Category Archives: Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM

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Where ARE You, U.S. Family Policy Councils and Christian Legal Defense Funds???

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.   –  Sir Thomas More

Given his 1535 martyrdom for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce and adulterous remarriage to Ann Boleyn, does it seem at least a little reasonable to believe that Sir Thomas More might have been deeply troubled about the Marxist social engineering a successor Lord Chancellor named Gauke is currently cramming down the throats of over 80% of the UK citizens, a sample of whom  resoundingly told Parliament recently they don’t want 6-month forced family-shredding (no-defense divorce) to become the immoral law in their country?

When Ireland was about legalize abortion a couple of years ago, every one of these groups, whose logos appear above, tracked and wrote about it on an almost weekly basis.   When gay marriage was in the process of being legalized in numerous countries abroad (not the least of which was the UK), it was the top daily headline for every one of them.     The push to radically expand unilateral “no-fault” divorce has been all over the UK papers for more than a year now, ever since a British high court did the right thing by the nation’s families last year in denying a 67-year old woman who had no legitimate grounds to seek a divorce against her 80-year old husband of 40 years.  It wasn’t that this woman would never be divorced from her God-joined one-flesh mate under the UK civil law, however (unless the Lord brought her to repentance).   It was only that it had been just 4 years since she moved out of their main house, and this decision made her await the final year under existing law to fully go her own selfish way with a chunk of the sizable marital estate.

You guys decided to sit this one out for some reason.    One can only imagine if instead of an elderly heterosexual couple, this had been Elton John and his lovely “husband” David Furness being denied a quickie divorce under existing law.    Would any of you have been able to resist sparring back at the outraged tabloids?   Yet, in over a year’s time, not one of you has even shown awareness that traditional marriage in the UK literally is on its last lonely stand.

Believers who care about this issue were scratching our heads, but still willing to forgive and support you when two U.S. states in the last four years took the tremendously courageous step of very seriously attempting the repeal of forced family-shredding-on-demand by requiring that “no-fault” grounds only be allowed upon a joint petition or other form of documented mutual consent, but for public purposes, you chose to sit that one out as well.

“standerinfamilycourt” means no disrespect, but 90% of the infringement of religious liberty in the name of the Sexual Revolution can be traced directly back to that grossly irresponsible bill Gov. Ronald Reagan signed on September 5, 1969.    In fact, innocent “Respondents” on the receiving end of a unilateral “no-fault” petition, having been charged with the made-up crime of “irreconcilable differences”, have suffered the earliest, worst and most numerous of religious freedom violations, including loss of God-assigned parental rights to influence and discipline, loss of ability to choose and direct their childrens’ parochial education,  severe financial reprisals in court for not acquiescing to the petition, restraining orders where there was no lawful cause, jail time, loss of licenses, and on and on.   And don’t forget, scripture tells us that if a Christian (or anyone else, for that matter) is “divorced” by their spouse, it is immoral to “remarry” for as long as that spouse remains alive, an act which Christ repeatedly called ongoing adultery.    That item alone makes unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws the most severe of all religious freedom violations, other than religious acts deemed to be capital violations.

If your mission statements are sincere, how can you possibly be silently sitting these events out?    How can you be so embarrassed to be seen with your brothers and sisters in Christ who care as much about this issue as all of the Apostles and early church fathers did?
At least Mr. Reagan eventually admitted that his signature on the death warrant for the institution of binding holy matrimony was his worst act in all of his years of public service.

The people of the UK have a tiny window of time before this destructive law is imposed upon them against their majority will.    We’re going to be nice in this post and not say anything about how inexcusably the industry special interest group that is backing this is violating the Article 73 separation-of-powers provisions in the British constitution,  but we would like to introduce you to your embattled counterparts in the UK who actively fight for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage in its own right.    “Standerinfamilycourt” is pleading with you to come to their aid in any way you possibly can while this time window remains briefly open due to Brexit preoccupation (the hand of the Lord, perhaps?)   And we all know you can give these family warriors at least the moral support they need right now!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr. Thomas Pascoe and Mr. Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage (C4M).    Please consider giving these gentlemen a hand in not allowing the liberal press and ruling elites to control the debate with the sort of narrative that the past 50 years’ track record in this country has overwhelmingly disproven.

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.   – Hebrews 13:4

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!  

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Deja-Vu All Over Again: The “No-Fault” Elite Legal and Media Scam Job in the UK

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https://cordellcordell.co.uk/news/divorce_in_the_uk_stats_and_facts/
by Standerinfamilycourt

And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
– Mark 10:11-12

This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now.  In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance.    On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly –  God be praised!    On the bad side,  we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations.    Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.

Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”.      Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S.  Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.

Where is the voice of British church leadership (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist) in defending the biblical Matthew 19:4-6 family?  (Indeed, it appears that the Queen’s counterpart to the U.S. Attorney General are aggressively pushing this deeply flawed policy legislation which 20 years ago failed its pilot testing in the UK and was scrapped).

Where is the mention of the sad fact that enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws has caused U.S. church doctrine to decay and church morality to utterly disintegrate?

Where is the mention that enactment of forced, “no-blame” divorce has rendered most U.S. states unable to balance their budgets?

Where is the disclosure that many of the states depend on Federal funds derived from taking children away from their fit parents and trafficking them to foster homes to narrow their deficit gaps?

Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent  attorneys out of their pockets?

Where is the mention that enactment of these statutes has literally ballooned the size of state and Federal government in the U.S.?

Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?

Where is the mention of all the U.S. constitutional attorneys who have testified before state legislatures that they believe the U.S. unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws violate the Respondent’s fundamental constitutional rights in numerous ways?

Indeed, where is the mention of the mounting traffic in repeal and reform measures being filed each year in the various U.S. state legislatures because the system is failing?

The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”.      Hello?

Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate:    the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors.  
Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue,  so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public!   If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary  DivorceCorp,  and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.

And, oh, the shrieking, howling headlines from “across the pond” last year when Mrs. Owens (who most likely was recruited by the greedy elite special interests for the rarity and emotional pull of her case) lost her high court challenge by unanimous decision and was forced to wait one more year to immorally abandon her elderly husband while taking spoils.
“The courts can’t make Tini Owens love her husband!” whined Suzanne Moore at The Guardian.
“Nobody’s fault but the law”  echoed her Guardian colleague, Owen Bowcott.
“Tini Owens is locked into an unhappy marriage – this is why we need ‘no fault’ divorce”  (Guardian, again – Laura Barton).
“Tini Owens forced to stay married…”  howled the UK Daily Mail.

“Barbaric!” they all hissed.    Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations,  for both intact and government-shattered families.

Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands!    How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.

The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:

“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.”   –  Daily Mail, July, 2018

Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious:  Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife.     The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago.  It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.

Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”:  emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.

As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation,  including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview,  “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”

Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.

Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper,  Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative)  was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have.  ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.”   In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.”    (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)

Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world.  History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned.  As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites.    According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women.    She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S.  womens’ bar groups.  Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak).    We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships).   Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery.    The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.

These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another”  in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench.   On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.


This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” –  rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.

In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed).    Both were unstable situations, however, must the UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences?   What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period?  Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven?   As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.

No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed.  It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities  (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. )  Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,

“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.

“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.

“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”

So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign,  the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.

Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,

“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad

“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation.  I will have to write or email him a letter,  we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this,  yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”

Perhaps this Cornish friend will now be able to educate her MP about the five-decade U.S. adventure in state-enforced family shredding, and inform him that a growing number of people in the States don’t think setting back the family clock 50 years is actually that bad an idea.    This is not yet a “done deal”.    Bad policy was enacted and repealed before in the UK.   This is even worse policy, and does not deserve to be enacted, despite the powerful endorsements.   Even India had the common sense to repeal faultless unilateral divorce practices in their country, ruling them unconstitutional violations of equal protection and property rights.

Discretion will guard you,
Understanding will watch over you…
To deliver you from the strange woman,
From the adulteress who flatters with her words;
That leaves the companion of her youth
And forgets the covenant of her God;
 For her house sinks down to death
And her tracks lead to the dead;
 None who go to her return again,
Nor do they reach the paths of life.
–  Proverbs 2: 11, 16-18

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

 

 

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Letter from Menlo Park Jail

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by Standerinfamilycourt

“My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas … But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms. “
(Rev. Martin Luther King, April 16, 1963)

Today marks a major milestone in the ministry of “standerinfamilycourt”.    Someone was “triggered” over our blog on antinomianism and the Christian media pandering-for-profit to so-called “blended families.”    Interestingly, the Facebook crew had just 24 hours earlier, approved this particular post to be “boosted” in a paid ad, deciding at that time, it met their “community standards”.

Of course we weren’t talking about “the Brady Bunch” here when we discussed these “blended families”.   Back in the day,  it was as reliable as twin beds in the TV-land marital bedroom that “the lovely lady” and the “man named Brady” were both widowed.   We were instead talking about those who blatantly disobey New Testament scripture to drag their spouse before a pagan court to get “dissolution” papers, and then further disobey scripture to take advantage of biblically-immoral civil laws that allow them to “remarry” while their true spouse is still living.    Jesus repeatedly told us that this amounted to ongoing adultery, as did the Apostle Paul.

For a couple of years, “standerinfamilycourt” has watched many distinguished others (who are vocal online about sexual ethics) get shut down without notice, and based only on someone “reporting” a post as “offensive”, find themselves unable to operate any sites they were associated with, including their personal wall (even if that’s not where the reported  “infraction” occurred).     Those who have gone before have usually “triggered” someone in the LGBTQ community, or their sympathizers.    Meanwhile, since SIFC tends to believe that hand-wringing over mere symptoms (weaponized homosexualism, for example) of the root cancer (church leadership acquiescence to immoral and unconstitutional family laws)  is a bit futile, unless surgery is scheduled at the source of the symptoms.    “standerinfamilycourt” believes that the conditions others complain of in that realm are part of God’s slowly unfolding progressive judgment on the nation, ongoing for 50 years at least, eroding the privilege of effective constitutional protections, and which our church leadership alone could turn around, if only they weren’t utterly complicit with the breakdown in heterosexual ethics and families.   Our site has long been blessed to fly under the radar screen, so to speak, in large part because of this wholistic philosophy.    Almost never, in over four years, would a post on our site go after homosexuals for its own sake;  always such posts are tied on our pages with owning the truth about evangelical hypocrisy with regard to “sanctified”,  legalized adultery-with-paper.    As our culture continues to erode, even this is “triggering” people.    Such is the identical kind of “hate” John-the-Baptizer,  Jesus Christ, the Apostles Paul and Jude, brother of Jesus, regularly expressed.    Thank God, the penalty has been greatly reduced in our times for such “hate”.    At least for now.

“Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds… ”     MLK, April 16, 1963

Because many have “gone before” who are far more articulate than “standerinfamilycourt”, it almost seems redundant to complain (again) about the insult to our free speech protections in the 1st Amendment posed by the prevailing cultural norm: that everyone has some sort of fundamental right “not to be offended – ever“, which trumps free speech on a  tech “platform” to which our Federal government grants immunity protections from damages for harmful content, provided they don’t censor content.    Indeed, we are coming up on the anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg’s famous testimony before the U.S. senate, when Sen. Cruz asked him something like, “under the standards of the CDA (Communications Decency Act of 1996, section 230), would you call Facebook a “platform” or a “publisher”?     The CEO insisted that Facebook was a “platform”.      Yet the censorship is legendary at Facebook, and continues to grow without any sort of due process including notice or appeal.   If that sounds familiar, think back to the unsubstantiated allegations brought for purely partisan political reasons against Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall, where the accusers insisted that their mere allegation (never proven) should preempt his  very “license to operate” on the bench, or even on the coaching bench.    As MLK alludes to the need to do, “standerinfamilycourt” is still “working through” the best way to raise the necessary funds not to sit idly by behind a computer screen, but get out around the country to family policy councils, legislatures, standers’ retreats and other events, toward the end goal of abolishing forced faultless divorce and curbing adulterous remarriage in our country.

