The True Way to Save Marriage
Republicans with multiple divorces are destroying the institution
On the Fox Nation website, minions of Roger Ailes accused Obama of declaring "war on marriage," echoing Rush Limbaugh's charge that "the president of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage," while Karl Rove simply gloated that the controversy has left Obama "in a bad place" with Catholic and conservative voters.
All of these reflex attacks were consistent with Republican propaganda, shrieking that matrimonial rights for gay people will destroy the institution Republicans hope to uphold. It is a puzzling argument, especially because the principal right-wing complaint against homosexuals for so many years was their alleged promiscuity. Now gays and lesbians are charged with trying to ruin the family because they want to take vows of fidelity.
Why Not Outlaw Divorce?
In this historic moment for human rights, listening to the likes of Ailes (now on his third marriage) and Limbaugh (currently married to wife No. 4), not to mention Rove (divorced twice), it is impossible to believe that Republicans screaming about the future of wedlock are sincere. If they are truly worried about marriage, they should stop harassing gays and campaign for the only change that might make a real difference.
They could outlaw divorce, or at least repeal the ultra-liberal, no-fault divorce laws that they've used to their own advantage.
Across America—and particularly in the red states that have rejected gay marriage—divorce rates are continually rising, along with teen pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births and single motherhood (which somehow afflict gay-friendly blue states far less). Gay rights obviously isn't the cause of marital strife and separation in those places where hostility to same-sex relationships is considered a religious duty. To achieve their professed goal of protecting marriage, shouldn't the divorce addicts of the Republican right renounce their sins and return to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Old Testament, which forbid divorce except under a few very restricted circumstances?
Of course such a return to bygone moral standards would severely inconvenience men like the hypocrites named above—along with Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich and a very large proportion of the GOP congressional caucus—and will therefore never occur. Restricting divorce wouldn't be good social policy, anyway. Yet it is worth noting that the most enraged defenders of the traditional, heterosexual conjugal bond are men who have repeatedly trashed their own marriages.
Why should Limbaugh and his ilk deny gays and lesbians a chance at wedded bliss? Can they possibly set a worse example, after all, than he did?
Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com.
© 2012 Creators.com
Could be applied to all sorts of things, outlaw all ways of getting out of a mistake or debt, include public, private, and corporate. While we are on making sure that the price to society is fully paid by all every perp (so the taxpayers of society do not have to pay the price of recovery), do this...
- Stop gold-digger wives from divorcing a man who did not carry out his promise of the moon. Stop the man from divorcing his wife for screwing around with the repairman. No more DNA tests needed, but then you will need to allow him to do the "wife-burning" think like in India.
- Stop people (and corporations) from filing for bankruptcy. So you lost money, go after all the assets of the stockholders that voted in the CEO who looked the other way when that mistake was made.
- Make the descendants pay for the mistakes of the fathers and mothers. Make the parents and role models in the youthful offenders lives pay 100% of the price of the crime, includes the teachers, pastors, and policemen that did not "nip it in the bud". Of course, you will need to allow the Bill Cosby thing... "I brought you into this world, I can take you out."
- make children of criminals do the time that was escaped by dying in prison. Now you can sentence a criminal to 1000 years, and take out all their offspring while you are at it, stop that line from breeding... or make them our slaves!
How extreme should making amends be? Enough to pay for all those who did not get caught? It's said that for every 1st offense DWI, this person has already driven drunk on average 88 times before, never got caught. Should we let them off lightly?
Am I getting carried away? Going to extremes? How many of you think the founding fathers got it wrong when they came up with the idea of "innocent until PROVEN guilty"? Every conservative knows that the accused is simply guilty be virtue of being accused, if they didn't do this crime, they must have done another they did not get caught for. -- Can anyone say "Witch hunt"? -- Who is going to pay the price for all those times the accused gets off with a technicality or 1 person on the 12 member jury will not see the majority way?
Don't we also have a founding mandate of no cruel and unusual punishment?