From xxxxxx <moderator@xxxxxx.ORG>
Subject The Christian Right Is Coming for Divorce
Date June 22, 2024 2:25 AM
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THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS COMING FOR DIVORCE  
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Anna North
June 13, 2024
Vox
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_ A counter-revolution is brewing: Conservative
commentators and lawmakers are calling for an end to no-fault
divorce, arguing that it has harmed men and even destroyed the fabric
of society. _

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Before the 1960s, it was really hard to get divorced in America.

Typically, the only way to do it was to convince a judge that your
spouse had committed some form of wrongdoing, like adultery,
abandonment, or “cruelty” (that is, abuse). This could be
difficult: “Even if you could prove you had been hit, that didn’t
necessarily mean it rose to the level of cruelty that justified a
divorce,” said Marcia Zug
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a family law professor at the University of South Carolina.

Then came a revolution: In 1969, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California
(who was himself divorced) signed the nation’s first no-fault
divorce law
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allowing people to end their marriages without proving they’d been
wronged. The move was a recognition that “people were going to get
out of marriages,” Zug said, and gave them a way to do that
without resorting to subterfuge
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Similar laws soon swept the country, and rates of domestic violence
and spousal murder
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to drop as people — especially women — gained more freedom to
leave dangerous situations. 

Today, however, a counter-revolution is brewing: Conservative
commentators
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calling for an end to no-fault divorce, arguing that it has harmed men
and even destroyed the fabric of society. Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty
Deevers, for example, introduced a bill
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January to ban his state’s version of no-fault divorce. The Texas
Republican Party added a call to end the practice to its 2022
platform
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plank is preserved in the 2024 version
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Federal lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and House Speaker Mike
Johnson
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as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson
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have spoken out in favor of tightening divorce laws. 

If this sounds outlandish or like easily dismissed political posturing
— surely Republicans don’t want to turn back the clock on marital
law more than 50 years — it’s worth looking back at, say, how
rhetorical attacks on abortion, birth control, and IVF have become
reality.

And that will cause huge problems, especially for anyone experiencing
abuse. “Any barrier to divorce is a really big challenge for
survivors,” said Marium Durrani
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vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
“What it really ends up doing is prolonging their forced
entanglement with an abusive partner.”

In the wake of the _Dobbs_ decision
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divorce is just one of many areas of family law that conservative
policymakers see an opportunity to rewrite. “We’ve now gotten to
the point where things that weren’t on the table are on the
table,” Zug said. “Fringe ideas are becoming much more
mainstream.”

Republicans in multiple states are eyeing divorce restrictions

Pushback against no-fault divorce dates back decades. In the 1990s and
early 2000s, three states passed covenant marriage laws
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allowing couples to opt into signing a contract
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divorce only under circumstances like abuse or abandonment. Some
backers of the laws intended them to send a larger anti-divorce
message, the Maryland Daily Record reported
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2001. Speaker Johnson, then a lawyer in Louisiana, was an early
adopter of covenant marriage, entering one with his wife Kelly in
1999. 

More recently, high-profile conservative commentators have taken up
the anti-divorce cause. Last year, the popular right-wing podcaster
Steven Crowder announced his own unwilling split
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“My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married
anymore,” he complained, “and in the state of Texas, that is
completely permitted.”

That could change. As Tessa Stuart noted in Rolling Stone
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the Texas Republican party controls both chambers of the state
legislature and the governor’s office, and could likely make its
platform — the one calling on the state legislature to “rescind
unilateral no-fault divorce laws” — a reality if it chose. The
Louisiana and Nebraska Republican parties have also considered or
adopted similar language.  

And Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development under
President Donald Trump who has been floated as a potential VP pick
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wrote in his recent book
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“for the sake of families, we should enact legislation to remove or
radically reduce incidences of no-fault divorce.”

Ending no-fault divorce would have major consequences

Opponents of no-fault divorce argue that it is hurting families and
American culture. Making divorce too easy causes “social upheaval,
unfettered dishonesty, lawlessness, violence towards women, war on
men, and expendability of children,” Deevers wrote last year
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American Reformer, a Christian publication. “To devalue marriage is
to devalue the family is to undermine the foundation of a thriving
society.”

It’s worth noting that though the no-fault laws initially led to
spikes in divorce, rates then began to drop, and reached a 50-year low
in 2019, CNN reports.
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today, an end to no-fault divorce would cause enormous financial,
logistical, and emotional strain for people who are trying to end
their marriages, experts say. Proving fault requires a trial,
something many divorcing couples today avoid, said Kristen Marinaccio
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New Jersey-based family law attorney. A divorce trial is
time-consuming and costly, putting the partner with less money at an
immediate disadvantage. It can also be “really, really
traumatizing” to have to take the stand against an ex-partner,
Marinaccio said.

There’s also no guarantee that judges will always decide cases
fairly. In the days of fault-based divorce, courts were often
unwilling to intervene in marriages even in cases of abuse, Zug
said. 

No-fault divorce can be easier on children, who don’t have to
experience their parents facing each other in a trial, experts say
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Research suggests that allowing such divorces increased women’s
power in marriages and even reduced women’s suicide rates
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A return to the old ways would turn back the clock on this progress,
scholars say.

“We know exactly what happens when people can’t get out of very
unhappy marriages,” Zug said. “There’s much higher incidences of
domestic abuse and spousal murder.” 

It’s unlikely that blue states would ban no-fault divorce,
Marinaccio said, but if red states do, their residents would be stuck.
Divorce laws generally include a residency requirement, which would
make it difficult for people to cross state lines to get a divorce the
way they sometimes do now to obtain an abortion. “Your state is the
only access you have to divorce,” Marinaccio said.

Divorce is extremely common — more than 670,000 American couples
split in 2022 alone
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to no-fault divorce would likely be politically unpopular, even in red
states (some of which have higher divorce rates
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the national average).

But perhaps emboldened by their victory in overturning _Roe v. Wade_,
social conservatives have gone after other popular targets in recent
months, from birth control
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The drive to increase restrictions on divorce is part of the same
movement, Zug said — an effort to re-entrench “conservative family
values,” incentivize heterosexual marriage
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and disempower women. “They are all connected,” Zug said.

_This story originally appeared in TODAY, EXPLAINED
[[link removed]], Vox’s flagship
daily newsletter. SIGN UP HERE FOR FUTURE EDITIONS
[[link removed]]._

_Anna North [[link removed]] is a senior
correspondent for Vox, where she covers American family life, work,
and education. Previously, she was an editor and writer at the New
York Times. She is also the author of three novels, including the New
York Times bestseller Outlawed._

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