About three years ago “standerinfamilycourt” had a much-admired Australian counterpart whose Facebook community page had grown over the prior four years to just a bit larger following than Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional‘s  current 780 or so.  She was surely reaching the feeds of several thousand people each week, and she knew the traditional marriage activists in her own country well (such as the oft-incarcerated Bill Muhlenberg).   Unlike our page, this owner went as aggressively and directly after the LGBTQ community as she did the blight of sanctioned, legalized adultery saturating the church.   Then one day without warning, both her personal and her community pages disappeared, never to return.  The hope was, by way of explanation, that her estranged, prodigal husband had repented and returned.   Unfortunately, the covenant marriage stander community never found out exactly what happened to our comrade “Zipporah Moses”.    This alone should reinforce how very precious our free speech protections are to us in the United States.    Today’s gestapo are the large corporations rather than government storm troops.

“In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. ”
MLK, April 16, 1963

This blog post will be the only open whining planned by “standerinfamilycourt” over this incident.   It might be different if “demonetizing” our avenues to donation funds was on-the-line with our site, as was the case with The Activist Mommy, and PragerU.   But this ministry just isn’t quite to that point yet, and only beginning to mull over a more formal future, with clarified objectives and a strategy roadmap currently being deliberated.   We will continue to defy the Community Standard to the full extent necessary to put the biblical truth or other reliable facts across, but with no intentional offense being targeted at anyone.    We aim to do so lovingly, and we do accept the full consequences or penalties for our choices, as graciously as possible, making the most of the time as the days grow evil.    But for crying out loud, this time we “triggered” a white, female evangelical with the “offensive”, verbatim word of God!

Elizabeth Johnston, “The Activist Mommy” probably has a special place in her wardrobe for her Zuckerberg “slammer attire”, given her “hate” recidivism.  We believe her initial “conviction” (more accurately, her accusation via “reporting”) was about a year ago.    Early this week she had the delight to report in her blog on legislation introduced in the Florida Senate, which would fine social media firms $75,000 for each occurrence of censorship actions taken for political and religious reasons.   Please support FL  SB1722  and ask your own state representatives to sponsor similar bills.    While this may seem like a slap on the wrist to the tech giants, the cumulative occurrences would soon add up, and just may help to trigger actual enforcement of the Federal law aimed at this,  since liability is being imposed on firms for not complying with their claimed status as a “platform” due to the censorship they impose on conservative sites.    As it stands now, any person can shut down a site for a period of from 24 hours to indefinitely just by claiming to be “offended”.     That’s not due process!   And “triggered” people, especially those who claim to be “Christians”, but feel the need to “report” content that quotes holy scripture in disciplined, accurate context, well…..you have no respect for the 1st Amendment, either.

UPDATE  3/14/2019:   Well, as it turns out, “standerinfamilycourt” never did get a jail notice, and learned on Thursday that what was going on instead was a widespread and very long outage.   Our record it seems is still free of FB felonies, despite the rebuffs and occasional threats we get from offended folks.   The timing just happened to coincide with a threat by one of our disgruntled readers to report us.  Our functionality was starting to return bit by bit on Wednesday evening.     We publish this anyway, because most of the points made within are still perfectly true and valid.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.    Luke 6:26

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Sorry, But 50/50 Shared Parenting Won’t Solve the Constitutional Problem Or Help Raise Better Kids

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him.   The one woman said, “Oh, my lord,  this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 It happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house.  This woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on it.   So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom.  When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.”   Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” Thus they spoke before the king.

Then the king said, “ The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’”   The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king.    The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”   Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!”    Then the king said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”   When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had [o]handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to [p]administer justice.  
–  1 Kings 3:16-27

Back in biblical times, sons were a big deal, even to “ladies of the night”, because sons were a means of longterm survival if there was no husband in the picture.    It was on this basis that Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law repaid his treachery toward her by masquerading as a prostitute to get him to impregnate her, and when it was all said and done, he remarked that she was more righteous than he (duh!)    Anyone who has been to “family court” knows that not much has changed:  sons and daughters often translate into cash flow of varying reliability, courtesy of the court, for some women, and a few men as well, not to even mention some abusive state entities.    It’s understandable, then, that the parent who’s ordered to provide the cash flow would so much rather have parenting time instead.   Who can blame them?     Given that the states also get Federal payola in the form of Title IV-D payments for collecting those child support payments, we now have those babies being divided three ways in “family court”, instead of in half as proposed in Solomon’s court.

There are lots of videos out there describing this ugly underbelly of Big Divorce, a $100 billion per year industry, that additionally costs state and Federal taxpayers another $100+ billion each year in transferred social costs from unilateral “no-fault” forced divorce laws.   While we pointedly disagree with some of the spelling, and the conclusion, the facts and statistics are well-presented in this expose‘.  

Trust us when we say that our empathies are always with the innocent Respondent who was forced into “family court” against their will and conscience, when they never did anything to harm their children or family.    The typical situation:

Connie Covetous marries Billy Beergut, both previously single, but perhaps they were involved premaritally or cohabited first.    Connie finishes school, has a couple of kids, and goes to work in a job making around what Billy makes.   It’s still not enough to keep up with HGTV and the Travel Channel, and Billy doesn’t feel compelled to climb the economic ladder to make enough for upward mobility.   She’s exhausted.  He’s enjoying their kids and his hobbies.    Connie starts complaining about Billy to a male coworker she admires, who is climbing the ladder and doing all the things to improve himself that she wishes Billy were doing.    The male colleague complains back about his wife who “is taking him for granted”.    The two become involved and promise each other to divorce their respective spouses.   Under our legal system, it doesn’t matter whether or not those now-surplus spouses consent from the curb.   The unilateral petitions will be granted 100% of the time, and a reason doesn’t have to be given.     Neither discarded spouse does consent,  so Billy is dragged into court, and he’s ordered to pay child support and become a part-time father, by an imperious “black-robe” perched above him.    Now Connie’s household income is four times his, and he’s evicted from the family home to boot.   Close to 70% of unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women in the United States, as even the divorce attorneys tell us.  Only two states require mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds, and technically only one state, Mississippi, has laws that don’t eventually enable a forced divorce against the consent of an innocent partner.    

Is mandated 50-50 shared parenting really in the best interest of the child?    That depends.   Is it right for even 1% of the children’s time to be spent under Connie’s adulterous roof?    Arguably, not!    The trauma of remarriage has been shown in studies to be even worse for child outcomes than just the divorce, if the children are exposed to the legalized adultery partner.    If Billy B. becomes a “stander”,  and does not remarry or take on a girlfriend, the childrens’ outcomes will be better than if both parents remarry and are materially well off, no matter how little he’s allowed to see the kids.    The kids will see the day-in, day-out moral example their father sets in honoring his marriage vows in the most difficult of circumstances, i.e., immoral civil paper ordering him not to honor those vows to protect and cherish.  If, on the other hand, both parents are living in some form of state-licensed or unlicensed adultery, and that’s the forward plan, neither home is any better than the other for the kids, and they will be raised to believe adultery is an unavoidable cultural norm, that nothing in life is that reliable, and they will probably even avoid marriage as adults, having the next generation of kids out of wedlock.

If  we go back to 1968 and earlier, we didn’t have these societal issues to any meaningful degree because we had fault-based custody decisions.    That system worked well, and the reason it did has already been explained.    That system was also much cheaper for the taxpayers of the day (some grandparents will actually remember when we used to balance our state and Federal budgets), and it helped our constitutional republic to thrive because we always raised a majority of solid, moral citizens in sufficient numbers to sustain it.    Today that’s rapidly breaking down into cries for socialism among the children of this regime – as if unilateral, forced divorce isn’t already socialism, but clearly, blanket 50/50 shared parenting isn’t the answer from the sociological perspective.  It’s only one more layer of socialism, transferring resources from the virtuous to the less virtuous on both a micro and macro level.   (“standerinfamilycourt” is only coincidentally in agreement with the legal vultures of the “family court” regime on this one issue.   Hopefully that won’t happen again.)

Let’s now look at it from the fundamental rights perspective, and the longstanding legal precedents that have come down under the  Bill of Rights.    The growing number of shared parenting activists out there are correct that there are due process and equal protection issues involved here, under the 14th amendment.    But it’s not necessarily because they aren’t given the same amount of parenting time as the custodial parent, unless both parents are guilty of some equally grievous infraction against the marriage, the safety of the home, or the moral development of the children.     In fact, the guy in the video is technically arguing against his own core argument, in a sort of laughable double-speak.   For example, at ~5:30 minutes he says,

“creation of the ‘best interest of the children’ state statutes was unconstitutional!  And a lie.  They are vague value judgements (sic) and cannot be used until after harm to a child has been proven.”   

On the contrary, SIFC would humbly propose that the mere filing of a unilateral divorce petition on “no-fault” grounds is prima facie evidence of harm to the child, as well as to grandchildren, both born and unborn.   Under those circumstances, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the Petitioner(s) should not get more than supervised visitation, and no overnights, or whatever differing arrangement they mutually agree with the other spouse.    That’s equal protection under the law, and the “best interest of the child”, friends.   (Sword held at a respectful and safe distance from the baby.)    SIFC does agree that the principle of Parens Patriae ~7:10  is definitionally incompatible with “no-fault” because an asserted fault must be established for this power of the state to apply, and that it has been rampantly abused by state courts,  which are acting ministerially for legislatures who enacted the entire gamut of “no-fault” laws (not just grounds statutes) unconstitutionally.

The looting of the system evolved over time, escalating dramatically in the 1980’s.    The violation of civil rights and constitutional precedent occurring at the first hearing, which this gentleman refers to ~8:10  actually consists of reducing the parental authority of the non-filing spouse below 100% unless there’s some fault basis!   And the burden should be on the Petitioning side to prove this under the normal standards of evidence.   On the other hand, even if it’s 50/50, the innocent spouse’s civil rights are already being violated by 50% – half the maimed, spiritually dead baby, so to speak.   The constitutional issue this gentleman speaks of still remains under his split-the-baby approach, whether he’s being deprived of 50% of this parental sovereignty or 90% of it.    Admittedly, 50% is financially less burdensome than 90% in terms of child support, but that’s really a separate property-taking issue, which is also better-adjudicated under a fault-basis.    Under a proper repeal of non-consensual divorce on “no-fault” grounds, the divorce simply would not be granted unless the parents came to binding terms on all such matters so that nobody is forfeiting, nor being deprived of, their fundamental 14th amendment protections.

To be sure, most of the proposed legislation before legislatures in many states call for a “rebuttable presumption” that this is in the child’s best interest,  something that is likely to prove to be utterly meaningless “window dressing” in practice, given the rampant judicial corruption throughout the family court system, and the high hurdles to court access that most of us experience, should the need arise to rebut the presumption.   This will be a mere band-aid on a pustulent boil that needs full lancing and draining.    It appears that the industrial family law machine and its lobbyists are somewhat split on the issue, looking as they always do through their primary lens:  impact on longterm fee revenue.    A few firms embrace it, realizing that nothing is ever really final.    Most stand vehemently opposed, proving that pushing through forced divorces quickly, then litigating over children and support collections for years thereafter is the optimal business model.    We should keep an eye on the trend in state enactment threat, those of us who hope to abolish non-consensual “no-fault” decrees altogether.    Strategically, in the face of enactment of a law that has pretty strong public sympathy,  as 50/50 shared parenting has, and seems inevitable — as a matter not of if but when, might there come a day when under those changed circumstances, we could start to persuade the “family law” lobby that forced faultless divorces are no longer in their business interest?   Are they aware from their own market research that 80% of unilateral “no-fault” divorces in the U.S. aren’t really mutual, nor over “irreconcilable differences” other than adultery or the desire to pursue adultery legally?

