Christian Post is perhaps the most neoconservative outlet in Christian news. Sometimes they post great opinion pieces. More often they cater to liberal narratives and support a certain foreign lobby. This week they published yet another glowing defense of no-fault divorce written by a rabid feminist who claims to be a Christian.
Kaeley Harms wrote a piece titled, No-fault divorce isn’t the actual problem which takes aim at men like Dusty Deevers and Matt Walsh for opposing this practice associated with the sexual revolution.
Deevers recently argued that easy access to divorce causes “social upheaval, unfettered dishonesty, lawlessness, violence towards women, war on men, and expendability of children.” His statements accompanied his sponsorship of an Oklahoma SB 1958, a well-intended but poorly conceived train wreck that would put (especially women) in grave danger should it ever pass committee.
Trapping battered spouses in marriages with abusers until such a time as they can legally prove the abuse is a recipe for getting people killed, especially when the abusive spouse controls the family finances. This is reckless public policy that seems to be completely “divorced” from the wisdom and insight of people who have walked these roads before.
Currently, as it stands, women, especially college-educated women, initiate the overwhelming majority of divorces. Harms’s argument that without no-fault divorce, women would be subjected to abusive marriages with no escape is an ignorant emotional appeal. The term no-fault divorce implies such a thing as at-fault divorce. Here are examples of grounds for at-fault divorce.
Adultery: This is a common ground for divorce in many states, including Alabama, Arizona, California, and Florida.
Abandonment: This is another common ground, recognized in states such as Georgia, Illinois, and New York.
Cruelty: This can include physical, emotional, or mental abuse. States recognizing cruelty as a ground for divorce include Colorado, Idaho, and Kentucky.
Imprisonment: If a spouse is imprisoned for a certain period, this can be grounds for divorce in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
Substance Abuse: Persistent substance abuse can be grounds for divorce in states including Montana, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
She then addresses objections to her arguments:
One thing I hear a lot is that the data show that abuse isn’t a factor in most divorces in America. We really need to challenge this belief.
Data are important. I won’t dispute this. But it’s also true that there are truths the data don’t reveal. My no-fault divorce says we divorced for irreconcilable differences, when, in fact, it was the quickest, safest route out of abuse and infidelity. This is the reality for countless people across the country. If you have the option of getting out of dodge as quickly, safely, and inexpensively as you can vs the option of hiring an expensive attorney to take your ex to a risky trial where anything less than damning evidence is going to end badly for you and your children, which option are you going to take?
You’re going to check the box that says “irreconcilable differences” and work to recover from the trauma as quickly as possible. And then family policy groups are going to take your data and conclude that abuse isn’t really a problem. And they will be woefully misguided.
Harms uses the language of trauma in her own situation to justify leaving her marriage.
Decent men don’t think like abusers, so it doesn’t occur to them how many other men do. They keep telling me, “If a wife is abused, she can file for at-fault divorce, and she will be just fine.”
But they don’t ever seem to have any answers for how the wife is supposed to do this if she’s a stay-at-home mom with no income of her own, and her husband controls the purse strings.
They don’t know how she’s supposed to prove that he’s whispering his constant verbal threats to her, thereby escaping recording or the attention of potential witnesses who could substantiate her claims.
They don’t know how to help her be taken seriously by the police when she tells them he’s trapped her in the house for the past three hours but he denies it ever happened.
Harms addresses the argument of at-fault divorce but believes that no-fault divorce should remain as an easier path because of the burden of proof. She concludes by attacking the character of Christian men who oppose no-fault divorce.
And no, of course I’m not saying that all no-fault divorces are the result of abuse. But I’m saying a lot of them are. And I’m saying you would never know this from a surface-level review of the statistics.
And let’s say Dusty Deevers and company DO succeed in getting rid of no-fault divorce. Then what? Do we actually believe they’re going to lift a finger to help women caught in abuse? I’m not particularly optimistic about this.
Kaeley Harms employs zero Scripture in her support of no-fault divorce which is unsurprising given that hers is a biblically indefensible position.