Posted on 11/28/2004 1:44:21 PM PST by woodb01
As posted half-way down the front page of www.NoDNC.com
To those who are concerned at
Focus On The Family and
Focus On The Family Action
Dear Concerned,
In spite of all the good that Focus On The Family has done in the area of family rescue, I believe you have missed seeing the major enemy: No-Fault Divorce.
It is true that divorce came as a result of feminism and hearts drawn away by self-centered, and selfish actions, but the major enemy, Easy Divorce, came as a result of uncontested changes in divorce laws in all 50 states.
All of us have done much to try to change the current anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-home, anti-male forces, but these efforts resemble someone trying to totally submerge an inflated inner tube. It cannot be done. It can never be done. Get it "down" in one area and it pops up in another one.
Until we completely stop no-fault divorce laws we are fighting a losing battle, much like someone fighting the wind with a tennis racket...plenty of holes for escape or free passage.
I truly hope that Focus On The Family Action will make this the first area of concern with relentless efforts exerted until this No.1 enemy of the family is totally destroyed.
I have called upon many "rights" and "family" organizations for their involvment, but all have responded with a definite "NO".
This is not a divorce issue, but a legal issue, defending the rights of American citizens guaranteed by our Constitution. These rights are: 1) due process - the right to hear the alleged claims of wrongdoing, with proof, defense, decision, and appeal; 2) equal protection under the law - the same legal "benefits" for both plaintiff and defendant, and 3) trial by jury of peers.
When divorce strikes, attorneys say there is nothing they can do to prevent it, but when you look at the constitutional rights, and the divorce procedures, there are endless actions that can be taken to prevent the illegal actions that go on in a civil divorce suit. Judges and attorneys can be confronted with legal actions about conducting business outside of constitutional law.
There is something seriously flawed (illegal) when the plaintiff in a divorce suit is granted a divorce EVERY TIME. Justice is NOT being served. This is NOT "justice for ALL".
A follow-up to this FORCED divorce procedure is "deadbeat Dads" being imprisoned without Due Process, Equal Protection, and Trial by Jury of Peers, over a CIVIL matter. That is illegality at its worst and MUST be ended. It harks back to pauper's prison...pay or go to jail.
We can all speak that we want to defend marriages and families, but if this issue is not addressed also, we are just fooling ourselves into believing that we really care about the rights of American citizens, and in particular, the ungodly treatment of our spiritual brothers. (75% of divorces are initiated by wives/Mothers)
All kinds of programs can be launched in support of marriages and families, but until we stop No-Fault Divorce our efforts to truly protect them are in vain.
I am reminded of a situation in the Bible where a giant named Goliath was doing his thing against the children of God without restraint, who were too afraid to be the eliminators. Then along comes little David, who had kept a good track record of what God had done in his life, and was certain that this giant should and could be slain - that the enemy should be dead.
Somewhere there is a "David" who has not yet heard about the situation with this giant No-Fault Divorce, but who will be more than willing to "step up to the plate" in the name of Almighty God, and put an end to his godless actions.
Is David a member of your "family"?
Please let me know how you agree or disagree with issues addressed in this letter.
Most concerned...and relentlessly active,
Billy Miller - Louisiana
brmiller (at) bellsouth (dot) net
I was there, were you? I saw it happening, did you? I do not need to read any research about it.
I forgot the SARCASM annotation in that first part. I'm hardly a Feminazi. Retired Army & I was a Team Leader on the Bush'04 campaign here in Madison, WI. We only lost Wisconsin by 11,841 votes! It's much more red than blue, my dear.
So, you've got me all wrong, Woodb01. Appology accepted in advance. ;)
No they don't, do they.
And of course if a gal decides to defend themselves and/or their children against those very real scenarios they're labeled "feminist" -- or some other slurr -- by the absolutelt whacko morons who'll gleefully use a cross as a club.
Funny that, eh.
"It's humiliating enough to be in that situation.. and 'duking it out in court' would offer nothing more then even more humiliation."
Yup.