“standerinfamilycourt” is aware that this post is not going to sit well with those who are already-divorced and not looking back, possibly “remarried”, strapped with child support payments and either alienated from their children, or allowed too little time with them.   That sucks.   Unfortunately, it boils down to the same choice you would have made for their sake if you were civilly still in that marriage.  There would be no one on the side, for their sake, with or without the subsequent civil paper condoning it.    You’d be on your knees taking your complaint to the Lord about any and all barriers to your being the parent He appointed you to be.     You’d be sacrificing and laying down your life in order to raise them right, since you only get one shot at it.   The Lord would see this and, in His time, move mountains in your behalf.

Here’s what the Righteous Judge says about the best interest of the child:

And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;  but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.  Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.    If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the   fiery hell.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.”

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom, Substantive Due Process

Would a Ruling that Unilateral No-Fault Divorce is Unconstitutional REALLY Be “Legislating from the Bench” ?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State; –between Citizens of different States, –between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
United States Constitution, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.    United States Constitution, Article 10

Two landmark cases of the Sexual Revolution in the U.S., namely Roe v. Wade – 1973 (depriving pre-born children of their fundamental right to life), and Obergefell v. Hodges – 2015, legalizing sodomy as “marriage”, were seen by conservatives and original constructionists (with a fair amount of justification, we daresay) as “legislating from the bench”.    An extra-constitutional fundamental right (to “privacy”) was established without actually amending the Constitution via Congressional and state legislative action as called for in Article 5.    Leading up to those cases, several other cases also turned on a judicially-presumed “right of privacy”, including Eisenstadt v. Baird – 1972 (establishing the right of unmarried individuals to purchase contraceptives) and Lawrence v. Texas – 2003 (declaring state laws against sodomy “unconstitutional”).      It should be noted that the fundamental right that is explicit in the Bill of Rights is the right to freedom of association, which came to be closely associated with a presumed “privacy” right which, even worse, has come to override the priority of other conflicting fundamental rights of impacted parties, in order to arrive at some of these activist, individualist decisions that don’t comport with balancing fundamental rights in a way that is best for society as a whole.

As for prioritizing the protection of fundamental rights that inherently conflict with one another, most reasonable people would concur with the principle:  “My fundamental rights end where yours take up.”     For example, a baby’s right to life was ruled in Roe v. Wade to unduly infringe upon a woman’s right to “free association”, but is that reasonable?    A homosexual pair’s right to “free association”, protected by local SOGI laws (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) was ruled to have priority over a wedding professional’s free exercise of religion in a matter before the U.S. Supreme Court last year with a landmark ruling in his favor delivered in June.

SCOTUS did (effectively) rule in 2015 that homosexual couples have a fundamental right to remain married, but our unilateral divorce laws continue to deny that same fundamental right to innocent heterosexual spouses who oppose the purported “dissolution” of their marriage as profoundly harmful to their immediate and extended families’ true best interests, and significantly infringing on the family members’ rights to free association and free religious exercise.  In fact, the Petitioner’s presumed right to “free association” with an adulterous partner, and “privacy” are treated as trumping their innocent spouse’s right to free religious exercise and conscience, as well as their right to protection of property with due process of law, along with their right to protection of decades of extended family relationships.    My right to bear arms must necessarily yield to your right to life if I misuse my fundamental right in order to advance my individual selfish interest at your expense.    And so forth.

Most immoral laws and court rulings indeed result from immoral prioritization of conflicting fundamental rights – a balancing that always has been unavoidable when it comes to the Bill of Rights protections.    It is popular (and ridiculously false) to claim that “you can’t legislate morality”,  but is that not precisely what laws against murder, rape, battery, larceny and defamation actually do?   Don’t discrimination laws of all types “legislate morality” ?

C.S. Lewis famously said,

“There is no neutral ground in the universe.   Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”

Indeed, if someone isn’t legislating morality, it certainly doesn’t leave just a neutral vacuum.     The evidence is all around us that somebody else is surely going to be legislating immorality –and in constantly increasing amounts,  to the corrosive detriment of the whole of society.    As the morality and sense of the good of the whole thereby disintegrates, the whole nation can go down to historic ruin because immoral laws can be exceedingly difficult to reverse no matter how much vile impact they’ve produced.

This concludes the long introduction to the topic at-hand.
Our U.S. Constitution and state constitutions were designed with an intentional separation-of-powers so that the three branches,  legislative, executive and judicial, historically operated with prudent boundaries; checks-and-balances on each other.    It wasn’t perfect, but it continued to pervasively function well over a long period of time —  until the Sexual Revolution hit in full force in the 1970’s.   In addition, the concept of Federalism served to set boundaries of balance between states’ power and the power of national leaders.     Unfortunately, both of these mechanisms in recent decades have worked together to make the erosion of equal protection in marriage laws enacted with unconstitutional statutory provisions increasingly difficult to counter or overturn, at least with regard to the heterosexuals who (after all) produce the children who become the next generation of citizens.

As we’ve seen since former President Obama swept into office in 2008, it’s been a far different story with regard to homosexuals, who achieved superior protections to all other citizens, and relaxation of those legal boundaries, vis-à-vis heterosexuals .   Homosexuals have typically not been required to undertake the expensive burden of taking marriage cases through all levels of the state courts before a lower Federal court would hear and rule on the case.    Homosexuals have often been extended special privilege in overturning a state marriage law that state judiciary authorities declined to review.    By contrast, heterosexuals in modern times have been forced to bear the expensive burden of exhausting all state channels of review, with SCOTUS being the first allowed Federal  engagement point of review.   The odds of getting a constitutional challenge heard there are approximately 90 to 1 as recently reported.     Reportedly, less than 1% of the 9,000 some cases submitted for SCOTUS docketing ever make it oral arguments.    Unless at least four Justices agree to hear the case, it will never be heard, and no reason need be given.   To make matters worse, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Court revealed that the Justices had been using a “vetting pool” of clerks, rather than having their own clerks read the cases, reducing the chances of a case which so fundamentally “takes on” the Sexual Revolution having its day in highest court in the land even more remote.    To his credit, Justice Gorsuch announced that he would be joining Justice Alito in breaking with that convenience.    Most recently, Justice Kavanaugh was mum on that issue, so presumably he’s using the “cert” pool, as the now-retired Justice Kennedy did.   That means liberal clerks still probably outnumber conservative clerks in that pool, but “standerinfamilycourt” digresses except to say that even the conservative clerks are going to have an ideological bias against the perception of “legislating from the bench”.

Unfortunately, the whole concept of “legislating from the bench”,  tends to be ideologically charged.   It refers to using courts to violate the constitutional separation of powers in Articles 1 and 3, also the interference with Federalism and states’ rights prohibited by Article 10.    Our constitutional republic is gravely harmed in the clear-cut cases of “legislating from the bench” where special rights have been created for a group of people in a case precedent that will in fact deny fundamental rights to everyone else in order to implement and enforce the same.    Our constitutional republic is equally harmed when an ideological majority uses the concept as an excuse to deny fundamental rights to a group of people whose state constitutions and the Bill of Rights is supposed to guarantee them.   The latter has historically been accomplished either through applying an inappropriate standard of judicial review, or wrongfully declining to hear such a case coming from a lower level.

For example, in 1986, Florida pro-se constitutional challenger Judith Brumbaugh related in her book, “Judge, Please Don’t Strike that Gavel on My Marriage”, that she managed to get her appeal of Florida’s unilateral “no-fault” divorce law docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court.    They ultimately declined to hear the case “for want of a Federal question”.    It was striking that Judith’s request for “cert” even got docketed.   This blog has documented many earlier challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws based on religious freedom and equal protection grounds, where the state appeals courts applied the rational basis standard of review, instead of the strict scrutiny basis that is constitutionally required when fundamental rights are being denied by a state statute.   The latter requires that the states prove a compelling interest in denying those fundamental rights, and that such laws be narrowly-tailored to meet that interest in the least intrusive way upon those rights.    What tends to happen is that SCOTUS will apply Article 10 first, and say there is no “Federal question” (unless conflicting results are found in lower courts in different circuits on the same issue) even when it is clear that not only is the Bill of Rights being violated, but the state courts are tolerating wholesale violations of Articles 1 and 3, and thereby compromising the separation-of-powers between the branches of government.    What’s really happening is the actual inverse of “legislating from the bench”,  that is, taking away true judicial discretion and validating a phony cause-of-action from the floors of the state legislative bodies, while being allowed to do it through what amounts to judicial collusion and self-dealing.

Although SCOTUS intervened twice in equal protection cases involving marriage or divorce between homosexuals between 2013 and 2015, the last heterosexual divorce case “standerinfamilycourt” could find that was heard appears to be in 1996 out of Mississippi, and it involved the termination of parental rights for a mother who had suffered a divorce to which she probably acquiesced.    (Mississippi’s “no-fault” law is the only one in the country that was comprehensively enacted in 1972 so as to not force divorce on a non-consenting spouse except on a fault basis.)   The matter at issue was not even the divorce itself, but her inability to pay the transcript costs that blocked her from fighting the termination of her parental rights at the request of her now-“remarried” husband.    There was already significant precedent for the costs of access to courts not to be permitted to deny access to her avenues of initial hearing or appeal.  That case was simply remanded back to the state on that very narrow basis.

In the landmark case, Loving v Virginia (1967) there were no such concerns with violating Article 10.    The Lovings had secured the help of the ACLU to fight the state’s anti-miscegenation laws all the way up through the state appellate system in a class action suit, until certiorari was requested and granted from SCOTUS.   However, neither was there any artificial requirement imposed by SCOTUS to wait for differing outcomes in other regions of the country, lest the spurious claim be made of “want of a Federal question”.    The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) ….

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

….makes such assertions highly questionable when Bill of Rights protections are being denied by state legislatures to its citizens.
The sequence of events in the Loving case, as laid out in the majority SCOTUS opinion:

“On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court. The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966…”

Fundamental rights to stay married, and to live where they wished were on the line in this case that was decided unanimously by the Justices, two and a half years before unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws began to be enacted in the various states.   While it should never be the case, the ugly reality is that the changeable prevailing morality tends to drive landmark SCOTUS decisions and fundamental rights get some lip service, but tend to take a back seat.  For more on the constitutional challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce  that were decided at the state level under an erroneous standard of judicial review, but never heard by SCOTUS, please click here, and here.   Several of the gay marriage cases decided in 2014 cited the right to stay married.

If subsequent state legislation conflicts with a state constitution, there is no violation of Federalism for SCOTUS to enforce the state constitution where a state supreme court denied certiorari.

First-level state appeals are required to be heard, but are sometimes dismissed on technicalities, and hearings for state Supreme Court appeals can be declined without comment, simply based on the number of cases submitted, with “standerinfamilycourt’s” constitutional attorney advising that the state Supreme Court might hear perhaps 5% of the few thousand appeals submitted each session.   Given the influence-peddling on the state level for states that have an elected judiciary, which was ongoing both before and after the jaw-dropping Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS (money is “speech”), it is important, in theory at least, to have an unobstructed path to SCOTUS.    Appellate decisions at the state level, and demonstrably also by SCOTUS, are becoming almost uniformly ideological rather than independent, with the effect that constitutional checks-and-balances between the branches of government are becoming ever-weaker, and stare decisis (ruling by precedent) is pretty much a joke these days.   While in a rare instance there might be a favorable individual challenge where the ruling would be limited in its impact to the law as applied to just that case,  no state appellate court wants to invalidate 50 years worth of unconstitutional marriage dissolutions by admitting the laws are unconstitutional on their face, knowing the social chaos that would result, so these courts will be duplicitous in avoiding ever being put in a situation where they would have to so rule.    Some basis is going to have the be found for taking a constitutional challenge up through the Federal court system despite the long history of being barred from doing so by Article 10 arguments.

