Posted on 02/05/2014 4:15:29 AM PST by xzins
Last night, someone emailed and asked me to write about the gay marriage case in Virginia. This morning, a woman from Wisconsin asked if I would blog about the gay marriage case in her state. A few readers in Utah have also requested that I chime in on the gay marriage fight there.
And so I was going to do just that. I sat down to type a scathing rant about gay marriage. I sat down to tell the world that gay marriage is the greatest threat to the sanctity of marriage.
But then I remembered this:
That’s a sign I saw on the side of the road a little while back. Divorce for sale! Only 129 dollars! Get ‘em while they’re hot!
And then I remembered an article I read last week about the new phenomenon of “divorce parties.” Divorced is the new single, the divorce party planner tells us.
And then I remembered another article claiming that the divorce rate is climbing because the economy is recovering. Now that things are getting a little better, we can finally splurge on that divorce we’ve always wanted!
And then I remembered that – ebbs and flows notwithstanding – there is one divorce every 13 seconds, or over 46,000 divorces a week in this country. And then I remembered that, although the “50 percent of marriages end in divorce” statistic can be misleading, we’re still in a situation where there are half as many divorces as there are marriages in a single year.
And then I remembered no-fault divorce. I remembered that marriage is the ONLY LEGAL CONTRACT A PERSON CAN BREAK WITHOUT THE OTHER PARTY’S CONSENT AND WITHOUT FACING ANY LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS.
Sorry to scream at you.
But I remembered that marriage has for decades been, from a legal perspective, the least meaningful, least stable, and least protected contract in existence, and I think this fact should be emphasized.
And then I remembered how many Christian churches gave up on marriage long ago, allowing their flock to divorce and remarry and divorce and remarry and divorce and remarry, and each time permitting the charade of “vows” to take place on their altars. And then I remembered that churches CAN lower the divorce rate simply by taking a consistent position on it — which is why practicing Catholics are significantly less likely to break up — but many refuse because they are cowards begging for the world’s approval.
And then I remembered that over 40 percent of America’s children are growing up without a father in the home. And then I remembered that close to half of all children will witness the breakdown of their parent’s marriage. Half of that half will also have the pleasure of watching a second marriage fall apart.
And then I remembered that more and more young people are opting out of marriage because the previous generation was so bad at it that they’ve scared their kids away from the institution entirely.
I remembered all of these things, and I decided to instead write about the most urgent threat to the sanctity of marriage.
Divorce.
Divorces are as common as flat tires, and they often happen for reasons nearly as frivolous.
The institution of marriage is crumbling beneath us; it’s under attack, it’s mortally wounded, it’s sprawled out on the pavement with bullet wounds in its back, coughing up blood and gasping for breath. And guess who did this? It wasn’t Perez Hilton or Elton John, I can tell you that.
This is the work of divorce.
I am an opponent of gay marriage, but we here in the “sanctity of marriage” camp are tragically too afraid to approach the thing that is destroying marriage faster than anything else ever could. Gay marriage removes from marriage its procreative characteristic, but rampant divorce takes away its permanent characteristic. It makes no sense to concentrate all of our energy on the former while all but ignoring the latter.
To make matters worse, some of the loudest mouth pieces for “traditional marriage” in media and politics are bigamists, adulterers, and men with two, three, or four ex-wives. It’s not that you can’t defend the sanctity of marriage when you have been divorced multiple times, it’s just that you have zero credibility on the subject.
If you beat and abuse your children so badly that they have to be removed from you, you could, I suppose, still complain if you found out that your kids are also being mistreated in their foster home. But your anger must first be directed at yourself, because it is YOUR FAULT that they are suffering in this way.
So whose fault is it that the institution of marriage is beaten and broken? I don’t think we want to contemplate that question, for fear that we might see ourselves in the answer.
Should laws be written to “defend marriage”? Sure, and let’s start with legislation to make divorces at least somewhat harder to obtain than a magazine subscription. How serious are we about this? Anyone up for a law to criminalize adultery? What about putting some restrictions on re-marriage?
There are certainly times when a couple has no choice but to go their separate ways. What else can you do in cases of serial abuse or serial adultery, or when one party simply abandons the other? But infidelity and abuse do not explain the majority of divorces in this country, and they are not the leading causes of break-ups. According to these “experts,” the top causes of divorce are a lack of individual identity, “getting into it for the wrong reasons,” and “becoming lost in the roles.” A survey done by the National Fatherhood Institute found lack of communication, and finances to be the leading culprits. An article in The Examiner also cites finances as the most potent divorce-fuel.
In other words, these days marriages can be blown apart by the slightest gust of wind, coming from any direction, and for any reason. Noticeably absent from all of these polls about the reasons for divorce: gay marriage.
That’s because gay marriage is not the biggest threat to marriage.
We are.
We are, when we vow on our very souls to stand by someone for the rest of our lives, until death do us part, only to let financial troubles and communication difficulties dissolve that union we forged before God. We are, when we forget about those Biblical readings we picked out for our wedding service:
My lover belongs to me and I to him. He says to me: “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away.”
For stern as death is love.
