No Fault Divorce, Marriage's True Enemy

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/rescuing_marriage_from_no_fault_divorce

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/the-logical-fallacy-gay-marriage-opponents-depend-upon/251486/

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2010/sep/10092104

http://blogs.fayobserver.com/myronpitts/April-2012

It’s a common position of social conservatives, especially in the media, that gay marriage is a threat to marriage and will destroy the family and society as we know it vicariously. But no-fault divorce, established in America as early as the 70s and finalized in all states in 1985, has had more demonstrable and probably correlative and causative effects on marriage and divorce rates in the last few “generations” than gay marriage has in the last 10 years since it was first legalized in the Netherlands. The most obvious reason why it has infested and corrupted marriage and the family is because people don’t have the basic restrictions on divorce law that existed prior: where you had to find some fault with the partner in order to separate. When people don’t take marriage seriously and can legally marry someone and then separate in less than 24 hours for a mere caprice, it’s no surprise fewer people give the institution the respect it deserves and are basically lying through their teeth at their vows or don’t realize that marriage is more than just shared property and some tax breaks, it’s a commitment for a lifetime that should not be taken lightly. There are at least two perspectives from which divorce is criticized, though not always to the same extent. But no-fault divorce goes too far and I think both sides that could find fault with divorce to one extent or another would see this law as repugnant even to the mere secular purpose of marriage: maintaining kinship and intimacy between family and couple respectively and encouraging the values of fidelity and monogamy for all those in and planning for marriage.

Religiously, divorce is only permitted in a few circumstances, if we consider the Christian perspective, which is fairly common in America. If a spouse is unfaithful and caught in the act, dies, or willingly leaves the spouse because they do not believe in God anymore, then the divorce is considered valid and justified, roughly speaking. And the only time someone can remarry is if their spouse dies. There are issues in Jewish divorce law, since it appears traditionally a woman can’t initiate a divorce and a man can refuse to out of spite. In Islam, divorce is permitted by both men and women with waiting periods or court proceedings respectively, though it is considered the most hateful thing that is also lawful, for similar reasons that Jews would try to maintain civil harmony in their marriage, even if they don’t think they can maintain it for personal reasons of one form or another. There’s always the admonition from Jesus in the gospels, particularly Matthew 19:6, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." The Catholic Church takes it so seriously than even an annulment, which makes the man and woman not obligated to live together, does not separate them in the eyes of God. As mentioned before, the only way remarriage is acceptable by Catholic standards in particular is if one of the spouses dies. Infidelity does not break the bond of marriage, though it is grounds for separation. Many other Christian denominations will permit divorce, though they could consider it problematic to remarry. A lot of it depends on interpretations of both Jesus and Paul’s thoughts on marriage, since Paul is noted to have said that it is better not to be married unless you cannot resist temptations of the flesh and the like. Being bound to a woman is almost seen as a distraction from worshipping God. But the positions tend to range on a spectrum of condemnation of divorce in itself, condemnation not of divorce in the sense of annulment, but of divorce and remarriage and then permission of divorce and remarriage within limited constraints of infidelity or if an unbelieving spouse calls for separation and then permission of it under more general grounds and remarriage as well.

The more secular perspective on divorce is a bit limited, since the legal standards for it have changed. The original law in the U.S. appears to have been the form that required finding culpable fault in one of the partners, which was more than merely emotional distance or the like. Physical abuse, adultery, abandonment or other felonies fell under this standard. The legal opposition to this divorce law was on the grounds that there shouldn’t have to be such obfuscating or otherwise ad hoc justifications made to determine divorce proceedings. There is disagreement in that this just involves the government more in determining how marriages can end, but that’s not as pertinent to the topic at hand. There are alleged problems with no-fault divorce that come down to property and such. One partner can be left high and dry when the other leaves them because of prior arrangements, though a lot of this may be preventable by making more equitable contracts beforehand. The biggest issue that can be brought up for no-fault divorce being counterintuitive to marriage without invoking a bond made by God through a sacrament would be that this can create a habit of detachment that leads to separations that do not encourage communication between spouses. If one side decides to leave and doesn’t even have to prove fault, then the divorce leaves bad feelings behind because the other side may have wanted to go into marriage counseling. If you can’t resolve your feelings together, then the notion of commitment and loyalty to one another in the marital state seems to fall apart in society’s perspective at large. I would hope people deciding to get married have thought long and hard about it, gotten counseling or practice in some beforehand perhaps even cohabitated with limitations to see how they interact together. If that’s done, no fault divorce can be avoided from the start by encouraging good marriage habits.