In one sense, given the long history of barriers and difficulty of getting any true appellate justice in 1st and 14th Amendment-based challenges to unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, either on the state or Federal levels, the question of whether it would be “legislating from the bench” to declare them unconstitutional on this basis might seem like a moot or futile question.    However, if judges could be sued in Federal court because they ruled while having no true subject matter jurisdiction due to the Article 3 violations entailed in the statute, then this might suddenly become a very relevant question.    As this post is being written, the theory that state divorce statutes unconstitutionally strip judges of the discretion required by Article 3 is being tested in Federal court in several states.    As soon as some initial outcomes are available, the updates will be the subject of a future post.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.   “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
– Malachi 3: 5-6

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

 

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

“Standerinfamilycourt” Responds to Dr. Hilary Towers and Author Leila Miller

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Our response to this article,
Are the Church’s Teachings on Sexuality Still ‘Good News’ for the Divorced?
…which is (in part) about Protestant covenant marriage “standers” and their example to Roman Catholic divorcees.

There’s much to say here.  Bottom line: Jesus told us in Matt. 19:8 that all “divorce” is a man-made fabrication “from the beginning”,  a violation of the created order (Gen. 2:21-24; Matt. 19:4-6), and the only “marriage” God recognizes is both complementarian and life-long indissoluble by any acts or paper of men.   He and Paul both go on to say that dying in the ongoing state of adultery – that is, “remarriage” after man-legalized abandonment of a God-joined spouse, sends people to hell (Matt. 5:27-32; Luke 16:15-31; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
The only people, therefore, who are actually “divorced” are the subsequent spouses who were never married in God’s eyes to begin with. True God-joined spouses are only immorally abandoned, according to the word of God, because only D-E-A-T-H ever dissolves those marriages.   Jesus mentions NO religious test for this that is recorded within the four canonized gospels, nor do any of the Apostles reference such.    Bluntly, all Christ-followers should vehemently object to Roman Catholic doctrine that waters down this truth via the papal contrivance of “nullity”, which today amounts to little more than revival of the vile medieval practice of selling indulgences.   

By the “church” the obvious reference in this article is to the RCC, who since the 12th century has progressively watered down this hard truth with “annulment” (extra paper), a practice which is now almost universal in this country.  The Protestant church, on the other hand, watered it down by ignoring / reinterpreting / obfuscating the scriptures, fraudulently handing jurisdiction over to the civil state by the Reformers, and by casting inexcusable doubt on the Apostles and early church fathers who unanimously confirmed the hard truth for 400 years–until history’s last “Donald Trump” came along (namely, the Emperor Constantine).

Under the concurrent polygamist, Constantine, the church took its first Leftist turn, in gratitude for being delivered from Roman persecution.

We saw this wicked cycle being played out again at the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, where in addition to the longstanding violation of Matt. 19:6, the largest evangelical denomination in the U.S. is now paving the way for sanctioned violation of Matt. 19:4, rather than repent of BOTH forms of marriage desecration, and rather than patiently endure the resulting persecution of staying true to biblical sexual ethics.    Possibly the recent spectacle of human street torches on the big screen in the movie “The Apostle Paul” didn’t bode well, but there also seems to be increasing evidence of dirty money making its way into both the RCC and the SBC. The objective of the outside financial largesse, of course, is to complete the decades-long orchestrated political extinction of the biblical family.

“Irregular circumstances” need to be repented of by severance.   This is a euphemistic canonical term for immoral life choices that Jesus and Paul both repeatedly tell us destroy the souls of those involved.   Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that this is ongoing adultery in every case where there is a living, estranged spouse on either side.    We can all empathize with the desire to lessen the stigma and trauma for the children of such illicit unions, but we must never lose sight of the betrayed children of covenant, and must never favor the illicit children over the covenant children (and covenant generations).    God never did this.   Jesus was graphically clear in Luke 16 when describing the eternal fate of such “married” people.     We presume that then, as now,  there were non-covenant children involved — just as there are children made in God’s image today being raised in sodomous unions.

In fact, while it’s great that this article highlights and praises the “standers” who endeavor to live chaste lives following man’s divorce, it’s also true that the only pure motivation for standing that goes the distance is the consuming and enduring desire to keep family members and our one-flesh mates (as well as their legalized adultery partners) out of hell by leaving the door wide open to their physical repentance.   Any church that recognizes “irregular circumstances” and gives that any other treatment than what was prescribed by Paul in 1 Cor. 5 is directly stoking the demand for the rising, overwhelming incidence of divorce.   We don’t need family flowcharts, we need on-our-face repentance in the holy fear of God!

The authors write:

“Protestants have a term for those spouses who remain true to a wayward spouse even in the wake of what may be a necessary separation and/or civil divorce: “standers.” Absent clear and enthusiastic support for this approach (both from within the Church and without), it simply does not occur to many faithful U.S. Catholics that ‘standing’ might be the most compassionate option for the abandoned spouse and his or her children.”       (We standers certainly believe that the Apostle Paul would agree.)

This is an excellent observation, with a couple of caveats.  First, most standers who are true Christ-followers do not consider civil divorce “necessary” under any circumstances, because they know it is of no effect in the kingdom of God.   The obvious exception is, of course, divorce out of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called ongoing adulterous (non-widowed “remarriage”) — a union which God is always precluded from participating in at all.    This differs not one whit from a sodomous, legalized union for all the same reasons.   Disciples in covenant marriages should endeavor not to participate in the civil system, and should be willing to endure whatever hardships necessary, rather than disobey 1 Cor. 6:1-8.

If the authors are under the impression that standers are ever civil divorce initiators, they are only fractionally correct. There are a handful of these who went from prodigal to stander after learning the truth, and then repenting (by leaving adulterous subsequent relationships, legalized or not).  Separation without civil involvement may indeed be necessary for original marriages — and this is consistent with the instructions of the Apostle in 1 Cor. 7:10-11, not to divorce, and if divorced, to remain celibate until reconciled.

Secondly, local Protestant churches typically consider standers “pariahs” and a threat to the “unity” of the church.  Some false shepherds will even carry out “church discipline” on vocal standers (instead of on the legalized adulterers whose souls are actually on the line).    Of course, one does not necessarily need to have an estranged marriage to be a stander in the larger sense.  

Thankfully, God is raising up a growing handful of Protestant pastors, with and without congregations, in an encouraging variety of evangelical denominations, who are coming into the biblical truth in the last few years, Berean-style, through deep study of original language scripture manuscripts and the writings of the ante-Nicene “church fathers“ (whereas their faithless peers would prefer to discard this valuable historic evidence in order to please and appease the religious humanists filling their pews)–and these true shepherds are coming into the unpopular truth by the wooing of the Holy Spirit.    These men have determined to suffer the economic consequences and the censure entailed in refusing to do adulterous weddings, in attending marriage permanence retreats to encourage standers, in writing truthful books, and in preaching the truth without fear of the temporal consequences.   SIFC and the angels in heaven can’t sing their praises loudly enough!

SIFC believes it was Dr. Towers who recently suggested that the effects of the standers’ movement on their children should be studied when there is a large enough sample size.   Amen!  At present, SIFC blogs anecdotally on this topic quite frequently.   We would all hope that unilateral divorce will be abolished nationwide, well before sample size  “n” can occur and before longitudinal results would ever become available.   SIFC has historical doubts that the Lord will tarry that long in these Days of Noah, but absolutely applauds Dr. Towers’ desire to see this topic studied.   Let’s be thankful that the Lord has orchestrated that Catholics and Protestants work together to turn the moral tide in church culture before it’s apocalyptically too  late for our country.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
– Daniel 4:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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How Do We Know that God Created Indissoluble Holy Matrimony to Mirror the Gospel?

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by Standerinfamilycourt

From a recent facebook exchange about John MacArthur as a purported gospel “truth-teller” (versus the alleged “distorters” of the gospel), on the Pulpit & Pen facebook page post:

SIFC:  “MacArthur is himself a Gospel distorter because he refuses to tell the truth about the no-excuses lifelong indissolubility of holy matrimony. Piper does tell the truth, but then he turns right around and tells people to stay in their ongoing man-legalized adultery, as if Paul didn’t warn at least twice that doing so will land them in hell. God designed holy matrimony as the very image of the gospel.
It cannot be desecrated the way the Mac-Man promotes, without pulling all of society down in 3 or 4 generations.”

JAB: “I actually agree with you on the permanence of marriage, but how is disagreeing distorting the gospel?”

SML: “[SIFC], please answer Johnny Benson’s question. I am interested”.

SIFC:  “Excellent question, Johnny. I have a male blogger friend who, upon learning the biblical truth and becoming convicted, removed himself from his biblically-adulterous “marriage” to another man’s discarded covenant wife several years ago, encouraging her to reconcile with her true husband. One of his blogs expresses this so much more eloquently than I ever could, but I can’t seem to find it right offhand, so we’ll have to make do with my attempt at it. You are right, this aspect of comparison to the gospel could fairly be construed as “opinion”. It is one of those truths that is Spirit-imparted, but I believe there is ample evidence that Jesus modeled this many times Himself. I think misappropriated Lutherism and Calvinism (“insurance policy Christianity”) tends to blind most of us to this pervasive truth, especially in our adultery-steeped church culture.

“I think the biggest clue that Matt. 19:4-6, 8 indissoluble holy matrimony is God’s first-created symbol for the gospel is the fact that Jesus was one of the two witnesses at history’s first wedding (the other was the serpent) where the very first mini- “church” is created, is repeatedly referred to as the Bridegroom throughout the OT and NT, ending with Rev. 22:17,20:  “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost….He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra and Malachi all testified to this (ironically leading to some of the most egregious hermeneutic sins imaginable in our contemporary churchianity, but I digress)…all of them comparing covenant-breaking with idolatry.  Jesus echoes this in His fiery rebuke of the Pharisees in Luke 16.

“Most people don’t know it (because they deliberately aren’t taught), but the comforting words with which Jesus opens the last supper would have been instantly recognized by the twelve, because they are the ancient, ceremonial words of the Hebrew betrothal ceremony, such as Joseph would have repeated in front of Mary’s family just before His conception….”In My Father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you…I go away to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may be also….I will not drink of this cup again until I drink it anew in My Father’s house..” (and so forth). The bread symbolizes “sarx mia” (supernatural, instantaneous, inseverable one-flesh) and the wine symbolizes unconditional covenant. His very ministry began at a wedding, where He turned an ordinary element necessary to life* itself into a flow of unconditional covenant.

“When Jesus says, “I will never leave nor forsake you”,  He is referring to all of this, and it is the primary reason He demands unconditional forgiveness of our neighbor as a condition of inheriting the kingdom of God. When Paul says in Galatians 4:22, “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman (Hagar) and one by the free woman (Sarah). But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise”, he is referring to the kingdom difference between a God-joined partner and a carnal-but-legal counterfeit.

“Piper also makes the case for holy matrimony reflecting the gospel (as contrasted with our post-modern redefinition of “marriage” to include legalized adultery and legalized sodomy) so very eloquently and accurately, but then he wrongly believes that dying in an ongoing state of covenant-breaking will only result in the “loss of rewards”, despite Paul’s repeated clear warnings to the contrary.
He wrongly claims that full repentance from such is “repeat sin”.
In doing so, he morally equates God-joined unions with those that Jesus repeatedly and unequivocally called ongoing adultery, as if God’s hand would join someone to more than one living spouse or go back on His own unconditional covenant with the existing one-flesh entity He already created. I’ve not personally read Piper’s book, “This Momentary Marriage”, but my blogger friend has reviewed it:
http://genesistwo24.blogspot.com/…/a-book-review-this…”

………………………………………………………..

If only this Facebook exchange had ended right there, but alas, nobody says to a “TULIP-merchant” something like , “[Piper] wrongly believes that dying in an ongoing state of [marital] covenant-breaking will only result in the “loss of rewards”, without getting the authenticity of one’s salvation questioned, do they?    The conversation went on in that tedious vein for what seems like hours afterward, but the readers will here be spared.   “Standerinfamilycourt’s”   prayerful view of that errant dogma can be read here, for those interested.   (Meanwhile, “SML” above went in a different direction of challenge:  “are you really saying there is no divorce for cases of abuse and abandonment?”   Yes, ma’am, but I didn’t write the bible.)