When we marry, we die. Our old selves die, and we are born anew into each other; into the unbreakable marital bond.
We are a threat to the sanctity of marriage when we let our selfishness fool us into thinking that our wedding vows weren’t that serious.
Indeed, despite popular sentiment, they were serious. They are serious. They’re as serious as death.
The struggle to protect marriage is also serious. It’s an important battle.
So maybe it’s time we actually start fighting it.
*NOTE. To answer your questions: no, I have not actually been divorced four times. I’ve been married once, and I’m still married to her, and I’ll never be married to anyone else. The title was tongue-in-cheek. I was writing it from the perspective of the sorts of people who rant about the sanctity of marriage, yet have racked up multiple ex-spouses. Perhaps I should have been more clear about this. In any case, there it is. I appreciate your concern.
To defend homo “marriage” on the grounds that heterosexual marriage is unstable is a lot like saying that because rape is rampant we should allow murder.
The solution isn’t to further destabilize marriage by broadening its definition; it’s to strengthen it by restoring it to its once sacred position as a social and religious institution.
Clearly the problem is not marriage, but *government* controlled marriage. The abrogation of a holy rite by religions is a terrible disaster.
Marriage is a biological advantage that humans have over animals. It helps women, men, and most certainly, their children. But it can only function properly when it is “socially enforced”. This is done to protect a breeding couple from those who want sex, but are either unwilling, unable, or otherwise should not make or raise children.
This means that, when married, other people keep their hands off, *or else*. Social enforcement. And religion is a good way to accomplish this. But government isn’t.
In a way I can sort of understand his point. I have known lots of friends who have been married and divorced, some several times.
I married my wife after just a few weeks of knowing her, and not even meeting face to face. That was over 13 years ago, not every day has been sunshine and roses, but I think when two people really love each other, AND are committed to each other it will work itself out.
I dont really have any answers I guess, but sometimes you have to just let things slide a little, not everything is personal.
As a person who was divorced once I can say I am not proud of it. I divorced years ago (20 odd years ago) when I was young, stupid, and not on a clear path with God. Since then I have gotten right with Him and remarried. Not a day goes by I do not think about my mistake and the ramifications it had on me, the ex, and others. Btw, I did not divorce for another woman. Would I undo it? Not with what I know now and since I have two children and an adopted one from my second marriage. I have to constantly be reaffirmed that God will forgive me and live in guilt every day for the decisions I made when I was stupid and arrogant.
I won’t even get into the effects the divorce had on me financially and with other relationships (2 children from that marriage). Luckily, my two kids from the first have turned out great since I made sure they spent all the time I could with me from day one.
Bottom line, it still haunts me.
“There are some FReepers who like to bleat that they have been married multiple times...”
After I wrote my comment, I wanted to make a clarification. I am not saying that divorce is always wicked, evil etc.. I have known both men and women who divorced and to be honest.. they SHOULD have divorced. One man I know recently divorced ignored his wife’s constant infidelities until she finally left him. A woman I know suffered a broken jaw, broken eye socket etc.. till she left his sorry butt. My initial point was simply to say that the % of divorces seems high to me. I have know some FReepers and others who divorced and then found a stable, good person and remarried. **I just wanted to clarify for FR.
Marriage is about providing a protective environment for the arrival and rearing of children. The word “matrimony” spells that out much more clearly.
“Further still, if the matter be duly pondered, we shall clearly see these evils to be the more especially dangerous, because, divorce once being tolerated, there will be no restraint powerful enough to keep it within the bounds marked out or presurmised. Great indeed is the force of example, and even greater still the might of passion. With such incitements it must needs follow that the eagerness for divorce, daily spreading by devious ways, will seize upon the minds of many like a virulent contagious disease, or like a flood of water bursting through every barrier. These are truths that doubtlessly are all clear in themselves, but they will become clearer yet if we call to mind the teachings of experience. So soon as the road to divorce began to be made smooth by law, at once quarrels, jealousies, and judicial separations largely increased; and such shamelessness of life followed that men who had been in favor of these divorces repented of what they had done, and feared that, if they did not carefully seek a remedy by repealing the law, the State itself might come to ruin. The Romans of old are said to have shrunk with horror from the first example of divorce, but ere long all sense of decency was blunted in their soul; the meager restraint of passion died out, and the marriage vow was so often broken that what some writers have affirmed would seem to be true-namely, women used to reckon years not by the change of consuls, but of their husbands. In like manner, at the beginning, Protestants allowed legalized divorces in certain although but few cases, and yet from the affinity of circumstances of like kind, the number of divorces increased to such extent in Germany, America, and elsewhere that all wise thinkers deplored the boundless corruption of morals, and judged the recklessness of the laws to be simply intolerable.
Even in Catholic States the evil existed. For whenever at any time divorce was introduced, the abundance of misery that followed far exceeded all that the framers of the law could have foreseen. In fact, many lent their minds to contrive all kinds of fraud and device, and by accusations of cruelty, violence, and adultery to feign grounds for the dissolution of the matrimonial bond of which they had grown weary; and all this with so great havoc to morals that an amendment of the laws was deemed to be urgently needed.
