Category Archives: Equal Protection

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” ?

November 20, 2018 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

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!

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Substantive Due Process

Dear Texas Lawmakers: A Guest Blog

June 18, 2018 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

– by Kristi Davis

Dear Members of the Texas State Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues:

I came before you in March of 2017 to testify for HB93 for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in Texas. My testimony can be viewed online on your website.

Now I would like to present to you an analogy to help bring better understanding of what you are allowing when you have allowed no-fault divorce to continue in our state.

You received your privilege of representing people of our state when those people exercised their privilege to vote and voted for you. You chose to run; they chose to vote. The result is the seat you are now sitting in. All this took place because there are rules in place to create a healthy environment for us to “do government”.

So please imagine this chaotic scenario:

What would you think if one of your constituents walked into the Capitol Building one day and declared that you were no longer their choice for office and must be removed? This person is not just any constituent; this person voted for you.

And what would you think if they had the erroneous right and ability to remove you simply by making a subjective statement on how they no longer like this relationship you are now in, as voter and representative?

Imagine they could simply file a complaint at the information desk which would guarantee the issue be brought up on the House floor in front of everyone. There really is no need to discuss the issue on the floor, after all, because they need no reason for your removal. And you will have no opportunity to object to their statement because your side of the story need not be heard. How can you defend yourself, really, when you have not been accused of doing any wrong? The situation has nothing to do with your work performance, anyway. It all comes down to their whims and singular feelings about your relationship. They no longer want you in your seat. That is all that is needed.

What if you wanted to keep your seat? After all, this one voter does not represent your whole constituency; others are involved!
I regret to tell you, the rules were changed years ago that allow one voter, any one voter, to remove you at any time for no reason other than their feelings, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once the voter objects, your job is gone and your career is over. The entire process can be completed in as little as two months’ time, because we wouldn’t want to inconvenience the public with the legal bill to defend your job.

Please remember: this voter also has access to everything you own and all your private information. They can walk into your office at any time and take your computer, read your emails, force your aides to speak against you, even take over your office and lock your door! They can force your aides to become their aides and work for their campaign to elect someone else in your place. You cannot stop it. But then again, why would you? Even though they voluntarily entered this relationship and chose to vote, you wouldn’t want to force someone to stay enslaved in this voter/representative relationship, would you?

This process could take place at any time, with any representative, as many times as a person would choose, ad nauseum.

Representatives could be shuffled in and out of office the whole session long. I know that making laws is why you are in office, that’s your job, but it’s ok if your job never gets done due to these personal whims of one person. Sure, the whole of the public would pay the price, but aren’t this individual’s desires more important? The courts say this is in the best interest of all your constituents, though years of research would say they are exactly wrong.

Would you think this public policy is not such a great one and needs to be amended or removed?

What would you do if the media folks showed up and opposed your efforts to change these policies? They would make a handsome living off broadcasting these voter objections at the Capitol, after all. But they would not say that out loud; instead, they will tell you that you are being selfish and old-fashioned. They would say that the law is now in the eye of the beholder, subject to redefinition by anyone living under it. Would you be “ok” with that?

Chaos.

Can you imagine this sort of logic applied to every area of law? If it can happen to the most fundamental and important of relationships- family ties, human beings- why not apply to it to everything else, because everything else is less important?
This matter could not be more serious.

Where do we draw the line? Where do you draw the line?
You may think my analogy sounds impossible, but that is what people of 50 years ago thought of the idea of a society where people dissolve marriage and family with the click of a button, literally.
If you do not stop this nonsense here, this analogy that sounds impossible today could be the way of life tomorrow. You are in the position to draw the line.

Let’s reestablish a healthy environment to “do family”; support healthy family relationships by requiring contested divorce cases to be brought for real reasons and every case to be heard thoroughly by a judge. If doing what is in the best interest of the children is really valued at all in this legislature, I implore you to leave hypocrisy behind and protect family by repealing unilateral divorce.