I'd agree with your take, there.
"Give us some solutions we can work with!"
Solutions?
From others?
You know what you need to do in situation(s) only you know.
"I was told repeatedly to allow God to do a miracle. I waited 15 years..."
Uh-huh, and would probably still be waiting had you not taken steps, acted proactively to do what had to be done.
Of course the fundies would never concede the one possibility keeping a lot of gals from becoming raving lunatics, either.
That *maybe* God gave 'em the answer to their problem which explains *why* they acted, accordingly?
Naturally that wouldn't *fit* into many of the brainstem's warped view of how things *should* be.
...& therein lies the rub. ;^)
I wasn't the one who was sidetracked or angry. Pio (Post #2) is the one who wrongly tried to make this a Catholic versus Protestant issue; I was trying to get him to see that it really isn't.
My point is that both sides (a) have strong anti-divorce doctrines, yet (b) break their own rule far too often. Somehow we've got to persuade people to follow their own doctrines. How?
That doesn't jibe with my bitter experiences.
...and women respond by giving themselves to the bad men, thus reinforcing their badness. Men are violent because women for thousands have years have rewarded male violence.
BTW... 45 million abortions, almost all done at the behest of women, and you still say that men are more prone to mayhem? Hmmmm.....
I can tell you from personal experience that your post is true, altho I also think there were other factors that contributed (i.e. no-fault divorce, the so-called sexual revolution [which I think "benefited" men more than women], Roe v. Wade, and women in the workforce).
My dad once told me that we (the '60's gen) were setting outselves up for loneliness and relational failure, that women would find they didn't need husbands for financial/physical security and men would find they didn't need wives for sex or setting up households. I think that turned out to be true.
I think there are valid reasons for divorce (adultery, abandonment, physical abuse), but irreconcilable differences is much too vague! It seems to me, now, that it was yet another '60's case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Thank you, Sam, for looking deeper into this issue and recognizing that there were other factors involved in the downfall of morality and families in our nation.
<><
...marriage is the only contract that you can default on with no reprecussion ... It is basically designed to free up court time. It is harmful to families.
...then you got some wise advice over instant messenger! :-)
Seriously, though -- your case is unusual. The majority of women, studies show, file for divorce NOT because of adultery or abuse but simply because they are "unhappy" (as if somehow marriage was supposed to guarantee happiness all the time). A lot of the angry guys who vent on marriage/divorce threads here at FR, are nice guys who were dumped for no valid reason; in many cases, they were good men who were cheated on, ruined in divorce court, etc.
However, the fact that men (and women) aren't held accountable by the churches for marital or romantic transgressions -- or sin in general -- is a HUGE problem. But, the church has to know about the sin to confront it. Trying to get such a confrontation to occur (a) will certainly result in public exposure, which you have decided to avoid for the kids' sake, and (b) can really blow up in your face, as you know I found out the hard way with a certain girlfriend. There's no easy answer.
You are absolutely right about that.. But consider the sources and the cycles.. Women are attracted to violent men because they are attracted to men just like their own fathers. Men tend to treat their wives exactly like their father's treated their mothers. That can be a good thing, or a bad thing.
The old saying is absolutely true, children learn what they live. My 17 year old daughter is dating a boy that is so much like her own father it's uncanny! Even though she has sworn she'd never let someone treat her the way her father treated me. My mother and I have pointed out the similarities.. and she CANNOT seem to see them. Amazing!
The issue is not gender specific. Satan is destroying Christianity by destroying marriage and families, he's pulled out all the stops and the churches are not equipped to use the power of Christ, church discipline, accountability.. God's own word.. and they aren't unified in this front. If one church does have these things in place, the offending spouse can just switch to another that is more tolerant. If a cheating wife knew that after one or two witnesses she'd have to go in front of the whole church (IN LOVE) she just might change her ways. I think a lot more marriages could be salvaged if the church honed more skills then just condemnation.
Thanks for the kind words.
