resulting injustices) would have a more difficult time being brief enough to allow feedback and interaction afterwards in a uniform allotted time slot, which was 30 minutes total.    This seemed to be less of a problem with the personal testimony panels where there was ample time for some follow-up, in most cases.    As it turned out, there was no time for such in the “activist” panel led by Matthew Johnston, Jeff Morgan and Christopher Brennan  (~47 minutes into this link).  The personal testimonies, while significant and powerful, mostly represent the symptoms of the disease, while the “activist panel” (in effect) represents a proposal for the surgical approach to excising the disease that is causing the cascade of symptoms.     Yes, this does involve a process for influencing policy and legislation to some extent, but the IRS has given 501(c)3’s a little bit of leeway for potential indirect involvement in this:

501(c)(3) organizations ARE allowed to take part in small amounts of political lobbying. There are two ways to determine how much nonprofits can legally lobby: 1) Insubstantial Part Test and, 2) Expenditure Test. In the first option, an organization’s lobbying activities cannot constitute a substantial part of the organization’s total activities and expenditures in any tax year. This option is somewhat vague, as it does not define “lobbying activities,” “substantial amount,” or how that amount will be calculated. The second option is somewhat clearer. The Expenditure Test defines permissible lobbying activities and measures an 501(c)(3)’s lobbying activities only by the amount of money spent on lobbying activities.

Surely, providing an annual venue for meaningful strategy development, and possible nonprofit mentoring (or incubation) for an allied-but-separate non-profit that could take a more activist role which complements TRI’s core strategic mission would not get TRI into any difficulty with the IRS, nor divert significant resources from “Ruth’s” preferred core activities.   The fact that TRI awarded an “Activist” recognition this year is a good demonstration of that point.   Quite often, when a problem seems complex and intractable, effective solutions are “both / and” rather than “either / or”,  meaning that involved organizations can certainly specialize where they feel their strengths are, while maintaining supportive ties with other organizations whose strengths may be complementary but not duplicative.

Perhaps some time allowance is necessary for “ice-breaking” when diverse allied interests and players (who started out not knowing each other very well) begin coming together for the first time, but the road home from this conference felt as though an untamed “adhocracy” will continue to be aimed in 2019-20 at the political realm, rather than a purposeful coordination of collaborating efforts based on experiences shared, and consensus-finding.   This seemed like a sad waste of the rare and valuable face-to-face time we were afforded in Lake Charles.   Hopefully, some of this occurred at the smaller dinners that were organized for the invited speakers outside the formal agenda.    From SIFC’s seat, it appeared that some panelists were not in consensus with each other about specifics of the way forward.    When the other side plays dirty (as we know they do), one option indeed is to wait until conditions are more favorable before ever engaging, another is to peck away randomly which isn’t likely to be very successful, and the third way is to go after them with a solid, coordinated and well-vetted battle plan that takes into account a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that is updated at least annually.    One possible solution for the next conference might be some breakout time by interest area.

We all tend to come to these events with a few individualized sub-agendas, in addition to the main agenda items.    SIFC is the first to admit that what will be gleaned from this year’s Summit participation and deemed most valuable is steps to meaningful reform that will come sooner rather than later, and divert that many more precious souls from hell (at least, on account of dying while in a sinful subsequent union).   Another sub-agenda, for somebody else, might be gleaning whatever will most quickly lessen parental alienation or reduce onerous child support payments.   Some standers in the room might prefer for divorce to remain cheap, easy and certain so that their prodigal spouse has an easier path to repentance some day.   Some individuals will be looking to make or continue a livelihood from the reform effort.   These things will, of course, cause some differences in preferred approach and timeline to reform.     Possibly, a sub-agenda for the Summit sponsors is to be inclusive of non-Catholics while not doing anything that might unnecessarily alienate the material support of RCC hierarchy for the organization’s efforts and vision.   Can a mutually-supportable action path be found through all these sub-agendas?   Possibly, but not if insufficient interactive discussion time is allotted among key stakeholders in the program agenda!    This is the first major conference in recent memory attended by SIFC  where some sort of general participant evaluation feedback was not requested.

It did not take long for word to get out among the covenant marriage stander community of this #RuthSummit, and of the livestream video resources that Family Research Council staffers so generously provided.  “Standerinfamilycourt” awoke to an email from a male leader in the movement Tuesday morning, sharing that another abandoned, standing husband had emailed most of the faithful pastors in the movement, and several other standers.   This young husband who originated the email chain had been texting me on Friday, eager to get to the livestreaming links before the opening dinner got underway.    All of this is truly a blessing to that large community, who has (admittedly) mixed views on the actual repeal of unilateral, no-fault divorce laws and the biblically-appropriate level government engagement by Christ-followers.