Can anyone, therefore, doubt that laws in favor of divorce would have a result equally baneful and calamitous were they to be passed in these our days? There exists not, indeed, in the projects and enactments of men any power to change the character and tendency with things have received from nature. Those men, therefore, show but little wisdom in the idea they have formed of the well-being of the commonwealth who think that the inherent character of marriage can be perverted with impunity; and who, disregarding the sanctity of religion and of the sacrament, seem to wish to degrade and dishonor marriage more basely than was done even by heathen laws. Indeed, if they do not change their views, not only private families, but all public society, will have unceasing cause to fear lest they should be miserably driven into that general confusion and overthrow of order which is even now the wicked aim of socialists and communists. Thus we see most clearly how foolish and senseless it is to expect any public good from divorce, when, on the contrary, it tends to the certain destruction of society.”
—Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum 1880
89-90 years later Ronald Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce law in the US, in 15 years it comes to every state. 35 years after the first no-fault divorce law the first US state accepts ‘gay marriage.’ 9 years after that there are 17 states that accept ‘gay marriage’ with several court cases pending that could eventually turn over every state marriage amendment.
Freegards
I said it was a decent point, but that he didn’t emphasize that the point has absolutely nothing to do with the reason for marriage.
- yet we want to rail on this issue ignoring the board in our own eye.”
The degree to which some fail in attaining perfection has no bearing on the moral point under discussion-and yet the author goes right ahead and juxtaposes anyway. People are or can be asses...wow....big news....alert the networks.
I sat down to tell the world that gay marriage is the greatest threat to the sanctity of marriage.
But then I remembered this:
What you forgot is this is not about marriage. It is about evil and good. Will we allow evil to triumph and destroy our society or will we take a stand.
I am going to have to partly disagree with you on the ‘reason for marriage’. Children are one of the reasons but a bigger one, the FIRST one (if you are a bible believing christian) is that a man was not meant to live alone and needed a partner and helpmeet. A big reason for divorce is that we don’t teach what marriage really means and is really for (yes children are a huge part of that). Look at the article and he mentions that in surveys one reason people get divorced is that they got ‘lost in the roles’. What does that even mean? I am guessing it means people got into marriage having no idea what marriage was really about; what it was FOR. As a society we watered it down to ‘love’ and ‘companionship’ and ZERO else.... and they were surprised when young people just decided to cohabitate instead. We obliterated the whole concept of gender roles and differences so it is no wonder people have forgotten the POINT of being married.
There
This isn’t about attaining perfection. There is a cancer among our ranks and we absolutely fail to grasp the way in which it affects every system (in the body and out).
Four and a half years ago at the dinner for my 50th class reunion—our class president bragged about how everyone at the head table had been divorced at least once. I went to a Catholic High School.
The issue isn’t Divorce...it’s the complete ruination of what marriage is....
.... Defining marriage today could easily be defined as a temporary layover for individuals where they can play house for a time.
the author should have clearly stated two homosexuals do not produce children. period.
“...the only marriage is natural marriage. Unnatural marriage is not marriage.”
I agree. However, I think ‘homosexual marriage’ has nothing to do with marriage at all. It is only about normalizing what any sane person would agree is very abnormal behavior. I guess what bothers me isn’t that the courts are forcing homosexual marriage, but that the courts have already eliminated all laws making homosexual activity illegal.
A man sticking his penis in another man’s rear is more unnatural than killing a puppy, but the former is now a “constitutional right” while the other will get you thrown in jail.
It is the flagrant rejection of both natural law and God’s law that appalls me, not the sham of ‘marriage’. The “right” to marriage - which has never existed anywhere at any time - is being used to pretend that homosexual acts are not perversion, when it is painfully obvious that they are. The lack of moral outrage means America and other formerly Christian countries have rejected God.
Why do the nations plan rebellion?
Why do people make their useless plots?
Their kings revolt,
their rulers plot together against the Lord
and against the king he chose.
“Let us free ourselves from their rule,” they say;
“let us throw off their control.”
From his throne in heaven the Lord laughs
and mocks their feeble plans. - Psalm 2
Thanks for your post 24. My criticism was not aimed at folks like you. I should have said that it was directed at those who commit serial divorces, i.e., two or more.
Everyone can be forgiven a first marriage which went bad since most of us are young and inexperienced when he or she first marries. After more than one divorce, though, I maintain that something is seriously wrong with your judgment and your sense of commitment.
Regarding your post 26, I agree, some marriages should be dissolved. The participants should, though, learn from it and not continue marrying and divorcing (not that you said as such).
I have particular animus toward those, who, marriage after marriage, stand in the altar and proclaim that they will honor and cherish this person til death do they part, knowing damn well that they have failed to do so in the past and, I suspect, know deep down that they really aren’t sure they’re going to fulfill that holy promise.
I was so lucky as to find my life partner with the first proposal I ever made. Mrs. OP and I have now been married for close to 43 years.
~snip~
That’s because gay marriage is not the biggest threat to marriage.
Ouch. These and many other stinging rebukes are found within this article. Is Matt Walsh making valid points or not?
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