Did you ever see the "Willoughby" old Twilight Zone episode ? Where an overworked, burned out ad executive dreams every night on the train home of the train stopping in a quaint, charming, bucolic fantasy of the 1880's called Willoughby and spending his life away from the rat race, away from the pressure, away from his selfish, greedy trophy wife's materialistic demands ? The tragedy was that you could see that he didn't belong in that office. But she did. She had the ruthless drive to be a bang-up exec.
There was a lot of that in the 1955-1965 popular culture. The bourgeous wife as virility sucking vampire, whose husband was nothing more than a paycheck to serve her "keeping up with the Joneses" status symbol consumerism. And I'll bet lots of men felt the husband in "Willoughby", like meal tickets whose best would never be enough. And what economic use was the stay at home wife ? What did she do but watch soap operas ?
A lot of marriages were ripe for collapse when the sexual revolution hit.
Women often cite "domestic violence" as a justification for divorce. But most domestic incidents are started (and strongly fueled by) the woman. They nag first and the majority of the time, women hit first too (men hit harder). Wives lack respect and husbands don't love wives. Why doesn't the situation ever change?
Ah well, Genesis 3:16, "And your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you."
It's very important that conservatives try to understand what fuels these destructive movements (and stop looking at the past so idyllically). The clamor for "sexual freedom" and "no fault divorce" (both of which benefitted men more than women, but whoever said feminazis were smart) found its roots in human tendencies that have been with us since Adam and Eve.
Sometime in the next few days, I'll post a quote for you that I think excellent (I have to dig it out of the archives at home). The gist of the quote was that marriage wasn't nearly as awful as the leftie/feminists said it was!
>>>A lot of marriages were ripe for collapse when the sexual revolution hit.<<<
I might tweak that to say that a lot of individual men and women were ripe for embracing an ideology that exhaulted themselves rather than God when the sexual revolution hit. Chuck Colson had a great quote (paraphrased): "In the '60's, women were coerced and encouraged to act in ways contrary to Biblical principles." I look back and see that that was true. It wasn't just that men, through marriage, were oppressive; it was that women were somehow made to feel ridiculous for acting in a traditional manner (i.e. nurturing, building homes, monogomous, cooking, cleaning, etc). Women also upheld (for the most part) the social moral code -- you weren't a real red-blooded American male if you didn't try, but you weren't a good marriageable woman if you didn't stop them (that was generally the way the game was played back then). Mistakes were made, of course, but not nearly like today, which I wouldn't call "mistakes" anyway.
No, I never saw that TZ episode and I thought I'd seen them all! I understand your point, though. It's interesting to see how early on the ridiculing and dissing of American men/husbands started not to mention the encouraging of women to be like men.
<><
How many husbands in the "good old days" felt as trapped as the husband in "Willoughby" ? How many drowned their emptiness in double martinis ? If that husband had been around in 1968 wouldn't he have dropped out, dumped his greedy wife and his high-pressure job and written the great American novel on Venice Beach with some groovy young chickie ?
Feminism did not trigger the divorce boom. It was husbands who felt, with some reason, that the marriage contract of 1945-1970 had to be revised in their favor because...
1. The stay at home wife's labor was unnecessary.
2. She was more consumer than producer.
3. Sex was cheap and plentiful outside of marriage.
Divorce is fully accepted in most Protestant circles..Child molestation is an evil that sprung up among liberal, gay clergy (reference Paul Shanley) it is not a bedrock doctrinal development (reference Henry VIII).
"BTW... 45 million abortions, almost all done at the behest of women,..."
Well they are ALL done with the acquiesence of women, of that there can be no doubt. But I wonder just how many are done over the objections of men. Although I acknowledge that a good many may be done with out the knowledge of the man involved. But of the women I've know who have had abortions (5 that I can think of) 3 the men agreed to and/or insisted on the abortion, 2 I don't know about that detail. Doesn't excuse the situation, but I know of no situtations where the guy strenously objected. My guess is that in at least 2 of the 5 cases I do not about personally the man's willingness to see the pregancy through would have changed the situation. The other, I don't know.
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