The point “JAB” pushed is nonetheless relevant because someone who views their “salvation” as a guaranteed, punch-card past transaction instead of an unconsummated ongoing betrothal is going to say something similar to what “JAB” refused, after all the above discussion, to budge from:   “marriage is a picture of the relationship of Christ and His bride the church, but it’s not the gospel.   That’s ‘idolizing’ marriage.”     Salvation, for “JAB” and adherents, is strictly the transaction (which the right-minded more accurately call justification), but for him, “salvation” doesn’t seem to entail any of  the details about becoming sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit, or learning how to live with the Bridegroom in eternity, ahead of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.    In other words, it’s a pared-down gospel that makes our sanctification seem “optional”, leading to the Calvinist’s (false) allegations of a “works-based” gospel if it is based in any way on obeying the commandments of Christ.    Yes, we are indeed free of any requirement to follow the Law of Moses, but obeying Christ from the heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is worlds removed from that!   We cannot equate the commandments of Christ with the defunct Law of Moses.

According to the referenced sermon by Dr. MacArthur, “false teachers”:

(1) hinder believers from obeying the truth by falsely claiming the authority of James, the head of the early church, and attacking Paul’s authority
(2) “obeying the truth” is to believe the gospel (circular argument, as presented by Dr. M, if it excludes obedience to Christ’s direct commandments in purported “legalism”)
(3) do not represent God (in “legalistic lies“)
(4) contaminate the church – “a little leaven…”
(5) will face judgment (SIFC: indeed!) because they are in it for money (SIFC: beginning at 38:25 the irony of this sermon really comes to a crescendo)
(6) persecute the true teachers (perhaps by calling them “graceless legalists” and “Pharisees”?)

The hypocritical application of what, on its face at least, is biblical truth is what most tickles carnal ears (contemporary “Nicolaitans”) these days.   Biblical “grace” never focuses on the temporal while completely ignoring what the bible says about eternal outcomes.    Refraining from disobeying Jesus by the act of “marrying” someone else while having a living, estranged spouse is not “legalism”, any more than refraining from sodomy, incest or concurrent polygamy is.     Indeed, James, the head of the church officially required the converted Gentiles in Acts 15 to refrain from sexual immorality.   Elsewhere, Paul tells us our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.   Refraining from, or physically repenting from, remarriage adultery is akin to refraining from touching the Ark of the Covenant — another of God’s most sacred symbols.   No, there isn’t instant death any longer for violators, but only because of Christ’s resurrection, and because God is not eager to instantly dispatch people to hell while Jesus is advocating for their souls that they would fully repent.   (“JAB” made a big deal that this was so they wouldn’t actually need to repent, other than from alleged “unbelief” in “grace”.)

By the Spirit of the Lord, there are a few Calvinists who “get” marriage permanence (Dr. “Mac” not being one of those).    SIFC hangs out on pages like Pulpit & Pen because the page owners are outspoken critics of a wide variety of the worst enemies and abusers of the sanctity of marriage within the evangelical church today.     At the same time, they seem to be boosters of the good doctor, despite his apostasy concerning marriage, and it’s not very clear why that’s the case at this point.   Perhaps it was good to get a word in on the subject, because not just any marriage, nor the institution of marriage reflects the gospel, that is, the husband laying down his life, and the wife submitting to her husband under the Lordship of Christ, both parties forgiving each other as Christ forgives us, seventy times seven, and the preparation for heaven.  How can much of what passes  for “marriage” these days, either in law or in practice, possibly do any of that?    No, it’s only God-joined, indissoluble unions that actually mirror the gospel.  Neither can be counterfeited by caving to an evil contemporary culture.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.

Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.”  Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he *said to me, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”    –  Revelation 19:6-10

(* Sorry, we couldn’t resist the well-timed jab by the satire page, Babylon Bee.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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Heads Up, Alabama – Here Comes a Liberal, Anti-Family Trojan Horse!

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Wedding Cake Pulverized
by Standerinfamilycourt

On January 17, 2018, Texas MassResistance (an offshoot of a Massachusetts-based pro-family organization that does aggressive battle with the comprehensive LGBT political agenda)  posted an article to their Facebook page from AL.com,

Alabama Senate Passes Bill to Eliminate Marriage Licenses

with the following Facebook comments:

“It’s sad to see a state opt out of licensing marriage, but the truth is real marriage as a legal construct essentially ceased to exist with the legalization of gay marriage. It’s like removing the legal distinction between real money and play money. Real money means nothing once play money becomes legal tender– and everyone is made poorer– even counterfeiters– same story on gay marriage.

“Gays kid themselves if they think they their marriages are of the same substance as marriage prior to gay marriage. Put a drop of fine wine from a wine bottle into a bottle of sewer water and you still have a bottle of wine and a bottle of sewer water, but put a drop of sewer water into a bottle of fine wine and you have two bottles of sewer water. Things of higher value are diminished or destroyed altogether when mixed with things of lower value. Alabama’s move to eliminate marriage licenses recognizes that reality– MR-T”

With a few days’ delay, we noticed a re-post of this on the Facebook wall by a friend of our blog page who lives in Texas, and we commented to MassResistance on their page as follows:

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:
“There are two conscionable alternatives to dealing with civil law that no longer coincides with God’s law in any respect:

(1) pastors opt out of participating in the civil system as an agent for the state (example: the 2014 First Things Marriage Pledge)
(2) what Alabama is seeking to do

“Although some 800+ pastors from a wide variety of denominations had signed the Marriage Pledge by two months after Obergefell, nearly 3 years later, few have had the moral courage to make good on it. We have a pretty good idea why not — wrong motives, and the sudden delayed realization of what that might do to the ability of heterosexuals to do what God forbids and get a state “dissolution” decree.
So, that leaves Option 2.

“We humbly remind that God’s definition of marriage (Matt.19:4-6) has TWO non-negotiable elements, not just one – as the tone of this post strongly implies. Those elements are: (1) complementarity, and (2) indissolubility.   Hence, the adulteration of that wine bottle started to take place 48 years ago, not in 2015, two generations later.
Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s”. He told us that Holy Matrimony does not happen except by God’s hand.  It’s therefore quite suspect that the Reformation humanists, Martin Luther in particular, saw fit to hand over to the state that which belonged to God in the first place. Count on God not to allow this issue to dissipate until His full definition of marriage is honored, and pastors from coast to coast repent of whining about sodomy-as-“marriage” while carefully preserving consecutive polygamy-as-holy-matrimony.

“It will be interesting to see, if this progresses to become law, how they continue to issue ‘dissolutions’. It’s probably pretty simple to substitute their affidavits for marriage certificates when it comes to finding another unilateral home invasion warrant, but how will they handle the gory details?  Option 1 would have denied them the piece of paper usable as such a “warrant” in a substantial number of cases.”

MassResistance gave a very gracious response to our comment, which we will leave the readers to reference on their own.

Of course, Alabama is the infamous state of dethroned State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from the bench in 2016 on ethics charges because he issued an administrative order to lower court judges stating, “until further decision by the Alabama Supreme Court, the existing orders of the Alabama Supreme Court that Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act remain in full force and effect….”   citing the fundamental right of these judges to conscience protections and free religious exercise in declining to issue civil marriage licenses to homosexuals.   (Presumably, these same judges had no serious compunctions or religious conscience issues with issuing civil marriage licenses to would-be legalized adulterers in the years since 1975 enactment of Alabama’s unilateral divorce laws.   Moore is himself “married” to a civilly-“divorced” woman.)    Apparently, for all the smoke-blowing that ensued to remove Moore, his successor on the bench has not reversed the 2016 administrative order after almost two years, the lingering effect being as stated in the AL.com article:

“Under current law, Alabama probate judges are not required to issue marriage licenses and some, at least initially, declined to issue licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court ruling.

“Albritton’s bill would take away any discretion by probate judges. The only requirement to make a marriage official would be to submit the documents to the probate judge.”

Take away the discretion of judges….does this sound familiar?   It should indeed!    This is exactly how brutal totalitarianism came to be injected into “family court” processes and procedures to implement unilateral divorce, without raising a whimper of public protest even though the 1st and 14th amendment protections were being stripped from millions of Americans in the process.    Legislating immorality has always been a stealth process — and in the past five decades, it has come to work flawlessly…intractably.

The gay “marriages” taking place in Alabama in this long interim have  only been enabled where LGBT-sympathetic judges are willing to issue the civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples.    Several counties are reportedly not issuing them at all.

SB13’s sponsor, Greg Albritton appears to be a liberal Republican, according to a 2016 voting scorecard published by the American Conservative Union, where he scored 58%,  the lowest of all of his GOP peers, and equaling the score of the highest scoring Democrat in the Alabama Senate.    His bill passed a fast-tracked and astounding floor vote of 19-1 in mid-January, and the ACLU published their analysis stating that they do not consider it a threat to liberal interests, so they are not taking a position on it.    This is a strong, red flag that the measure is not expected to be supportive of biblical, traditional families, since it is not drawing ACLU opposition.  The full text of SB13 (about 9 pages) can be read here.

At first blush, it should seem like a dream-come-true that the state might be giving back to God the authority over the holy ordinance that He never delegated to fallible, carnal men in civil government….

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [human] separate”…..He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. ”
– Matthew 19:6, 8

However, there is an ominous poison-pill:   it will no longer be necessary to have vows or a public ceremony should these bills become law.

Jesus pointed back to the first wedding in the Garden for the essentials of God-joined holy matrimony….

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his FATHER and MOTHER and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

– Matthew 19:4-5;  Genesis 2:21-24

Elements present in the Garden wedding between Adam and Eve:   eligible partners without prior, estranged spouses still living, consent, vows, witnesses (Jesus and the serpent),  and God’s supernatural, instantaneous act of (Greek : sunexuezen) joining.

Elements absent in the Garden wedding:  civil paper and a human officiant.

We all know that the unholy 16th century transaction between church and state authority was a foul fruit of the humanistic Reformers, principally, of Martin Luther who sought access to that which God expressly forbid through Jesus Christ, namely, divorce via a man-made declaration of “dissolution”, rather than the physical death of a spouse.    What appears on the surface to be a “taking back” of authority from civil government is actually a mirage in the case of these bills.    The texts of these bills SB13 and (pending) HB162 both explicitly provide that there will be no change to the statute with regard to divorce or child “welfare” provisions.     Unless there is civil paper of some sort, no unilateral divorces nor totalitarian interference with parental rights would be possible.   Hence, a more controlled piece of paper on the front-end, is being swapped for a piece of civil paper with far fewer controls, but effecting all the same state intrusion into the sanctity of the home. The uber-liberal take on this makes for some interesting reading, as well.

In the absence of a requirement for a witnessed ceremony, documentation of consent, and vows,  the effect is that common law marriages are being given the same legal status as holy matrimony unions.    In other words, a second category of legalized, adulterous unions is being created that essentially legalizes fornication as well as adultery.     Absorbed into the longstanding moral vacuum of the contemporary church, the effect on marital stability will be devastating to family structure over time, in the same way that rampant “remarriage” has been.      To be sure, pastors will still require the traditional ceremony for the weddings they do, and will continue their evil practice of performing the same over the already married-for-life.    But equally sure is the fact that in addition to the legalized adulterers whom they now welcome into their congregations (no questions asked), they will be welcoming a new group of folks likewise not married in God’s eyes – those who have made no vows before Him.   As an added bonus, pastors will be relieved of the offense to conscience from signing civil marriage licenses that reflect an immoral civil standard.

