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!   

 

 

Applying Gender To Scripture As it Suits Us: A “New” Eisegesis

by Standerinfamilycourt

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity against God?   –  James 4:4

Occasionally, “standerinfamilycourt” is forced to ban someone from our pages who is a persistent troll, who vehemently disagrees with our message, and who has as little respect for the purposeful decorum and mission of Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional and this blog page as they have respect for God’s word, rightly divided.    When such a person is an unchurched heathen or self-professed atheist, it’s sad enough, but when it’s someone steeped in contemporary “churchianity” who is in dire circumstances, and has been through the typical rough times that everyone who has suffered the larceny and indignity of being betrayed and involuntarily divorced has suffered, it’s downright heartbreaking.     However, from the beginnings back in 2014, the planning for these pages involved a strict “troll policy”, knowing that our message…

(1) would be tremendously unpopular with pew-sitter and pagan alike, and

(2) nevertheless, still needed the dignity to reach and persuade powerful people in the church, media, and government with scriptural truth which has not been manipulated by rogue bible publishers for well over 100 years.

Our pages were deliberately not set up as group forums, and consequently are not the place to debate theology.    There are hundreds of other places to do that.    Our page has the deliberately-planned mission and purpose which will not “morph” for as long as it takes to accomplish that mission and purpose, or to silence us altogether.     We do our very best to put the rightly-divided word of God out there as it appears in the original manuscript texts, after rigorously applying a full range of sound hermeneutical principles, as all worthy books by others on this topic do, and as all heretical books on this topic deliberately omit.     That’s the way it’s always been on our pages, and we bend for no one who can’t present solid proof according to hermeneutical principles and original texts that we’re materially wrong.    So far in a little over five years, no one has done so.   Instead, the usual challenge is thick with ad hominem,  and appeals to what hireling celebrity pastors have to say.

A recently-banned individual is physically suffering from a debilitating degenerative disease, whose covenant wife abandoned him because of it, and divorced him to adulterously “marry” another. This man is an extreme example of what compromised church leadership often leaves pages like ours contending with.    He works at Walmart and became a drain on the household income and self-indulgent lifestyle that many in our culture feel entitled to.   Having  been cruelly abandoned for greener pastures, he now desires to “marry” a female caretaker and feels there surely is an “exception” to Christ’s “unreasonable” moral code for people like him.    When he failed to secure “standerinfamilycourt’s” assent for this based on circumstances and a “God” who would never be that “unfair”, he next set his jaw on arguing his legalistic interpretation of Christ’s remarriage prohibition by strict application of gender, which he presumes provides him his “out”.    Obviously, he could go to almost any hireling pastor and get a hearty pat on the back for both his theory and his “plan”, most likely dubbing it as “God’s ‘provision”.      SIFC, however, told him in no uncertain terms he would lose his soul  if he indulges this plan of his, and that he needed to take counsel that he was no bible scholar.     This led to public charges of “arrogance” and “judging” directed at us, and he was issued the standard “troll warning”.

Having no appetite to invest time and posting space in a balanced, hermeneutical debate on rightly-dividing Matt. 7: 1-3, he was cut off when he ignored the troll warning.    People who follow our pages regularly get a balanced view on the topic of “judging” people inside and outside the church, as well as a chance to frequently observe the cultural havoc that antinomianism has wreaked in the church ever since the Reformation.