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to wrap up this post by giving a hearty “thumbs-up” to a few points in the long list of positives from #RuthSummit 2019 over this past weekend:

1.) Auspicious, God-orchestrated timing:  As we sat at dinner Friday night, while Texas activist Jeff Morgan was receiving TRI’s award as “Activist of the Year”,  SIFC received a text on the cell phone:    Both HB922 and HB926 had been scheduled for their committee hearings on only 2 business days’ notice.    SIFC is “sure” there was no mal-intent with this timing, which is “done all the time”, we hear.    Little did House committee chairman Harold Dutton know that his maneuver increased the joy of the evening, as the veritable who’s who of activists in were in the same room to receive the news while gathered over dinner.   This would include Dr. Morse, Leila Miller, Matthew Johnston, Chris Brennan, blogger Kristi Davis, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, and new repeal enthusiast Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon.     Just picture the phones ringing off the hook in Austin all day today and tomorrow, and the prayers going up for some of these folks who will be there in Austin testifying tomorrow at 10:30 local time.
The timing actually helped increase the chances that if both bills fail against the very long odds of getting to the House floor for a timely vote, there will at least be solid backing for simultaneously introducing them in both chambers (with needed improvements) in 2021, next legislative session.   The Lord works in mysterious ways. – praise Him!

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
– Gen. 50:20

Dear Readers, here is the list of committee members and their contact information.

ACTION REQUEST: Would you consider being a part of history-making and giving each of these committee members a timely call, asking them to support both bills? You do not necessarily have to be from Texas to weigh in, but if you are from Texas, and either you or somebody you know from Texas has a restored marriage after a Texas “no-fault” divorce, this will be very important information to leave with the staffer when you call, in order to deliver a strong message that “insupportability” is nothing more than a subjective legal fiction on which no law depriving citizens of their parental or property rights should be based in a constitutional republic.

A key tidbit about Mr. Dutton, the committee chairman:  he went through a messy divorce in the 1990’s.   Among other traumas from his own divorce, he experienced the horror of having his wife’s live-in boyfriend physically abuse his sons without being able to do anything about it, like many other young men who are subjected to forced divorce. If the situation is that he did not actually initiate his divorce (almost a 70% chance), this could provide something to widen his perspective a bit.

The current legislative session in Texas adjourns for two years at the end of May.    If you are interested in watching tomorrow’s proceedings live tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1, try this link (no promises they will actually have it on camera, but there’s a chance).   Alternatively, it’s likely Jeff Morgan will be videoing capturing the testimony for upload to you his youtube channel as he did two years ago.

UPDATE:  Testimony on the bill to repeal one spouse’s subjective and unsubstantiated declaration of  “insupportability” as a ground for divorce in Texas was heard on May 2, 2019.   On May 3, the bill failed to achieve the necessary votes in the Democrat-dominated Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee to move on to the Calendar Committee, despite having done so two years earlier, and despite dozens of covenant marriage standers calling these committee members’ offices in support of HB 922.   It will now have to be introduced again into the 87th legislative session in 2021.

2.) Wonderful connections with another strong group of Catholic standers was forged:  We already have solid connections with Catholic standers through Bai MacFarlane’s wonderful ministry, Mary’s Advocates.    SIFC learned at the Summit that Covenant Keepers has been working closely with a well-established group of Louisiana standers who have formed a weekly group locally called “Hosea’s Hope” (no apparent online presence).    These standers shared another tidbit of good news:  it appears that Covenant Keepers has worked recently to cleanse its local group leadership of adulterously remarried leaders, which would be an update on our earlier reporting, if confirmed.

3. )  The value that covenant marriage standers bring to the effort to save biblical marriage was publicly recognized at the Summit.   Dr. Morse asked all the standers in the room to “stand” right after the panel on marital abandonment spoke.   We were able then to identify each other, perhaps half a dozen people.    Hard copies of this recent blog post , “7 Important Contributions Covenant Standers Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce” were brought to the conference for handouts, and Dr. Morse very graciously gave us impromptu table space in the venue.   She told the invited stander speakers, “when the history is written that this ship got turned around, y’all are going to be mentioned…”     This was said in front of some of the most important Christian scholars we have today by one of the most important Christian scholars we have today, and it went out over the Family Research Council media machine.    It was a mighty proud moment for standers everywhere.    Dr. Baskerville gets a lot of feedback from the (justifiably) angry MGTOW crowd (“men going their own way”).    It must have been refreshing to hear for once about grace-filled men and women going GOD’s way under the same profoundly unjust circumstances.