STATUS , at this writing
Alabama Overview

The enacted result, should it come to pass:

– Win for the judges who no longer have a conscience conflict with their jobs (but still should, if they call themselves Christ-followers).
–  Win for the pastors whose threat of being sued by LGBT activists is significantly reduced, with the added bonus of avoiding any “heat” from their congregations for implementing something so controversial and “judgmental” as the Marriage Pledge.
– Win for the abusive Catholic dioceses that nationally grant 90% of marriage annulment petitions, the vast bulk of which claim “defective” original consent.
– Win for the heinous state bar association who have always looted the system since the enactment of unilateral divorce, and have purchased increasing political power with the confiscated proceeds, but who will now up their ante from the resulting increase in social and moral chaos.
–  Win for the homosexuals who seek to adopt, traffic in, and corrupt children, while gaining government and employer benefits.
–  Win for the LGBT activists (such as Tamra Metz and Masha Gessen) who openly admit the movement’s ultimate objective to destroy the institution of holy matrimony and traditional families.
–  Win for the shallow veneer of preserving religious liberty (until we stop and consider the denied religious liberty of the non-offending, non-filing spouse whose 1st amendment rights have traditionally been ignored by the system.)

Win-win for everybody, right?    Not exactly…major loss for covenant spouses, their children and grandchildren, and for God-defined holy matrimony, as well as for the already downward-spiraling sexual morality within the church.   A church full of papered-over adulterers, including behind the pulpit, is hardly ready to resume any authority over marriage the state gives back at this time.

WeRegret

Once again, the biblical covenant family is being thrown under the bus with the blind approval of all of all the above “winning” parties, and will now actually be in worse shape than their counterparts in neighboring states (until the easy-peasy-sleazy virus spreads to those states as well).    From the 1970’s until now, marriage seems to be becoming the ever more ridiculous, rambling  “house that Jack built”.

While MassResistance’s comments show they are less than enthused with this legal innovation,  where is the voice of the churches, or of Alabama’s family policy council?     To their credit, the Alabama Policy Institute has been at least tracking and timely-reporting on the bills during January (albeit, with exceptional brevity for such an impactful change – scroll all the way to the bottom of link)….but they do not appear to be taking a position, nor publicly recognizing the serious back-door dismantling threat to the institution of marriage itself.   Would that API would have at least reported who the one dissenting Senator was, and why Sen. Phillip Williams [R], who holds an 88% lifetime score with the American Conservative Union,  dissented.     Unfortunately, neither does the press do this.   It is clear that this legislation is all about facilitating sodomous “marriages” and protecting judges, and not about what’s best for the integrity of families or (ultimately) society.

Quoting Masha Gessen (2012):

“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. … (F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.

“The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out 30 years ago….”

As is fairly typical for state FPC’s and changes to marriage laws (other than those ushering in gay “marriage”), no blogs or articles have been devoted to this topic since the September, 2017 introduction of the Senate bill.   General press coverage, on the other hand, has been favorable both on the Right and Left, with no significant criticisms and only vaguely- expressed concerns (“waving the white flag on marriage”, etc.), despite the radical social impact which legally and morally equating common law and God-joined marriages will undoubtedly bring, absent any coinciding reform of unilateral divorce laws.

The better solution?   Continue to regulate marriages per existing law, while pastors with the requisite moral authority, discipleship and courage opt-out of acting as an agent for states whose marriage contract does not reflect the vows being exchanged in the sanctuary.    Take the heat for the sake of the kingdom of God, pastors and judges!

The best solution?    Remove “irreconcilable differences” (and its equivalents) as a “ground” for divorce if there is no mutual petition for marriage dissolution, and divide assets and child welfare based on proven marital fault, thereby drying up both the demand for “marriage” between homosexuals, and the perverse, lucrative financial incentives that drive the legal machine.     (We have asked MassResistance -Texas whether they plan to support the re-election of Rep. Matt Krause, and support 2019 continued repeal efforts in Texas, but they declined to respond to this question.)

Prayer warriors, we have our work cut out for us.   Please start by praying that HB162 fails in the Alabama House of Representatives.   In the ten days leading up to Valentine’s Day,  look for a series of daily posts to Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional reflecting concrete ways the church can rapidly improve her witness to the world concerning rebuilding  a “culture of marriage”.   We believe these steps would prepare the church morally for the responsibility of taking marriage back from the state and reversing the 500 year old  Lutheran curse.

The infamous Trojan Horse allowed the Greeks to get in and out of the city with their treasure.    After they were out, the whole city burned to the ground.

Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.
– Proverbs 14:34

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Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Prager U, Laurie Higgins, Guy Benson…and Our Response

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GBenson_Prager_Foxby Standerinfamilycourt

Laurie Higgins, Cultural Affairs Writer for the Illinois Family Institute, wrote in a blog on January 25:

“Prager University (PragerU) was started in 2009 by Dennis Prager as a way to circumvent the left-leaning educational universe and bring conservative ideas to the public in general but especially to young people. This week, PragerU released a deeply disappointing video featuring Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall Magazine and frequent contributor on Fox News Channel.

“Guy Benson is immensely gifted. He is a bright, thoughtful, articulate young man with a quick mind and a gracious, winsome manner. He is also telegenic, which makes him a perfect spokesperson in a culture mediated by visual media. But those very gifts and his appeal to young people will enable him to have a corrosive affect on some conservative values.

“Book-ending his five-minute PragerU video, Benson says, ‘I’m a Christian; a patriotic American, and a free market, shrink-the-government conservative who also happens to be gay.’

“The phrase ‘happens to be gay’ is an attempt to diminish the significance of his choice to affirm homosexuality as central to his identity. Please note, I did not say Benson chooses to experience same-sex attraction. Rather, he has freely chosen to place his unchosen homoerotic feelings at the center of his identity, and that is not something that just ‘happens.’  Nor is it something trivial.

“Benson goes on to say that ‘Far too often people are sorted by their gender, or their skin color, or their sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic that has nothing to do with ideas or values.‘

 

FB profile 7xtjw   SIFC:  After picking one’s self up off the floor at the startling realization that THE Dennis Prager had actually allowed this young man to (insupportably) claim on one of Prager U’s videos that homosexuality was an immutable characteristic, “standerinfamilycourt” participated in a dialogue on Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon’s page, where it was brought to light by one of the commenters that Mr. Prager, himself a conservative, unregenerated Jew, has a lesbian niece.    We find many who have close relatives who are homosexuals seem have considerable trouble not departing from biblical, and sometimes common-sense, views on the topic.

(Note:  according to Wikipedia, Dennis Prager is a serial polygamist with 3 wives, to-date.    Hence, his life shows that the only part of God’s Matt. 19:4-6 definition of marriage he endorses would be the complementarian element, if that.)  

Mrs. Higgins continues….

“This short sentence [bolded above] contains a number of troubling propositions.

“Like ‘progressives,’ Benson suggests that ‘gender’—and by ‘gender,’
I assume he means biological sex—and skin color are analogous to ‘sexual orientation.’  First, ‘sexual orientation’ is a Leftist rhetorical construction intended to communicate the false idea that heterosexuality and homosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin and morally equivalent.   In contrast, others argue that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse.

“Second, homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to sex or skin color. Biological sex and skin color are genetically determined and carry no behavioral implications, thereby rendering moral disapproval of them irrational.

“In contrast, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, whose cause or causes are unknown, and volitional activity for which moral assessment is both rational and legitimate—no matter what the cause or causes for the feelings.

“Third, what does Benson mean when he refers to homosexuality as an “immutable characteristic”? Is he referring to the powerful, persistent, and seemingly intractable nature of his desires? If so, in his view is it morally acceptable to act on all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings? If he doesn’t believe the powerful, persistent nature of feelings confers automatic moral legitimacy on actions impelled by such feelings, how does he determine which ought not be acted on?

“And how does he respond to the brilliant Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist English professor and lesbian who has written eloquently about her spiritual conversion and rejection of a lesbian identity?”

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:  Amen, Laurie Higgins!   Homosexuality is a chosen behavior, every bit as much as heterosexuals choosing to ignore the crystal-clear word of God against coveting and retaining the God-joined, man-separated spouse of another living person is a chosen behavior.    But it’s true that if you dare speak out about either immorality, the latter being by far more pervasive,  you have, in effect, been deemed to have “attacked” that person.   Both can be, and in fact, must be forsaken to gain or recover any inheritance in the kingdom of God.    Forty years ago, the claim started to be that marriages Jesus repeatedly called adulterous { Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b ] were morally equivalent to the holy matrimony of our youth, if the proper paperwork was obtained from the civil state.
(Both Laurie Higgins and Rosaria Butterfield are in God-joined, original covenant marriages, but we daresay many friends, relatives and donors are not in original covenant marriages.   It’s really no different than with Prager’s lesbian niece when it comes to adopting a mindset that is contrary to plain scripture instruction.)

Continuing….

“Fourth and most intellectually dishonest, Benson makes the remarkable claim that the affirmation of a homosexual identity ‘ has nothing to do with ideas or values.’   Does Benson really believe that his (or anyone else’s) homosexual attraction has anything to do with his ideas about and support for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages?

“And does he really believe that his homosexual attraction has nothing to do with his hermeneutics (i.e., methods of biblical interpretation)?  Benson claims he is a Christian and that his Christian identity sits at the tiptop of his list of personal identifiers.   For him to identify as a homosexuality-affirming Christian, Benson must have first embraced a very late 20th Century revisionist hermeneutic that rejects the plain reading of Scripture and 2,000 years of church history, and which emerged not from newly discovered documents but from the mid-20th Century sexual revolution.”

As usual, Laurie Higgins has the cultural idiocy nailed, when it comes to homosexual immorality and its effect on our culture.    That said, she is characteristically myopic when, in her ten years as the Cultural Writer for a major state’s very effective Christian family policy organization, she still fails to note where all of this is actually coming from.     In this  last paragraph above, she has surely crossed over into the myopic plane of vision.     Faulty hermeneutics and the Sexual Revolution had everything in the world to do with why 40% to 60% of our fellow pew-sitters (heterosexuals) are adulterously “married” to another living person’s God-joined spouse.   Mr. Benson could very well be a child of that national abomination.    From here, Laurie Higgins also joins the January 22 conversation that occurred on Dr. Gagnon’s Facebook wall:

“Arguably the preeminent theologian writing on the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, writes this in response to Benson’s PragerU video:

“Marriage is the single most significant structure in society. Radically redefining it at its very foundation so as to make gender differentiation irrelevant is a decisively non-conservative political stance, not to mention an unfaithful anti-Christian position that tacitly rejects the God of Abraham and Moses as well as the lordship of Jesus Christ. There can be no negotiation on this point without upending the rug on which the conservative table is set. It takes more courage to hold the line here than on any other position. Conservatives should be known for courage, not cowardice; clarity, not confusion….”

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   Everything stated above by Dr. G about homosexual practice can equally be said of the practice of “marrying” a divorced person.   For that matter, all that Laurie Higgins states immediately above (our bolding) can be said for the behavior of the evangelical community in embracing remarriage adultery over the past 50 years.    The professor recognizes the widespread adoption of consecutive polygamy inside and outside the church, and has debated the likes of Dr. David Instone-Brewer on the topic.     He is not a myopic man, but a clear-sighted one who struggles for a way to avert the mass-exit repentance of people from admittedly-adulterous unions.     In this, he rationalizes that only the prohibition of homosexuality (but not marital indissolubility) is “foundational” to God’s design for sexual ethics.   He further argues that there is adultery, and there is a “lesser class” of adultery for remarriage while estranged from a God-joined spouse.    He is unable to support this with scripture, and sometimes says he “could be wrong.”      We would say to our friend, Dr. Gagnon that it takes twenty times the courage to hold the line on the indissolubility of holy matrimony than it does to hold the line on the immorality of homosexuality.     We would agree with him that disciples of Jesus Christ should be known more for courage than cowardice, and known more for clarity than confusion.    Were it only so!

Laurie Higgins concludes:

“The talented Guy Benson and others like him pose a threat to conservatism and Christianity. Widespread cultural approval of the homosexuality-affirming ideology threatens the foundation of any society. And if the church affirms heresy, we put at risk the eternal lives of people like Guy Benson.