In either case, no-fault divorce is either taking marriage to a level where commitment to the sacred nature of it is lost or even adhering to basic standards of marriage as something that binds people together for a lifetime is lacking. When you don’t have to even find fault with your spouse, but get tired of them, and the legal system supports you in that decision, society has gotten to a point where jokes about Britney Spears or Kim Kardashian being married for less than a week and getting divorced in at least one case within 24 hours aren’t funny anymore. Quite the contrary: in hindsight, they reflect badly on popular culture. Marriage isn’t even a commitment anymore to people; it’s an excuse to have sex in the eyes of one’s religious taboos against premarital relations. Beyond that, if you don’t want to be married anymore, if you just don’t feel it, you don’t need to communicate, you just have to get a divorce, no questions asked. I hate to sound like a ranting family values sort of right wing pundit, but this sort of thing is far more damaging in the ideas about marriage it establishes. Children aren’t even a concern here, families aren’t relevant. No one matters but whichever spouse decides they don’t want to be married anymore and goes through with the process. If that’s what love is perceived as by the next generation, I fear for society much more than if 5% of our population that happen to be attracted to the same sex are permitted to be called married and actually encourages monogamy or other values of marriage that can be discerned by observing couples in varying stages of wedded “bliss”. The real destruction to marriage comes not so much in changing the definition, but in making it obsolete. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Family Planning and Fertility Procedures

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/10/my-take-catholic-church-should-reverse-ivf-opposition/

As a follow up to my post this week, “Politics and Pro Life”, I thought I’d confront something of a problem within official (?) Catholic doctrine that is indirectly related to the pro-life issue they brought against Republicans and their budget that disfavored the poor. This alleged contradiction of a consistent pro life position makes an important distinction of anti-abortion rights versus pro-life as a whole in terms of overlapping but distinct principles, since consistent pro-life usually implies also being anti capital punishment and anti war to a great extent. But now we confront an issue that’s deeper with Catholic family values and how technology can conflict with it at times.

The article’s author says that he and his wife feel condemned after an incident where another couple’s embryos were mixed up with theirs and a difficult decision was made to give the child up to their genetic parents. The process of in-vitro fertilization was how this problematic set of circumstances came about, but I certainly don’t see it as a problem if they were willing to give up the child. But the Catholic diocese the article’s author belonged to called what the family had engaged in morally unacceptable. It’s ironic since one can argue, as the author does, that he and his wife were actually trying to advance their family and affirm the sanctity of life at the same time. This is a twofold issue: 1) the couple was trying to expand their family through different means, since, as explained, they are infertile and have had no success through normal routes, and 2) they chose not to abort the fetus because it happened to not be their biological child and was instead another couples’. This is another choice of dual import; since first, they didn’t abort, which affirms the value of life in Catholic doctrine, and secondly, they valued the wishes of the family who wanted a child themselves and carried that child, willingly giving it up, with some trepidation.

The reason the Catholic Church opposed this practice by any Catholic family has roots in old doctrines that say, in simple terms, that children should be conceived in natural ways, not through any procedure that negates the conjugal act. This is also why they oppose birth control, as this disrupts the natural act of sexual intimacy that produces a child under normal circumstances. With this family in question, they had two children, either from a previous marriage or from their present one (or possibly adopted). The church had two potential lines of attack here: 1) The couple could be said to be ungrateful to God for the two children they already have; or more directly 2) They were trying to usurp God’s natural order by using science to have a child through means that were actually more practical and would also advance their family, as Catholics tend to be called to do (you know, have as many kids as humanly possible?) The author agrees with Catholic doctrines concerning abortion and the like, but this singular opposition to IVF as a method for conceiving and bringing a child into the world is a source of deep opposition on personal and moral grounds.

