Yeah, no shit people don't approve of this

[trinityvixen]

So this woman is out to save marriage from divorce in Oklahoma. This may be an unpopular thing to say, but I applaud her for at least having the courage of her convictions and going full-on with the crazy and not being a hypocrite. See, she really does think gays are a threat to marriage. And she sat a good long time and thought, "Gee, you know what else is a threat to marriage?"

Et voila, she has something she wants done about divorce. Not that she intends to be any less batshit, rights-denying, human-hating about this than she is about gay marriage. This woman wants you married, goddamnit, and you will stay that way, so help her GOD...

Her rules would basically make it impossible for all but childless couples and those who get married at Vegas chapels on drunken binges (are you listening, Britney Spears?) to get divorced. You couldn't divorce for "incompatibility" if you'd been married for ten years or more (because every thing that might happen to you to change your personality has only a ten-year window in which to happen which opens right after you get married and nothing good/bad/major will ever happen to you or your spouse after that window is closed). You also can't divorce for "incompatibility" if you have minor children, which means that unless you were living in sin with the partner with whom you had children until those children were 6-7-8 years of age, HA HA NO DIVORCE FOR YOU. I suppose that's one way to keep an eye on those people of ill repute who would dare to birth bastards in this day and age. (That's probably her next suggestion: finding a way to declare certain kinds of children legally illegitimate in a country with no royalty.)

You also can't object to a divorce on "incompatibility" grounds if the other person objects. Would love to be in that Divorce Court. ("Your Honor, we're clearly incompatible! He wants a divorce and I don't! Er, wait...") It's the kind of logical conundrum that would kill off our Robot Overlords.

The non-funny side to this is that a person who is not outright abusive or unfaithful could trap you in a marriage basically forever by refusing to divorce you. Two things about that: 1) No one should ever have that power over you again, which is why divorce exists at all. 2) If this whole thing were to pass, that person could hold you until such time as you hit the big Tin/Aluminium Anniversary and became ineligible. (Ooh, did this Rep. know that the traditional presents for that anniversary are so...tarnishable?) ::shudders at the thought::

No fault divorce! The three best words in the English language!

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Speaking of homophobic evangelicals ... have you seen this?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I followed this story where it first broke on Rachel Maddow's show. She had that ex-gay leader guy (UBER CREEPY) on to ask him about the kill-the-gays bill and he was all faux-outraged that his teachings--that gays are trying to rape you, your children, your grandparents, and cripples in order to give you the gay (and probably also AIDS)--would be used to that extent. He's a racist piece of shit, too. She read out from his book a list of things that make people gay, one of which was "race." When she cornered him on it, he tried to deflect it: she was making it up! She said, literally, "It's in your book, dude." Then he was like, "It's out of context." Rachel says, "I read the entire paragraph that lists things that make you gay, and that was in there. Doesn't say why, though." He finally flop-sweated with "It won't be in later editions." She's like, "This makes it okay that it's in this edition?"

I mean, it was a good interview where she ripped him apart. But this article just makes it clear that whatever she took him to task for, however nasty it seemed? WAS ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED AND THEN SOME. Prick.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Being white makes you gay? (That's the only argument I could imagine him making. Thus the whole Ugandan thing of homosexuality being a Western import, etc. etc.)

[equustel.livejournal.com]

Sure, because marriage isn't already tied up in government to the extent that it gives people headaches at best and faulty "rights" at worst! Let's make it further enmeshed!

Also, one big LOL to the term "threat to marriage". The only real threat to any marriage is the people in it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The only threat to marriage are people determined to save it. (In addition to the people in it.)

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

This reform goes too far, but why should marriage be less binding than a contract?

If you start working for a private biotech company and sign a noncompete agreement with them, and 12 years later you get tired of working for the company and want to go elsewhere, you're stuck with the contract. You can try to negotiate your way out of the contract if the company will let you, but mere unhappiness won't save you. This isn't the case with no fault divorce in pretty much all states--even in New York, where fault is required to get the divorce but doesn't go to asset division, child custody, and child support.

My preferred reform is to just say that a marriage is a contract, and should be treated as such. You want out of the contract without good cause, fine--but you're in breach, and you'll pay through the nose for it (or if you're the lower-earning party, you'll walk away with nothing).

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

What interest does that state have in making people miserable?

If you need to be legally bound to have, hold, love, honor and cherish, then you are in a sham of a marriage anyway, because you can't truly do any of those things if you don't want to.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I addressed some of this myself. For me, legally binding marriages are usually of the sort that are either religious or of monetary gain. In the first case, even being miserable, a person finds other fulfillment/commandment in staying married. In the latter case, the marriage is already underwritten with enough pre-nups that making divorce tougher on other people wouldn't change what happens in this case at all. The lawyers would just work around it.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

None--but the state does have an interest in holding people to their legal commitments, of which marriage is one.