“Since Dennis Prager is committed to the free exchange of ideas, perhaps he’ll invite someone to appear on another video to debate the ideas expressed by Guy Benson, whose embrace of a “gay”  identity suggests that homosexuality—not Christianity—sits at the tiptop of his identity list.”

…. To which we respond that Guy Benson is not a disease but merely a symptom of a much more widespread disease that has already undermined both conservatism and Christianity, and formed an ideology of its own some 500 years ago, adopted in this country about 50 years ago.     Indeed, the fact that economic conservatism has proven increasingly elusive in the U.S. over these past 50 years can be accounted for by the studies on the high transferred social costs of institutionalized adultery, amounting to at least $112 billion dollars a year when last measured in 2008.     There is no such thing as economic or fiscal conservatism without social and moral conservatism, and President Trump’s recent tax cuts are more likely to swell the deficit than “lift all boats”, if history is any indication.     One cannot “shrink the government” while indulging a morality,  heterosexual or homosexual, that is offensive to God and toxic to families, as the bible defines families.

How well we already know what happens when the church affirms heresy — we have put at risk the eternals lives of millions, not just people like Guy Benson.    We submit that heterosexual autonomy – not Christianity – sits at the tiptop of most evangelicals’ identity lists, and that’s why we have the droning thunder of pastoral knees knocking these past few decades, as false converts call the shots at their churches.

“Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation‘ —  giving no cause for offense [against God] in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited,  but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses,  in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger,  in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love,  in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left…”    –  2 Corinthians 6:3-7

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Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Put Your Wedding Ring Back On and Get a Job, Greg Locke!

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GLocke_PutUrWeddingRingBackOn
by Standerinfamilycourt

 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.   He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?),  and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.   And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.   –  1 Timothy 3:2-7

J D Hall of Pulpit and Pen broke a tragic revelation* last week, which the rest of the media quickly grabbed up in their own headlines.   Satan had brought down yet another high-profile evangelical pastor, using  head-slander against his own one-flesh wife and the allure of another man’s wife.     Satan had successfully attacked not just one, but two covenant families– and a church congregation in the process.
(*Small silver lining:   J D Hall “gets it” when it comes to the perverse relationship between “family courts” and the evangelical churches, and doesn’t mind using his microphone to enlighten his evangelical listeners.   Don’t miss the excellent listening between 8:38 and 10:08 minutes into the linked Pulpit & Pen podcast, January 12, 2018 about the dissipated moral authority of the church which prefaces the description of Hall’s phone conversations with Locke.)

The social media report last week was, that outspoken (some would say, angry-spirited)  neo-conservative Pastor Greg Locke had accused his wife of 20 years of being mentally-ill,  had filed for divorce and had sent her away on a bus without their two natural and two adopted children, who will be in the joint custody of himself and his mother.     Further, he had recently installed his wife Melissa’s “best friend” as an administrative assistant at  Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee (suburb of populous and affluent Nashville) which Locke founded in 2006, and Locke was allegedly dating this woman who had also filed a recent divorce petition against her own husband.

(from the church website staff page, 1/17/2018)
GLockeOW 1.17.18

If this scenario is beginning to sound like deja vu to the readers, there’s good reason it does.   The Locke cult-following (some even within the circle of covenant marriage standers) were indignant, unable to believe it could possibly be true, and were chiding the re-posted reports as “shameful gossip”.    Meanwhile, many standers who have been down this infidelity road with their own spouse were finding it hard to overlook all of the telltale signs in this sorry story, and the familiar narcissism in Locke’s video statement from January 11, (which Locke has apparently had the common sense to take down in the days since he posted it).    Evidently, the podcast link in the first paragraph above is the only place to get back to at least the Pulpit & Pen audio of the video that was taken down this week from Locke’s public figure facebook page, the relevant portion starting at approx. 17:30 minutes.

Locke, of course, fancied that “damage-control” was possible (and probably necessary) with his 1 million+ facebook following,  so he posted this  now-removed video to his  wall late last Thursday, implying that his wife (not he) had filed the divorce, while giving various conflicting time frames for her departure.    He blamed his “haters” and in a tearful plea, insisted “I’m not an adulterer.”   Not even in his heart, apparently.   He said his church was “fully aware” of his relationship with the other woman (we suppose so, since they had “agreed” to put her on staff), and said the church was “walking beside him” in his “brokenness” (as opposed to taking the biblical step of asking Locke to step away from ministry for the season needed to attend to his family).     According to the podcast audio recounting Hall’s very  recent phone interview with Locke,  Pulpit & Pen challenged Locke’s  statement that the divorce was final, as Locke strongly implied in the video.    It is very disturbing indeed that Locke tearfully concluded the now-removed video as follows (approximately 26:30):

“I told them [his GVBC congregation], ‘I’ve gotta move forward with MY kids, and with MY life’….and people are, like, are you going to reconcile, are you going to work on it?   Do you understand if you’ve ever been divorced, that divorce is the finality of what you’ve been working on.  It’s not the beginning  and the cause of it.”   – Locke, January 11, 2018

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.   – Matthew 19:8

A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
– 1 Cor. 7:39

Approximately 23:25 into the Pulpit & Pen podcast, there is discussion of the counsel Greg Locke said (to J D Hall and Locke’s facebook audience) that he had sought from Charles Stanley’s ministry in Atlanta, GA.    Stanley’s wife Anna (deceased since 2014) obtained a civil divorce from Charles in 2000 after 42 years of marriage, and about seven years of legal separation.    Unlike Greg Locke, Stanley is accountable to a church board, and Stanley’s church board voted that he not step down so long as Stanley remains unmarried (per the biblical instruction in 1 Cor. 7:11).   To-date, there has been no evidence at all that Stanley has not done so.   Presumably, he has also honored the Lord by remaining celibate.

In other words, unlike Greg Locke, Charles Stanley is a covenant marriage “stander”, and unlike Greg Locke, Charles Stanley is now eligible to remarry if the Lord should so lead. “Standerinfamilycourt” takes exception, in this age of unilateral divorce, to the notion that a celibate, standing pastor whose children are grown and gone, raised orderly, should step down.    (SIFC has full respect for those who reasonably disagree on the basis that such a pastor failed to properly care for his wife according to Ephesian 5.)   In our humble opinion, at any rate, the board of First Baptist Church in Atlanta seems to have handled Mrs. Stanley’s prodigal departure in a way the Apostle Paul would have approved.

By contrast,  Locke’s Global Vision Bible Church is independent, and similar to the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) denominational background Locke first pastored in before founding his present church, there appears to be no church board to be accountable to, according to our search of the church’s website.     Any comparison Locke makes of himself with Charles Stanley is totally spurious, therefore.   According to accounts that various church members gave to J D Hall,  Locke issued an ultimatum one autumn 2017 Sunday to his congregation (last 15 minutes of the link) after Melissa’s departure, and he has no intention of stepping back or stepping down, despite the fact that his young family is not well-governed as the qualification scripture for pastors (1 Timothy 3:2-7) requires.   If he “marries”  the adulteress Tai McGee to keep his position, he will no longer be “the husband of one wife”.      All of the above is the classic scenario of how so many legalized adulterers come to replace chaste, biblically-qualified pastors behind our evangelical pulpits in the harlot church.     Is there any wonder why God’s judgment is falling so heavily on His church?

Another pastor,  Stephen Anderson, of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ  (another Independent Fundamental Baptist church, denominational membership, about 8 million)  is a marriage permanence pastor who has done videos criticizing fallen, high-profile pastors who refuse to repent from their adultery and also refuse to step down from ministry,  most notably Kent Hovind, whose adulterous remarriage in early 2016 to divorcee Mary Trocco is already in divorce proceedings (mercifully).  In this video, Anderson echoes what Hall said about pastor qualifications, and the need for Locke to step down.

SAnderson_reLocke

Anderson had been critical of Locke in an early 2016 video for a reason we don’t concur with,  namely Locke’s backing away from the extreme Calvinist doctrine, “once saved, always saved” in Global Vision’s doctrine statement.   Our position on the nature of justification and sanctification can be read here, and also here.    Anderson goes so far as to question whether Locke has had a genuine born-again experience, due to this theology difference and Locke’s public persona,  which we probably should not be judging until Mr. Locke has had an opportunity to “finish the race”, though we know the evangelical church in general is full of false converts.   The theological criticism and Anderson’s questioning  of the social media / political route Locke took to gather his following all arose before there were indications of marriage problems between the Lockes.     Although we disagree with that aspect of Anderson’s criticism,  his biblical observations about putting away Melissa, taking up with another man’s wife, and the condition of Locke’s family calling for him to step away from ministry at this time are all spot-on, echoing J D Hall.

In looking at accounts of Locke’s upbringing,  divorce and adulterous remarriage is an unresolved generational issue in his family, and the trademark angry spirit with which Locke tears into liberals and the gay community, he apparently came by as a result of the divorce and remarriage-related family strife in his young years.   Locke’s mother “divorced” his father after her true husband was sent to prison, and “married” another man when Locke was only five years old.   Understandably, this usurper and his “step-son” did not get along. Before his conversion experience outside the family, Locke had various brushes with the law.   But nobody ever went back and taught Locke that his mother’s soul was endangered because she was living in ongoing adultery, or that this “stepfather” was an immoral fixture in his childhood home.   Perhaps if this had occurred, it would have helped dissipate some of the anger and self-focus that it’s clear he carried over into his “ministry”.   The wicked example of unrebuked remarriage adultery is almost always self-perpetuating in the next generation.    Whatever “standing” Locke felt like he had done for his own allegedly difficult marriage,

“divorce is the finality of what you’ve been working on.  It’s not the beginning  and the cause of it.”

…before looking around to replace his wife and “move forward” with “HIS” kids and “HIS” life, is likely to have been done out of a legalistic spirit, if the holy concepts of supernatural inseverable one-flesh (sarx mia) and unconditional covenant have never been biblically explained to him.    This kind of an upbringing which normalizes Christ-defined immorality even in church also tends to lead to narcissism, feeling “owed” by God,  out of the sharp sense of deprivation that years spent in an immoral home can foster in the heart of a kid who wasn’t properly discipled after coming to faith.   Somebody in that family needs to draw the kingdom line with the devil!

A visit to the website of Global Vision Bible Church describe an element of the church’s “DNA” as “Loud where God is loud and silent where God is silent.”   What an ironic statement for the (reputed) LGBT(xyz) community’s “worst nightmare”!   Jesus didn’t feel the need to say much of anything for that which was no threat to the Jews or Gentiles of the 1st century, but repeatedly forbid and warned against precisely what Locke is in the process of doing now, and for which he is apparently receiving no discipline, or even rebuke, at all from the other leadership of that church.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.   You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.

For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.   In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,  I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, SO THAT HIS SPIRIT MAY BE SAVED in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?  Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.  Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;   I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.   But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—NOT TO EVEN EAT WITH SUCH A ONE.   For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Do you not judge those who are within the church?  But those who are outside, God judges.  Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
– 1 Corinthians 5

Who remembers the Ashley Madison scandal from 2015 that rocked more than 400 U.S. evangelical pastors exposed in that scandal– for who they are, when they think no one is watching?  From the mouth of one who’s so “important” that he doesn’t feel it matters who is watching:

GLockeAMadison video

SIFC (1/30/2018) –  Sorry folks, it seems Locke has taken this video down as well since publication of this blog post.   It was priceless, as one can just imagine.

Even if Locke is not yet sleeping with this woman until he can obtain the sham civil and church paperwork (doubtful, since his judgment is already so clouded), are there any obvious and recorded signs of this man being a reviler?  Or covetous?    As King David was sent a prophet named Nathan a year or more after his illicit wedding to Bathsheba, to tell him “you are the man!” he was not allowed by God to use his empire and an unlawful “marriage” to cover up his sin, neither will Greg Locke.