Most sincerely,
Kristi Davis
Texas Citizen
3-Time (Generational) Divorce Sufferer under No-Fault Divorce in Texas

( SIFC: Kristi Davis testified on March 8, 2017 before this Texas Legislative Committee where at least three committee members actually derive income, either directly or indirectly, from unilateral divorce laws. She has recently launched a blog page called Healing and Repealing for Strong Family Trees – www.healingandrepealing.com )

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare

“Abuse” Lies Under Every Rock: Exposing An Abusive Abuse Ministry

May 15, 2018 standerinfamilycourt 11 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

There are six things which the Lord hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

Can a ministry that seeks to speak out on behalf of physically or emotionally-battered spouses be abusive in their own practices?Due to the extreme political sensitivity of this topic, and out of a sincere desire to do no further harm to a priceless, real covenant family, this blog has been over two years in the writing. Current events, however, are causing this unresolved, mishandled, and highly-politicized abuse issue to fester in a way that is about to be very bad for a couple of states that are in an earnest-but-neglected battle to repeal their unilateral divorce laws. “Standerinfamilycourt” will explain a bit more about that later in this post, and in depth in another post which is in the works, scheduled for release in about another week.

We all rejoiced when the good news came a little over two years ago that Pastor Saeed Abedini had at long last been released from the Iranian prison that had held him for nearly four years. His wife, Naghmeh, put up a tireless effort to enlist those who could campaign for his release. Shortly before the harvest of her efforts, she took to her Facebook page to disclose to her more than 85,000 followers that Saeed had developed a pornography addiction prior to being detained in Iran, and that he had physically and verbally abused her since early in their marriage. She implied that her husband had been abusive and controlling in his most recent communications with her just prior to his release. Upon his release, the Abedinis and Franklin Graham announced that they would be spending a few days with the Grahams in North Carolina to try and reconcile the issues in their marriage. Yet, barely within two days of Saeed’s landing on U.S. soil, Naghmeh filed a petition in an Idaho court for a legal separation, explaining that the action was necessary to protect her children. Since it’s hard to imagine that she could have made these arrangements while across the country in North Carolina, it seems apparent that she had pre-arranged this filing some time well-prior to Saeed’s release. What was going on here?

On January 24, about a week after Saeed’s January 16 release, a couple of months after she had publicly disclosed Saeed’s alleged abuse, this pseudo-ministry made contact with Naghmeh on her Facebook page. She indicates that she had been reading their blogs.

Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

SIFC Note: It is obvious that if physical abuse endangers a spouse or children in the home, separation for a season is absolutely necessary, and reporting it to the criminal justice authorities is equally imperative. The latter seldom happens, however, since it’s cheaper and more private to run to the so-called “family court” system, and since almost nobody in our culture today buys into the unchangeable biblical truth that “remarriage” constitutes soul-destroying adultery in God’s eyes, with no excuses and no exceptions. Emotional abuse, however, can be “in the eye of the beholder”, and is difficult to objectively assess, measure or prove. This is all the more reason why Paul’s inspired instructions to the church in
1 Corinthians 7:10-11 and in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 is timeless in its remedy for domestic violence cases (which didn’t suddenly arise in the 21st century, most likely), especially against the backdrop of biblical truth– that man’s civil paper does not unjoin what only God can unjoin, and does not dissolve the unconditional covenant with God, in the case of the original marriage of our youth. Nor has a piece of civil paper ever “protected” anyone from any form of abuse.

The unilateral divorce laws were driven by a desire not to have to prove marital fault for this very reason, i.e. that there’s an expense to do so along with ugly public airing of personal misconduct, and attempting to do so might still fail for lack admissible evidence, etc. The mantra about “forcing women to stay in an abusive marriage” (even if it’s for only a slightly longer period) is an overblown, emotionally-driven exaggeration, but it becomes irresistible to the economically-hurting, and to the emotionally-wounded.