Obvious example, and the dominant one: Most marriages today (and almost all marriages prior to feminism) are based on a division of labor; one party is primarily responsible for household upkeep and childrearing, and the other is primarily responsible for bringing in income. There's a clear bargain here; the party staying at home taking care of kids gives up income and income potential, while the party working knows that his/her family is well taken care of. When a party breaches the contract, it hurts the other party. If the stay at home parent leaves for no reason, the working party shouldn't be penalized in child custody. If the working party leaves for no reason, the stay at home parent is utterly economically screwed.

The argument has nothing to do with love, and everything to do with family economics.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Because people aren't their jobs. Because people aren't signing on for a negotiated fee in a marriage. (Unless they're trophy wives, in which case their divorce issues are probably already rigidly defined enough not to need the help.) Because we don't legislate you against hurting people's feelings (unless you're slandering them). That's what your analogy works out as: if someone divorces you and gets a new partner and chooses to rub that in your face? That fucking sucks, but it's not nor should it be illegal. And would you really want someone who doesn't want you? You think forcing a solution is the best idea?

I have to take issue with "incompatibility" equated with "without good cause" as well. Unless your definition of incompatibility is arbitrary to the extreme (i.e. he/she sneezed, I want a divorce), it's a fair reason to divorce a person. I was incompatible with a roommate I'd been living with, though I didn't know it when I signed on to room with her. Suppose I made a similar mistake with a husband I never lived with? Personal habits that annoy and cannot be corrected or won't are extremely detrimental to both parties over time, and some times you cannot know what will affect you before hand. Should you be punished for not guessing how well you'd be able to tolerate these things?

I'll be honest here with you: I really hope no future girlfriend or wife of yours would ever read this. Because it makes you sound inhuman, as though you think people are being ethically unsound for not being able to stay in love for the rest of their lives. We know, statistically, that there is a so-called "natural" divorce rate (that is, even when people aren't allowed to divorce, there is always a double-digit percentage of people that would and want to) that hovers in the 20-30% range, if not higher. What it seems like you are saying is that those people? Are disreputable. Are somehow dishonorable and should be legally and monetarily punished for not being able to stay married. That's unfeeling. If it's not what you meant, correct me, but that is exactly what you said: divorce should be met with punishment. I would hope you wouldn't force marriage on a partner at all, ever, let alone use the threat of forcing the divorcing party to risk financial depredation because they were unsuitably loyal.

It also makes you sound incredibly naive. So while I admire your faith and your loyalty and your aspiration to stay married when the time comes, I pity that future married you when he's unhappy. God forbid you should ever be so unhappy that you don't want to stay married to a person even if you're no longer compatible. I wouldn't wish that one anyone, but especially I don't wish it on you because you're determined that it should be stuck out.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

You seem to confuse "breach of contract" with "acted unethically" (though the two are often concurrent). It's entirely possible that the best course of action is to breach a contract, and take the resulting hit--it happens all the time in business. If you're truly unhappy in a marriage, go ahead and leave. What I object to is expecting to break an agreement and get all the advantage out of it as well.

This is not about punishment (it can't be--contracts never result in punishment). This is simply about enforcing a legal agreement. This also is not about mutually agreed divorces; I agree the state has no interest there beyond making sure the children aren't abused. This only comes up as an issue where one party wants a divorce, and the other doesn't. And in that case, I'm a fan of holding people to their agreements, and see no reason why change of circumstance should relieve one of the financial responsibilities of marriage any more than it would a bankruptcy or other long term contract.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good point, noncompete agreements should also be illegal.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

This is why the plot of Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust is so convoluted (if I'm not confusing it with another book...). There's some very confusing stuff about having to fake infidelity to get out of a marriage. And I remember reading the Jeeves and Wooster stories where there's something called "breech of promise." Which means that if you promise to marry a girl, you are legally obligated to do so. And whose word do they listen to on that? The girl's. Thank god we've gotten rid of some of these laws.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Basically, we agree that marriage is a bedrock, but we've enable abuse of it for many years. Divorce allows some escape from that. Assault on divorce is basically asking for that stuff to happen all over again.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting topic. Even a non-religious coworker of mine was saying how people go through natural changes in a long term relationship, and should be prepared to work hard on it etc.

I'm not sure whether any legal/contractual things could lower the divorce rate, but I am in favour of relationship counselling and trial period of living together, before getting married.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Legal enforcement will stop divorce. So will making divorce illegal. The point is not that divorce can be stopped but that stopping divorce is a stupid, intrusive waste of time for any governing body. Yes, recklessly divorcing people end up in court and waste time there. But many divorcing couples use lawyers, file briefs, and go home, peaceable as Buddhists. Imagine how much more of a waste of goddamned time it would be to try and run around mediating divorce with force--which is basically what this woman is advocating by making anyone who falls into her restrictions have to fight to get out of a marriage.

