The Right’s Latest Target: No-Fault Divorce
Republicans have been quite successful in countering modern life: they have banned abortion, tried to make birth control more difficult, threw books on race, sex, gender and the Holocaust (the Holocaust?!) out of school libraries and tormented transgender people. You’d think they’d take a break, but no — now they have their sights set on a new goal: a no-fault divorce. Leading the charge are Republican lawmakers in some of the worst states for women (look at Louisiana!) and reactionary anti-feminist tirades like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and Steven Crowder. Funny story: Crowder went viral for portraying himself as a victim of a no-fault divorce and expressing shock that his wife could even divorce him “in Texas” without his permission — just before a video surfaced of him berated his heavily pregnant wife for not being “womanworthy,” among other domestic failings. Milton, you should live in this hour!
I mention the great poet of the 17th century, best known today for his epic poem paradise lostbecause he was one of the first – if not The First, an English writer argued that marriage was not a religious sacrament enforced by church and state, but a civil partnership which unhappy spouses could terminate at will. (Milton knew what he was talking about: he himself married 17-year-old Mary Powell, whom he barely knew by the time he was 34; she left him a few weeks later and stayed away for three years.) In The doctrine and discipline of divorce (1643) and three other tracts he passionately advocated divorce on the basis of plain incompatibility: where there was no love or friendship the marriage was already dead. Forcing unhappy partners to remain married prevented them from finding more suitable partners, and independent rights of conscience were replaced by ecclesiastical authority. “Wisdom and charity, considering God’s own institution, would think that the yearning of a sad spirit associated with loneliness should deserve to be delivered,” he wrote.
It is not clear how much of this freedom Milton would have allowed wives. Still, it was a start. But it would be more than three centuries before unhappy spouses gained the freedom to end a marriage without having to prove their spouses were unfaithful, abusive, or the like. The first no-fault divorce law in an American state was signed into law in 1969 by none other than conservative icon Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. It is now law in every state, although Mississippi and South Dakota require consent from both parties.
Who Benefits from Easy Access to Divorce? I would say everyone, including children, is often cited as a reason why parents should be forced to stay together – because what could be better for healthy development than growing up in a household full of bitterness, anger and disrespect. However, the stakes are greatest for women, because women are more vulnerable to men than vice versa. Even in the 19th century, when divorce was difficult to obtain and few women could make a living, women filed the bulk of divorce petitions in the United States; today it is more than two thirds. (Jordan Peterson says that’s because women are more neurotic than men and always look at the negative side. Well, given the sexist nature of most marriages, where women still do most of the housework and childcare, there’s quite a bit to do negatively about.)
Researchers tracking the long introduction of no-fault divorce in each state found that in every case, it led to a dramatic decrease in wife suicides, domestic violence, and husband-to-wife murders. These underrecognized facts effectively prove that women’s control is behind calls to abolish no-fault divorce, for if women’s lives and safety had mattered, divorce would always have been easy to achieve. In 2019, Focus on the Family director Jim Daly, which opposes no-fault divorce, told unhappy couples, “God hates divorce in any case,” even when it involves violence, cruelty, addiction or pedophilia. (The wife is supposed to save the marriage by being overly respectful, blaming herself, and giving her husband lots of sex.)
Who wants that? who needs this There is a real experiment measuring the popularity of Daly’s position. In Louisiana, Arkansas, and Arizona, engaged couples can register for a “federal marriage,” in which they agree to seek divorce only for adultery, abuse, or a handful of semi-criminal activities. Although it’s been an option for a quarter of a century, only about 1 percent of couples choose it. While the Bible is all about covenants, even among evangelicals, not many parents would want their adult child to be locked up forever in a loveless marriage to a terrible person. (Incidentally, the divorce rate for born-again Christians is 33 percent — higher than the rate for atheists and agnostics, 30 percent, according to a 2008 study by the Barna Group.)
For right-wing Christians and conservative Hungarian nationalists, both divorce and abortion mean social decay. Families should pray together and stay together, with the woman firmly under the man’s thumb. This gendered authoritarianism is sometimes called “populism”—an almost meaningless term progressives always try to claim as their own—but it is a power play by a minority adept at manipulating the levers of government. At a meeting of a US-based group called National Conservatism in London last May, Tory MP Miriam Cates claimed that Britain’s biggest problem is its low birth rate. The culprits include: “cultural Marxism”, too much education, high taxes, housing shortages – and divorces through no fault of their own. Does she really think couples who are forced to stay married will have more children? (I can’t stand you darling, now dim the lights and pour us each a glass of wine!)
I’d like to think that this crusade against no-fault divorce is some weirdo’s pet project. Most people don’t want to be unhappy, even right-wing fanatics. After all, Kellyanne Conway, Lauren Boebert, Sarah Palin, and Marjorie Taylor Greene all recently got divorced. For her, as for her ringmaster Donald Trump, divorce is part of her life. On the other hand, legal abortion was also part of the fabric of life. Until it wasn’t anymore.