Standing firm for biblical moral absolutes in a wicked, selfish evangelical culture absolutely guarantees the perception of “arrogance” on SIFC’s part.  Long have we been accused by so-called “Christians” of “driving” people (potential converts, they mean) away.   These people who say this are shameless emotional bullies, and SIFC will not be shamed (or bullied) in the name of Jesus.    Long have we been accused of having no empathy or “compassion” for people’s human weaknesses, even after we point out that, according to scripture, this life is a “mist or vapor” and that eternity is forever.    As this individual vigorously attempted to do, we are regularly accused of personally “condemning people to hell” – a superpower we repeatedly assure people God did not grant us.     Pointing to the fact that Jesus’ words in Luke 16:18-31 also “condemned people to hell” who pursued non-widowed remarriage (and their “best life now”) did no good whatsoever.    In their mind, the Sovereign Creator of heaven and earth has no righteous authority to set moral absolutes for the building of holy character, nor for the good of society as a whole.   All humanists believe this, which is why humanism is always completely incompatible with true discipleship.   Speaking of hell, this person tellingly  likened obeying Christ in this area of sexual ethics to being “condemned” to living the rest of his natural life “in hell”, completely oblivious to the volumes that such an attitude speaks of the person’s actual relationship with Jesus, who apparently isn’t enough for him.   Another male commenter on our page (bless him!) attempted in vain to point out this latter observation to the wounded gentleman — who had repeatedly pressed the same lines of argument on other recent posts without violating the troll policy.

So, what is this gender-based eisegesis, and has it been contagious?  In a certain sense, it’s not really that new.    The Judaizers who try to justify and promote both consecutive and concurrent polygamy have a very similar legalistic argument, actually — and not too coincidentally, they are typically professing Christian men who have been badly burnt by a faultless unilateral divorce they got no say in (join the club, gentlemen).   Their pores absolutely ooze resentment while they claim to have “forgiven” their “ex” wives like the Good Book tells us to.    In this particular manifestation, our now-banned outraged troll posited the following (after previously exhausting several other arguments on other threads that were just as silly and unfounded)….

“my ‘ex’ divorced me, I didn’t divorce her.    In Matthew, it doesn’t talk about the wife divorcing her husband.   It says only if the husband divorces his wife and marries another woman is anybody committing adultery.   I’m not marrying a divorced woman and I didn’t do the divorcing, so how can I be guilty of adultery if I remarry?   If you’re going to throw out one thing Jesus said, you might as well throw all of it out.”

Besides an allegedly “selective” hermeneutic, SIFC was literally accused by this chap of having a log in the eye, but the irony of the above statement is rich, is it not?     Our determined critic doesn’t mind throwing out every bit of what Jesus (more importantly and centrally) said in Matthew 19:6,8 about man’s divorce not only being immoral, but also metaphysically impossible.    Our amorous friend was determined to hyperfocus on the what, because he didn’t dare attend to the why of what Jesus actually made an undeniably consistent pattern of saying, in elaboration to His indissolubility proclamation.    Grab a snatch of God’s word a la carte and completely ignore all context involved.   Ignore also what all of the apostles and earliest church fathers unanimously echoed in their writings.      Not very originally, our troll friend threw nearly every conventional argument out there that all determined remarriage adulterers invariably do (not “the unpardonable sin”, Jesus “allowed” divorce and remarriage for “sexual immorality”,  etc. etc.), before tossing this one last salvo out there.    If there was a touch of originality to this final argument of his, it was in the transparent feeble-mindedness of it, so we hope it doesn’t sprout legs and journey destructively through the marriage permanence community the way several other feeble-minded heresies have nevertheless done.

Moses did indeed deliver his regulations in a gender-specific fashion, but that doesn’t mean Jesus also did, even if one of His scribes chose a writing style that spoke to a patriarchally-oriented Hebrew culture to whom he was recounting the same incident as Mark related to a Gentile audience that included both sexes equally.  Jesus issued the most famous sermon in history in order to abrogate most of the sayings of Moses with a higher moral law than “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth”…. “it is written….but I say unto you….MOSES allowed…but I say unto you….”  

Another of Jesus’ scribes and one of his apostles both took pains to point out where the resurrection of Christ deliberately put men and women on equal footing when it comes to obeying Him from an authentic and sincerely grateful place in our hearts, not merely following a mechanical legality to the letter while finding a loophole for the unpalatable core principle involved.    “If I can’t get out of responsibility for my marriage even when my wife is unfaithful”, the disciples reasoned, “it’s better never to marry at all…”    As we see in scripture, several of them later changed their accustomed humanistic bias about this matter, and grew spiritually into teaching the same no-excuses unisex indissolubility that Jesus taught.

 And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
– Mark 10:11-12

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
– Galatians 3:28

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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