There was a time when divorce was illegal. What happened? People fucked around. People were estranged. People up and left spouses. People were awful to each other generally. And people DEFINITELY still wanted to goddamn divorce each other. Divorce, like abortion, like lying, will always happen. Making it illegal doesn't change that. Prevention--like you were possibly unknowingly advocating with talk about counseling, etc.--is a great way to decrease the number of divorces, but there's a natural divorce rate, and it's not going anywhere.

Put it another way: ever wonder why most animals don't mate for life?

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Er, I wasn't advocating her view, just mentioning it as a possible response.

"Unknowingly"? Um, that sounds kind of patronising. Of course I was advocating that as a preventative response instead of enforced marriage etc, I thought that was implied.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

While I don't think two people who are obviously miserable together should be forced to stay married, I do find it odd situations like a friend of my cousins got divorced six months after getting married (after many had flown out to englad for the wedding). I know I don't know any of the inner workings of that relationship, but it does seem weird that without infidelity/abuse as a reason, a relationship couldn't have been given a longer try than that. But of course I wasn't in the situation so I don't know what happened.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It really does depend, doesn't it? I mean, all that has to happen is, well, anything. A new job. Losing your job. A death in the family. A birth in the family. Money loss. Money gain. Changing your name after getting married. Not changing your name.

It looks bad when couples split soon after getting married, but unless I do know that there is something truly airheaded or selfish about the people involved, I don't generally judge the people getting divorced one way or another. I can be irate about spending money on their wedding, though. That's fair. But my or your irritation is just part of the shit they have to accept if they can't make it work. Divorce is not about getting out of marriage scott free, you know?

[equustel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's this type of thing that bums me out. As often as incompatibility is a legitimate reason for divorce, I think it's just as often an excuse. I mean, no two people are perfectly compatible - marriage constitutes (or IMO, should constitute) an agreement to work past your differences with the other person on a daily basis, because you love them willfully more than you do just emotionally. You choose to accomodate their quirks and they choose to accomodate yours. In this situation, it doesn't matter when/if the other person "changes" - because you leave yourself room to work with the change. Marriage runs on the engine of mutual self-sacrifice.

I don't see that reflected in a lot of people's reasons for getting married in the first place, which is where the real problem lies with the divorce rate. IMHO. If people aren't up for the work marriage entails, why make the promise in the first place? Why not just date forever?

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Not that I agree with any of the batshittery, but I always felt kind of bad that the dilemma could exist where you, personally, could believe that divorce was a major sin and yet your spouse could still divorce you.

I guess that's what annulment is for,but I'm pretty sure there are grounds where they won't grant that. So, basically, your spouse could effectively condemn you to hell (or whatever, idk if divorce is even that kind of sin, just that the Catholic church throws fits about it) and there'd be absolutely nothing you could do about that. It always seemed vastly unfair on all counts. I guess that's why some religions won't marry people unless they've been lectured counseled first.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I was of the impression that the Catholics would let you out of most any sin if you confessed it and did appropriate acts of contrition. Presumably divorce is the same way.

And for the record: Catholic pre-marriage counseling can be great stuff. As a non-Catholic, I thought it was awesome--very little lecturing, and a lot of prompts to make you and the spouse-to-be talk about things you might otherwise not. Religion actually played very litttle role.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I do feel sympathy to an extent that I pity people who come into being wrong with their faith through no fault of their own. But you can't force other people to do what your religion demands of them, and if you took the risk of marrying someone who might divorce you because he/she didn't give a shit, well, yeah, sucks, but that was the chance. And that is why religious folk often have to get counseling before getting married because the pastors/priests/rabbis whoever won't sanction divorce later and have no interest in promoting a marriage under their faith that won't stand up to the test.

I mean, you know me. I'm a fairly offensive atheist at this point and I think if your religion considers you awful because of who you are--an imperfect human being--FUCK THAT RELIGION. Not always a choice for the people who are religious, which sucks, but yeah. Fuck it.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Divorce isn't a sin in Catholicism because it doesn't exist. If you get a legal divorce, the Church still considers you married. My mom was able to marry Osvaldo in a church only becuase my father had passed away in the intervening years, so they considered her a widow rather than a divorcee.

So while you won't be condemned to hell automatically, your life on earth won't be so hot, since you'll have to stay faithful to your ex....

(I only know Catholicism at all well, so I can't speak to other religions, where it may well be as you describe.)

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Er... any religion that claims that you are responsible for the sins of others is worthy of destruction.