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.
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