4.) Dr. Baskerville hit yet another one “out of the ballpark” (opening wide the eyes of some very influential people).    These were the exact words of a stunned Dr.  Gagnon on his Facebook wall after hearing Stephen Baskerville’s riveting 40-minute address:

“Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of government at Patrick Henry College, hitting his critique of “No Fault Divorce” out of the ballpark. It is one of the most anti-constitutional measures imaginable, incentivizing family break ups, rejecting basic standards of justice, and giving the state unlimited tyranny…”

Most serious standers who follow our pages were not surprised by this at all, since it is quite customary for the blunt Dr. B to hit things out of the ballpark every time the mic is on.   That said, there is a famous moment in the movie, “Amazing Grace” where MP William Wilberforce has conspired with the head of the Tories to take one well-heeled set on a party-barge tour of the harbor, complete with powdered wigs, wine, hors-d’oeuvres, and a string quartet.   SIFC could go on to describe the proceedings, but it would be more fun to just let the readers watch it instead, while emphasizing that in no way are any Summit leaders or participants being compared with the insensitive lot in the movie, but the “turning point” feel of that moment is still quite similar indeed.   Picture Dr. Baskerville on the bridge of the sailing vessel that carried the slaves – not hard, is it?

5.) The language of the thought leaders in the room appeared to be slowly changing for the better (and root causation finally being acknowledged out loud).     Dr. Gagnon also gave an excellent address Saturday afternoon.   Although it was (by title) about homosexualist twisting of the scripture, he had a lot to say about holy matrimony.  Across several of the speakers, we started hearing a bit less about the looser “standard” of “permanence”, and considerably more about the far more demanding state of indissolubility that Christ laid out.   Desirably, we also started to hear a lot about the one-flesh state, notably at ~ 11:55 in Dr. Gagnon’s address, when he says this about the one-flesh state (echoing Paul in Ephesians 5):  “…so whatever you do to your spouse, if it’s a negative thing, it’s a self-inflicted wound.”   And again, at ~ 21:30, and at ~40:00 where Dr. G comes oh-so-close to appropriately recognizing the instantaneous, supernatural, metaphysical nature of the God-joining that is the very Creational basis for indissolubility, and for “remarriage” while an original spouse still lives, constituting papered-over adultery 100% of the time.    It’s not the repeated physical uniting that creates the one-flesh state, according to Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 and Paul in Ephesians 5:31, it’s God’s actual hand in the wedding itself that permanently does so.   If this were properly acknowledged, the witness against homosexual “marriage” (and practice) would become so much more powerful than any attempts to “rank” soul-corroding sexual sin.

At ~ 18:00: “When Jesus talked about marriage in Matthew 19 as being indissoluble, permanent, lifelong…a vision largely lost by the church, which is the beginning of our problems.   We would never be at this place on the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism if we hadn’t already lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage…if we had not caved on those issues, we would not have come to this extreme point, and we are at an extreme point now.”  
(SIFC must still respectfully disagree with any attempt articulated between 22:00 and 40:00  to claim that one sexual sin is “worse” than another, when Paul said this in 1 Cor. 6:18-20,  about heterosexual defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and warned at least twice, “do not be deceived” :  both receive the same eternal outcome if unrepented, we’ve lived to see that both equally undermine the biblical family, hence entire societies, sending the unrepentant to hell in both cases.  SIFC believes such a philosophy is a large part of the reason we “lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage”, as Dr. Gagnon had earlier put it.)

We believe it’s the patient, continued voice of the scholar-standers who are respectfully challenging the comfortable presumptions of the more conventional and acclaimed scholars and bringing about this necessary evolution in the latter.

6.)  There also seemed to be a “lessons-learned” readiness to jettison the unhelpful idea of 5 years ago, that the sexuality debates can leave God out and prevail.   The best indication of this maturation, of course, is the theme for the Summit: “Why the Church’s Teaching Was Right All Along” (that is, “right all along” if you ignore the 12th century fabrication of “annulment” doctrine under Pope Innocent III, and you also ignore Luther’s humanistic 16th century innovations.)   The absurdity of this notion should have been obvious on its face in 2013:   “we battle not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and dark forces in the heavenly realm.”

7.) Satan so feared the impact of the #RuthSummit livestreaming result that he felt compelled to harass the Family Research Council technicians on both days.    Thankfully, the Holy Spirit was invited in both days in prayers to open and close the sessions.  Organizing this kind of an event around a controversial topic that brings together people of different faiths, but the same biblical truth, is never as easy as it looks.   This one came off very well, and was an endless encouragement to thousands of covenant marriage standers around the world who were not able to attend, but wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

We are looking forward to next year already!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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