"...advocates now hope to lower divorce rates through laws that slow the process — with some exceptions — and encourage couples who are waiting to use opportunities to improve communication and relational skills and hopefully reconsider.
Divorce-reform advocates are battling a cultural bias created by 40 years of legal precedent, concerns about increasing governmental involvement in private lives and the cost of seeking help. But they say this needs to be discussed to avoid more unnecessary pain.
... A 2008 study on the costs of divorce and unwed childbearing estimated that family fragmentation costs taxpayers $112 billion annually for things like food stamps, housing assistance, child welfare services and the justice system.
In a 2005 article in "The Future of Children," University of Pennsylvania sociologist Paul Amato explained that if children were to grow up in stable two-parent families at the same level as 1960 before the massive increase in divorce, it would mean 1.2 million fewer children suspended from school, 538,000 fewer acts of delinquency and 71,400 fewer suicide attempts.
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"Look, while you seem to have run into an alarming number of door knobs and fallen down the stairs quite often, we still are going to deny your divorce until you work on your relationship skills."
NOM has a heart with regard to suicide afterall, for children of straight parents. But its a start.
I'm not fully understanding the concerns of the domestic violence groups, and I welcome insight on the matter. They act as if when a woman is being abused by her husband, the key to ending the abuse is to, first and foremost, have the marriage legally dissolved, as opposed to getting the woman out of the house and away from the abuser. As if a woman suffering abuse would not be able to seek help in a shelter, call the police, move into a relative's home, speak with a counselor, etc., because she is not officially divorced.
I think the domestic violence concerns are sort of a red herring. I just find it fishy that we can't adopt or elongate a divorce waiting period for most marriages because some stress a tenuous link between delayed divorce and a woman's ability to escape an abusive home in the middle of the night. There seems to be a conflation of two separate issues by Rita Smith, in particular: 1) being able to get a divorce sooner than later; with 2) being able to *physically* leave an abusive relationship, phone for help, etc.
Furthermore, abusive marriages will be exempted from the proposals anyway, as will other marriages with severe circumstances. But domestic violence advocacy groups seem to be concerned that such promises for exemption are not solid. Rita Smith asked what kind of proof would be demanded for domestic violence claims, for example.
Conservative skeptics of these plans, on the other hand, see them as an expansion of government. I don't think I agree with them.
Does the state have an interest in keeping people together in marriage? I'd say it does. Since marriage is a voluntary institution, people should go into it understanding that the state has an interest in the longevity of their union, and will protect its interest as much is reasonably possible.
You can't ask for access to a state recognized relationship and wonder why the state would work to keep the relationship viable.
I like what Ken Altshuler said: if people get married, pledging to be together for life, then surely they can wait a year for divorce.
Hah! See how long your straight supporters stick with you NOW. (Not the ones who post regularly here, I mean: we do know where they stand. But your rank and file just walked out the door.)
Funny--so often NOM is accused of only "gay-bashing" for not posting more articles about other dangers facing marriage, and then when they do, the same critics sound off again.
Making divorce more difficult, EXCEPTING in cases of abuse, is a good start. A cheated spouse should be able to sue the betrayer(s) for alienation of affection. No fault divorce should be done away with.
Don't make divorce more difficult, make marriage more difficult.
Make the process take just a bit longer, and only people who really mean it will last through the whole thing--or bother in the first place.
But you have to make that difficulty level equal across the board, of course. Saying some people can't get married at all is obviously as intolerable as it is unconstitutional and unethical.
Oh, and since gays aren't socialized that we're "supposed to" get married to the same extent, those who do get married will, I predict, have a greater tendency to mean it.
But those first few years of marriage equality will have skewed statistics--I suspect mostly gay couples that *should* have had their marriages legally recognized long ago who will be very unlikely to divorce, but also those who rush into marriage because of the fear that their right to do might be taken away again, so they need to do it *now* while they still can even though they only started dating last week and might not last the month.
But, of course, it's y'all who cause THAT chaos.
Outrageous, Pat. Why put up unnecessary blocks in front of people getting married? The longer they go, the less interested they'll be. Cohabitating couples are more likely to break up within the first few years of their child's life than married couples. Do you favor encouraging people not to have sex or live together during this elongated period before they are allowed to marry? Because they'll have kids otherwise, and then you'd better *hope* they decide to get married.
And then there are people who've been together for years, but the moment they get married their relationship falls apart. So I don't see how your proposal would remedy this problem. It would not reduce divorce, and would increase non-marital, long-term cohabitation.
It makes a lot more sense to me to make it harder to get a divorce. Then marriage might actually resemble some sort of, you know, contract. Marriage would be monumental and have societal meaning. You're with this person for life. There's nothing special or meaningful about passing a probationary period to enter into something that has no binding effect...something that one partner could end arbitrarily.
You don't demonstrate commitment solely by waiting; it's demonstrated when you enter into something that you know you can't easily exit.