I cannot sympathize either as a Catholic or a father, but as a human being, his insights and observations are spot on. There is no reason the Catholic Church seems to be opposing this except to maintain a status quo of their tradition and teachings on the issue of fertility and the correct ways to have a child. But, like many would observe, this seems an unjustified pressure of the Church to its adherents for conformity to their teachings even against advice that would appear to benefit their overall cause. They are, for lack of a better expression, missing the forest for the trees. In emphasizing strict obedience to such antiquated and narrow ideas about how a child should come about, they exclude many still valued children that could come about through uncommon methods. The issue of rape or incest is not pertinent here, since, as I understand it, Catholics tend to permit abortions in these extenuating circumstances. But with a couple that is infertile, Catholics suddenly oppose any methods that might help them add to their family, merely because it isn’t the “natural” way.

In general, one shouldn’t prejudge an entire group on any issue, like Catholics on IVF’s moral permissibility, because of isolated incidents like this, but allegedly this is official doctrine and would require more effort to change this policy in the Catholic Church. If anything, the best argument is that this is depriving infertile couples of a chance to do what God supposedly ordained them to do, have sex (in the bonds of marriage) and conceive. But since they can’t do that, God apparently forbids them from using science that God also supposedly had a big hand in and conceive a child artificially. It’s not as if the child is less valuable in God’s eyes, so why oppose it except for what amounts to a mechanical view of human sexuality and extended functions, such as family? There’s no real reason, except that stereotype that Catholics are afraid of change. If anything, they seem threatened by changes through technological advances, but, (from what I understand) are not always threatened by change, but are for the most part, as evidenced from their activism against the Republican budget, a group that tries to spur change, at least when it synchs with their overall pro life position. This issue isn’t seen as very important, and even though I tend to shy away from activism on these issues, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other Catholics that have these sympathies. Perhaps the Anglican Church would welcome them into their church, mirroring the Catholic Church taking in Anglicans not happy with the permission of gay marriage in the denomination recently. It wouldn’t be a bad solution, if Anglicans have no problem with IVF. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.


And here's a pertinent text you can buy on Amazon. I highly recommend Amazon, as it's safe and consistent with delivery and has a variety of products you can purchase.

Moral status of in-vitro fertilization (IVF).: An article from: Catholic Insight

The Pro Choice/Life Ad?

While I didn't watch the Super Bowl at all (haven't for a couple of years; never been interested in sports to begin with, particularly team sports), I did get emails from Christian Response (research purposes primarily) emphasizing how pro-life the 30 second ad is. While the point I found amusing was point where Tim tackles his mother (odd, isn't it?), the supposed focus of the ad towards pro life is contested and for good reason.

The only instance where it really gets into pro-life territory is in the beginning where she emphasizes how she persevered even though her pregnancy was hard. The backstory, from my limited research, is that she was infected with a dysentery amoeba and the medicine she took to cure it caused a complication in the pregnancy that probably would have killed her and/or her fetus. While she does demonstrate that it is possible to carry a child to term with this complication, the pro life aspect that is emphasized in the commercial is hardly admirable. To admire someone for persevering against someone's better judgment seems especially troubling when one does not by necessity need to continue having children, in the context of the Tebow family. Tim is the youngest of five, count them, five children. Why the family insists that they must have another child when providing for four as missionaries would be difficult enough, I cannot say.

I can say that while I see the pro choice aspects of the ad, the ad itself is mostly there to get laughs. But in the beginning there is an emphasis by Tim Tebow's mother that he is a "miracle baby" and such things. Last I heard, in a Christian's perspective, all babies are miracles from God. But then, that would make Mr. Tebow even more miraculous. Like there's a hierarchy or some such nonsense. I'm not one for censoring, but I am one for contesting a position that I find objectionable that Focus on the Family holds. Although to continue on this rant would necessitate another blog post entirely.

For now, I will leave it at this: I disagree with Focus on the Family, but it is good that they are exercising a basic right to a free marketplace of ideas. Though frankly, I would think they'd direct their funds towards other modes of advertisement. The Super Bowl attempt recently seems to only demonstrate desperation in trying to push their message when they are in an extreme area of the position of pro life and "family values". Perhaps they will succeed, but perhaps they will realize a fault and try a new approach in the future. Why not, oh, I dunno…advertise on the 700 Club?!