Divorce
proponents focus on providing relief
to those whose marriages have supposedly
irretrievably broken down, but in so
doing, actually provide the causes for
greater breakdown of marriage and family
life. The supposed cure becomes the
dreaded cause of the "disease."
Many problems in society are directly
related to the breakdown of family life.
Indeed, God intended the family to be
the basic unit of society. If families
are godly, then society can be an expression
of a community of love and concern.
There are many problems in society and
in the world, but our work of renewing
the family and defending life is the
key to having a world enjoying the peace
of the Lord.
No-Fault Divorce a Greater threat
to Marriage than Gay 'Marriage': Expert
By
James Tillman
September
21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com)
- According to Dr. Stephen Baskerville,
professor of political science at Patrick
Henry College and author of “Taken
Into Custody: The War Against Fathers,
Marriage, and the Family,”
the government "is engaged in a
direct assault on the family" that
is causing family breakdown - which
in turn allows government to reach into
yet more areas of civil society under
the pretext of solving the problems
that the breakdown of the family creates.
"I
would go so far as to say that family
breakdown is the major engine driving
domestic government expansion and spending:
crime, substance abuse, educational
failure, law enforcement," Dr.
Baskerville told LifeSiteNews.com
(LSN). "All these costs
are attributable to single-parent homes
more than any other single factor."
(To
read the complete interview, including
many things not contained in this summary,
click here.)
Dr.
Baskerville claimed that the government
promotes family breakdown through “a
panoply of destructive laws” linked
to divorce.
"Unlike
cultural threats to the family, divorce
is a government regime," he stated.
"It is not eroding the family;
it is quite deliberately dismantling
it."
For
instance, he said that no-fault divorce
laws are a more serious threat to the
family than same-sex “marriage,”
which he called “a symptom of
how debased marriage has already become,
not a cause of it."
No-fault
divorce was signed into law in New York
State by Governor David Paterson last
month; New York was the last U.S. state
to pass such a law.
No-fault
divorce, explained Dr. Baskerville,
codifies "unilateral and involuntary
divorce" and thereby permits the
spouse breaking up the marriage and
the divorce court to "force the
innocent spouse to shoulder the burden
of the consequences."
"The
innocent spouse generally loses his
children, his home and property, and
his freedom for literally 'no fault'
of his own and for any failure to cooperate
with the divorce."
Other
laws are also connected with the “divorce-regime,”
he continued. False accusations of domestic
violence are now common, he said, nearly
all of which are “generated to
secure custody of children in divorce
cases."
"The
same is largely true of the hysteria
over 'child abuse,'" he continued.
"Child abuse is certainly real,
but almost all of it takes place in
single-parent homes, not intact families."
Thus,
he continued, "by encouraging false
accusations of child abuse to facilitate
divorce and single-parent homes, the
child abuse industry actually creates
more child abuse.”
Finally,
he said that although feminist and government
propaganda promotes the idea that “child
support is to provide for children who
have been abandoned” by their
fathers, it is instead “mostly
extorted from fathers that have been
evicted, again through ‘no fault’
of their own.”
“It
is a subsidy on divorce and single-parent
homes,” he explained. “If
you pay people to divorce, they will
do it more. That is precisely what child
support does.”
For
all these reasons, he continued, conservatives
who wish to ignore social issues and
instead focus on fiscal issues are at
best misguided.
"What
even most conservatives do not realize,"
he said, "is how [crime, substance
abuse, and educational failure] themselves
are created not by impersonal social
forces or cultural decay alone but by
government itself."
"In
other words, government is not simply
responding to problems created by the
culture. By attacking
the family, government is creating the
very problems it claims to be solving.”
He
recommended that conservatives widen
"their focus from just same-sex
marriage to the larger threats to marriage
and the family."
"Divorce
laws and practices are by far the greatest
neglect. Unless this machinery is brought
under control it will continue spreading
abuses elsewhere to threaten the rights
of intact parents such as homeschoolers
and others accused of 'abuse' and 'neglect.'"
(To
read the complete interview, containing
many things not found in this summary,
click here.)
Stephen
Baskerville, an assistant professor
of political science at Patrick Henry
College, is the author of Taken
Into Custody: The War Against Fathers,
Marriage, and the Family,
a book that Phyllis Schlafly, president
of the Eagle Forum, called a "tremenous
and much-needed report on how family
courts and government policies are harming
children." He served as the president
of the American Coalitions for Fathers
and Children from 2004 to 2007, and
has written articles for a wide variety
of publications, both scholarly and
popular, including the Washington Times,
the Washington Post, Chronicles, The
American Conservative, and National
Review.
"For
to me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain." (Phil 1:21)