Since Locke independently established his non-denominational church, it is likely he personally wrote the Statement of Beliefs for that church, with only limited input or external ratification.   These are brief, and they read as follows:

“WHAT WE BELIEVE (GLOBAL VISION BIBLE CHURCH):

  1. We believe the Bible is the perfect Word of God. It is without error from beginning to end. The Bible is our sole Authority for faith and practice. (2 Tim 3:13-17)
  2. We believe that salvation is provided by Jesus Christ and Him alone. It is through his death, burial and resurrection that men are saved from sin. It is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin. Works and religion cannot save in anyway. The Gospel is the power of God unto Salvation. Furthermore, we believe that Christ died for all men and upon the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the REPENTANCE OF THE HEART and the confession of the mouth men are Born-Again of God’s Spirit. (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 15:1-4, Eph 2:8-9)
  3. We believe in the eternal salvation of all believers. Once a person trusts in Christ, they are forever kept by the power of God and CAN NEVER BE LOST.   Salvation is truly everlasting life. However, those who have trusted Christ are His and will obey Him and His Word. We do not believe a person can live any way they so desire and be saved. The Bible DOGMATICALLY DECLARES that a person will be a new creature in Christ. (2 Cor 5:17, Jn 10:27-30)
  4. We believe in the Bible doctrine of the Trinity. We believe in one God, co-existing in three persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is the father who planned our salvation, his Son Jesus who provided our forgiveness and the Spirit of God who SEALS OUR STATE before God. Furthermore, at the moment of SALVATION we receive all of God’s Spirit. We do not get more of God, rather we must surrender more of ourselves to him on a daily basis. (1 Jn 5:7)
  5. We believe that the local New Testament Church is God’s ordained institution. It is through individual bodies of believers that the Great Commission is carried on throughout the world. (Acts 2:41-47, Matt 28:18-20)”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  “Standerinfamilycourt” has highlighted some phrases in three of these GVBC tenets that could be contributing to Greg Locke’s spiritual confusion, and therefore, could be specifically leading him down the wrong path.   The joke, in places like Tennessee, is that if you’re an evangelical, you’re going to be a Baptist (therefore, a Calvinist) — it’s just a matter of which of the 57 varieties of Baptist (Southern, Freewill, Regular, Fundamental, etc., etc.) one chooses.  Hence, we have an Independent Fundamental Baptist taking to YouTube to rebuke an nondemoninational independent Baptist over the degree of toxic Calvinism practiced (i.e. who has the worst “salvation by works” doctrine in the other’s eyes).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (1) “Repentance of the heart” is not repentance at all unless the feet are doing a physical U-turn at the same time.    People in this mindset confuse “salvation” with either sanctification or justification, and dismissively label obedience to Christ’s commandments “salvation by works” or “legalism”.     New Testament scripture makes it clear that we can fall away, even with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, if we persistently and habitually choose not to obey the commandments of Christ.    We are warned in the book of Hebrews that this process hardens a believer’s heart, and that there is a point of no-return once the Holy Spirit becomes so grieved and quenched that He cannot do His convicting work in us any longer.    Toxic Calvinists will claim that this constitutes, “not being born again to begin with” (as Anderson does toward Locke).    Anderson may legitimately do so only if he can conclusively demonstrate that the wandering soul in question was never indwelt with the Holy Spirit.    This is a tall order for we humans who lack omniscience.    If we know a person well and we are Spirit-filled, we only know the point at which the Holy Spirit did indwell someone else, from the degree of transformation in their life and consistent heart attitudes thereafter for a long season.    We have no way of knowing  conclusively that He did not indwell someone specific at some point, unless perhaps it’s one of our functional gifts.   Unfortunately, the first person someone with the spirit of adultery (a self-worshipper) lies to is himself or herself, and equally unfortunately, “repentance in the heart” can be premediated in Calvinist environments because of the “once-saved, always saved” (OSAS) heresy.   This is mocking God, which Paul repeatedly warns cannot be done without eternal consequences if not genuinely (and physically) repented.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (2) “Dogmatically declares”  (that a person will be a new creation in Christ) pretends that our free will “goes away” and will no longer be exercised.    God has endless ways to persuade us from our free will before it destroys our eternity, but unfortunately, He doesn’t ever override it.   We indeed are a new creation in Christ from the moment we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, but it’s an error to claim we will never backslide.    We should know this instinctively from the experience of the believers who surround us.     The fact that we are no longer able to be controlled by sin does not mean for a moment that we are prevented from willfully resubmitting ourselves to that control at a later point.    Someone deceived with a spirit of adultery who genuinely believes he and his intended adultery partner are born again very commonly reasons that,“since I am doing this, and God is ‘blessing’ it, it must be His will, otherwise the Holy Spirit (Who is, in reality, both grieved and quenched) would not allow it.   I must have not been doing God’s will in my marriage, since that wasn’t so blessed.”One  can just imagine how tempting this reasoning is if Greg’s characterization of Melissa being mentally ill is true.   If there’s a way to lay down one’s cross that men will allow other men to get away with, it becomes very hard to resist.   The IBF denomination Locke formerly belonged to teaches strongly against divorce and remarriage, but does so legalistically, with the Calvinistic spectre of “not being born again to begin with” hanging over a prodigal’s head.     Contrast this legalistic obedience with what the Church Father, Origen said:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               “If we love this neighbor, we are fulfilling the entire law and all the commandments by his love.
    “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.
    ” It is absolutely impossible for one who loves Christ with his whole heart and with all his inner being to do anything displeasing to Christ.
    “For the one who loves him not only does not commit murder, which is prohibited by the law, but he does not become angry with his brother because he whom he loves takes delight in this.
    “And not only does he not commit adultery, but he does not look at a woman in order to desire her. But instead he says to him, “My soul desires and faints for the living God.
    ”When would one who loves Christ, who has even abandoned everything he owns to follow Christ, think about stealing [someone else’s one-flesh]?
    “On what occasion does the one who loves Christ bear false testimony, when he knows that the one he loves was betrayed by false testimony? 
    “He who loves Christ inevitably loves his neighbor [including his one-flesh] as well. For a disciple is marked as belonging to Christ by this proof alone, if he loves his neighbors. For it is certain that he who does not love his neighbor does not know Christ.
    –Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.
    640px-Origen
    Someone who believes that “salvation” cannot be lost, regardless of whether they make choices that evade their ongoing sanctification (obtaining the wedding garments and the oiled lamp needed for admission to the future marriage supper),  can easily rationalize that  God will “grade them on a curve”, come Judgment Day, and in fact, they will only have their “rewards” reduced (1 Cor 3:11-15).    Hence, for the same reason, they don’t feel it’s necessary to exclude legalized adulterers from their pews and church coffers, they feel “their right to be happy” in this life is worth the gamble they’ve taken with the Most High.                                                                                                                                                                                                  (3)  The Spirit of God “Seals our state” and Holy Spirit indwells upon “salvation“.      Examined closely, these two statements are mutually exclusive due to timing factors.   The Holy Spirit indwells, as a deposit (not a guarantee, as one unfortunate translation renders it)  upon our justification.    Our salvation is not complete and conferred until we arrive and are admitted to the marriage supper of the Lamb.    See How Good is the Pledge of Being Sealed?  for the detailed hermeneutic support for this doctrine correction.     The effect of this error on a Greg Locke-style prodigal is a combination of the two deceits discussed in (1) and (2).    The reference in (2) that “We do not believe a person can live any way they so desire and be saved” (limited to drinking, smoking, dipping, chewing, dancing, fist-fighting, sodomizing, tongues-speaking, cussing, sleeping with someone else’s wife without the proper paperwork) most likely refers to someone who “was never saved to begin with”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Greg Locke has a searchable sermon file, as many Baptist pastors do,      on SermonAudio.    Using the search terms, “marriage” “divorce”,  or “remarriage”,  SIFC was unable to bring up any sermons at all on those topics, despite GVBC having been in existence for ten years.    This could be because M D R (marriage, divorce and remarriage)  is a deliberately silent topic in his church, which is not at all unusual.   Nor is that necessarily a bad thing if the pastor does not believe in the no-excuses indissolubility of God-joined holy matrimony.    Greg Locke is no Stephen Anderson.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Before wrapping up, a quick look at Tennessee divorce law indicates that, based on the longest of the many conflicting time frames Locke mentioned in the now-deleted facebook video,  the very  soonest this “dissolution” can be final is July, 2018, based on a combination of no-fault and 1 year desertion grounds, unless there is a mutual petition, in which case, the parents must still attend a parenting class before anything can be finalized, since there are minors in the home.  Other grounds require a trial and evidence, if contested, and that can take considerable time to get docketed.   Divorce petitions are public records, so the filing date is searchable in their county, and the petitioner can be known.   Locke insisted in the video that he didn’t file, and perhaps that’s true, but it’s also a matter of public record.   Melissa could have filed on either no-fault or adultery or banning from the home grounds, if it’s true that Greg didn’t file.   He stated that Melissa was sent, and is living out of state, so any divorce proceeding will entail delays and continuances, especially where children are involved.   The timing, therefore could not have been sufficient for a finalized decree, as Locke implied to the contrary, and Hall astutely disputed last week.    We all know that there are no “ex” wives in the kingdom of  God, only ex-adultery partners, so Locke was lying to himself and to God by deliberately calling Melissa his “ex” wife.   There is still time for the compassionate to pray for this family.

(Tennessee Code – Volume 6A, Title 36, Sections 36-4-101 and 36-4-103)

No-Fault:
(1) irreconcilable differences if: [a] there has been no denial of this ground; [b] the spouses submit a properly signed marital dissolution agreement (see below under Simplified or Special Divorce Procedures); or [c] this grounds for divorce is combined with a general fault-based grounds or (2) living separate and apart without cohabitation for 2 years when there are no minor children.                                                                                                                                                                                           Fault:
(1) impotence;                                                                                                                   (2) adultery;                                                                                                                        (3) conviction of a felony and imprisonment;                                                  (4) alcoholism and/or drug addiction;                                                                  (5) wife is pregnant by another at the time of marriage without husband’s knowledge;                                                                                                              (6) willful desertion for 1 year;                                                                                 (7) bigamy;                                                                                                                               (8) endangering the life of the spouse;                                                                (9) conviction of an infamous crime;                                                                  (10) refusing to move to Tennessee with a spouse and willfully absenting oneself from a new residence for 2 years;                                              (11) cruel and inhuman treatment or unsafe and improper marital conduct;                                                                                                                              (12) indignities that make the spouse’s life intolerable; and               (13) abandonment, neglect, or banning the spouse from the home.
If the court feels as though there is a possible chance of reconciliation, it will postpone any trial or hearing date and request the parties to attend mediation or counseling. In cases involving minor children, the court requires the parents to attend a parenting education class prior to the divorce being finalized.

Pastor Locke, you have the Other Woman’s children and four of your own, plus your entire congregation watching you turn your back on the Lord’s commandment.    The word of God says that we are a “kingdom of priests”, and God does not continue in fellowship with treacherous and violent priests.

“This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.   Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’  Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.  But not one has done so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring.  Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.”
– Malachi 2:13-15

UPDATE 1/21/2018:  Pulpit & Pen continues to be contacted by members of Locke’s church and by family members of the parties involved,  so they have continued to report on the situation.    They pulled the public record of the divorce filing, dated November 13, 2017,  Melissa as Plaintiff.    They also reportedly  located Melissa living in a women’s protective shelter.    The earliest an uncontested divorce can be final in the eyes of the State of Tennessee based on the filing date is mid-February, so Locke was clearly being untruthful in his January 11 video where he claimed to the public to be already “divorced”.      In the eyes of God, Greg and Melissa Locke,  and this Tai McGee and her rightful husband, will be married until one of each couple passes out of this life, and hence, it would have been so much better for everyone concerned if Melissa had taken her complaint to Criminal Court, instead of “family court”.    

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!