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.
*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.
Despite the author’s point — and it’s a valid observation — the problem is really that the only marriage is natural marriage. Unnatural marriage is not marriage.
His reference to children of divorce make that case, and he missed it.
I had a boss once who would begin conversations with, “Mary (eyes upward) my, let’s see, fourth, fifth...sixth wife...”
He was impossible to get along with, yet each woman he married was at fault. All of us who knew him thought...well, maybe not.
I had another boss in his late fifties with a lot of framed pictures of beautiful young woman. He saw me looking at them and started from left to right. “That’s Sarah, my second wife, Janice, my third, Karen, (she was a stewardess) my fourth”...all the way to six. All this time I’d assumed they were his daughters. Wife one was not represented because, I’m guessing, she was his age.
Yep, marriage has its problems. But they’re mostly due to the two parties involved.
Actually the read elephant in the room on the subject of marriage is who killed it. The Left now commonly cites the divorce rate as evidence that traditional marriage is already dead, but they are the ones that introduced no fault divorce all over the country and ensured its demise (as well as the introduction of the notion that sex, love, and marriage are all unrelated, nor even that it might be better if they were linked).
It really does take a heck of a heap of chutzpah to castigate the other side of a debate for a situation you created.
The authors point is the point and it’s the critical one. I’m sure you’re the exception but as a whole the American Christian culture is a gelatinous mass of contradiction on this issue - yet we want to rail on this issue ignoring the board in our own eye.
Live together and share funds-insurance tax stuff with each other. That’s it. No adoptions from outside the union. Should not be allowed to teach or mentor children in any way.
I completely understand the author’s point; that is, straight marriage has severe issues because of the high divorce rate. At this point in my life, I know more divorced people than I do married couples. HOWEVER, marriage was designed for the procreation of children and the establishment of a strong parental unit/home. IMHO, gay marriages brings down the sanctity of straight ones.
I agree that the author’s point about divorce is entirely legitimate.
Reality is, though, it is a ridiculous jump in logic to call anal penetration by a penis marriage... just because John and Susy got divorced.
Now, the author doesn’t say that. He sounds like a traditional marriage guy, but he argues that the gay marriage folks have a point when they showcase the sorry state of divorce. He then should make a stronger case that there is no legitimacy for so-called “gay marriage” no matter what the traditional marriage divorce rate.
Exactly-it is the definition of marriage that the homosexuals are destroying.
Someone who gets it. I don’t like same-sex marriage and hate the idea that it’s being forced down the throats of more and more states but it isn’t near the threat to traditional marriage that the easing of divorce laws have been. Marriage went for a permanent partnership to a temporary contract that lasts only till something better comes along.
-— HOWEVER, marriage was designed for the procreation of children and the establishment of a strong parental unit/home.-—
The break in the. Dam occurred when intercourse was separated from procreation with the acceptance of various means of induced sterility, aka, birth control.
Paul VI’s encyclical, On the Regulation of Birth, was prophetic.
Marriage is not and never has been a “right”. If it were a “right” the state could not tell you that you can’t marry your sister/brother. It could not tell you that you can’t marry one of your children. You must get permission from the state to marry.
Also, if it were a right, you could “demand” a partner.
There are some Freepers who like to bleat that they have been married multiple times and seem to think it’s some kind of badge of honor (as if to say that they have proved more than one woman thought they were the cat’s meow).
What it instead tells me that a) they have extremely poor judgment in their choice of mates, and b) they don’t honor their promises, i.e., “to have and to hold from this day forth.”
It gives insight into how loyal of a friend that person might be.
I didn't understand it that way. I understood him to be arguing that "gay" marriage is beside the point. Real marriage is the point: exclusive, permanent, and life-giving marriage. Real marriage didn't fall apart because of a small percentage of nutty people doing sick things with each other. Real marriage fell apart because an absolute majority of people don't want it.
In my opinion, "the right," whatever that includes, can't fundamentally affect the direction of the country, because they don't want to.
Was it you, frapster, in a post above, who said "gelatinous mass of contradiction"? Raucous round of applause! People recognize the social damage caused by easy divorce, and they certainly don't like it when their spouse up and dumps them ... but they don't want the law changed, because they want the option open. People recognize the social pathologies of fatherless "families," but they like free sex outside marriage.
People don't want an "anything goes" society, but they don't want a "theocracy" - I'm quoting some poster on some thread. That is, they don't want "anything goes," but they want everything to go that they, personally, want, while somehow precluding the things they don't want ... yet. When they decide they do want it, then anyone who disapproves is a "theocrat."
I will close this rant with some wise words from Sarah Palin: "Build the America you want in your home ... and keep looking up." (not claiming the quote is exact)
First, excellent Sarah Palin quote.
Next, You know that "divorce" is a homosexual marriage argument, and I know, so it's highly likely the author knows it. It's not a new idea. His comment about Paris Hilton and Elton John demonstrates it. "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."
I think the author brought up homosexuals simply to dismiss their relevance to the issue. However, it could be argued. On the other hand, beginning to argue about homosexuals is a distraction from the real problem.
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