Her prescription is why I posted this.
Infidelity used to be a criminal offense. Until Henry the Eighth, there was NO divorce. Marriage was an unbreakable bond.
Now, it’s so easy to get into. So easy to mess up without paying a price. So easy to get out. How is that ‘sacred’?
She wrote one a few months ago about how women actually benefit by refusing to marry or through divorce and how that further degrades the institution. She did a huge piece on ending all of those benefits and how women would quickly become less emotional ‘creatures of self-control’ once all the safety nets were gone.
So, is she right?
If *we* strengthened marriage... gave the institution the weight that it deserves... would fewer gays marry?
As the vast majority of gay men are NOT monogamous... would they shy away from an institution that criminalized and severely penalized infidelity?
And if we value monogamy so much... why would we argue against this?
Don’t we conservatives honor the sacrament of marriage highly? What would it hurt us to legally strengthen that which we love?
(What makes me sick after reading all of the comments is that they confirm her diagnosis that WE don’t want the weight and responsibility of the sacrament. She’s right. We’re so weak that we allow the holy to be defiled rather than risk responsibility.)
That there was NO divorce till Henry VIII is not really accurate.
Divorces were routine among the nobility and especially royalty, bought and paid for to the pope. Papal dispensation, sudden discovery of invalidating degree of kinship, etc. Part of Henry’s outrage at being denied on by the pope is that they were so common for kings.
Elanor of Aquitane, for instance, divorced the King of France and married the King of England.
If I remember correctly, the Pope even provided a dispensation for one Emperor to commit bigamy.
The pope in Henry’s case probably did not develop a sudden rush of integrity to the brain. He was a prisoner of the Emperor, a nephew of Catharine, and simply wasn’t free to gratify Henry.