This reckless “no-fault” ideology, however, ignores the equal protection and due process obligations that the civil authorities also owe the accused under our Constitution, including all state constitutions. Current law, as well as these “ministries”, presume the accused to be guilty based solely on the allegation, and in effect, deny the accused even a trial, before parental and property rights are cut off. They are hugely responsible for toxic impacts on the very children they claim to protect, by using the state as a vehicle to allow the petitioning party to alienate the accused party from their God-given parental rights. All too often, the “abuse” that is alleged is never objectively examined, and on this slippery slope it sometimes amounts to little more than individual perception, out of a self-focused spirit and with the egging-on of financially interested “professionals”.

We’ll spend a little time extracting from the web page of this “ministry”, and a similar one, Spiritual Sounding Board, which is currently at the center of a Leftist move to remove a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president who related in an interview that he had refused to counsel divorce in a mild (and quite brief) domestic abuse case that occurred when that pastor-molder served decades ago as a pastor himself. We will come back to that particular incident, which is being developed more fully in a blog post, to follow.

From one of the “abuse ministry” websites, referring to a post on the other website (click through to SSB’s link):

Abusive abuse “ministries” trade on emotions and biblically-false doctrine, hoping that anyone who calls out their wicked aims and antichrist direction will be censured for “adding to the suffering of the abused”. Their ideology castigates churches who are faithful to the word of God, accusing them of “devaluing” and “objectifying” women. They “cry wolf” at all churches who follow the precepts of Jesus and Paul, with the effect that where there truly is a questionable church, such as the one that unsuccessfully sued Spritual Sounding Board’s Julie Anne Smith for defamation in 2012, or Greg Locke’s Tennessee church, the broad paintbrush stroke they employ intimidates many other pastors into appeasing this Jezebel spirit instead of following the way of Christ. Worst of all, they add to the spiritual delusion of the abuse victims, steering them away from the biblical instruction that is truly available for them, and which truly works, both in the temporal life and with souls in eternity. When God delivers supernatural protection and miraculous transformation of the abuser, birthing him or her into the kingdom of God, they discredit even that, because it conflicts with their pro-divorce, feminist narrative. These “ministries” would have considered the Apostle Paul a “misogynist” (to the full extent they couldn’t get away with misquoting him, and with “sanitizing” his instructions to wives).

But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.

The Apostle Peter, similarly “misogynistic”….

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, ²as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. ….

You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. For,

“The one who desires life, to love and see good days,
Must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
“He must turn away from evil and do good;
He must seek peace and pursue it.
“For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous,
And His ears attend to their prayer,
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.

The above-posted February, 2016 article by Spiritual Sounding Board,

Saeed Abedini and Franklin Graham Promote “Couples Counseling” to Reconcile the Abedinis. Because of Saeed’s Abuse, is This Counterproductive?

raises a few valid points:

– the offender (if he / she is actually such) must want to change before change is possible

– the victim(s) and offender do need physical separation for the necessary season

– individual counseling is typically necessary before couples-counseling is likely to succeed

…but the article reaches a destructive and unbiblical conclusion that jeopardizes the souls of everyone involved: husband, wife and children. It also adds to the lethal effects on society as a whole, because it rushes the parties into the immoral, permanent abandonment of their marriage (unless the Lord intervenes some years later) under man’s false paper. In some cases, namely, the great many cases where the “marriage” was biblically unlawful at inception, this is an eternal mercy. But in every case where God-joined holy matrimony was involved between some combination of a widowed or never-married man and woman, this wicked, murmurring spirit is an abomination for which God will hold these practitioners responsible.

On the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ,

So they are no longer [never again] two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no [hu]man separate…Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

The Greek word for the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used in Matt. 19:6 is “choresthetai” which referred to the furrows between rows in a plowed field. An effective translation of this word is, “to put distance between.” That is a very apt description of how these groups operate. In Proverbs 6, God calls that an abomination.

These “ministries” actively foment and promote biblically-forbidden hard-heartedness, using clever labels, slanderous emotions and caustic publicity. Here, they arrogantly presumed that Franklin Graham would not have steered the Abedinis to the appropriate resources, had he been free of their own salacious publicity and interference. Spiritual Sounding Board (incredibly) asks why Franklin Graham didn’t defer to the Abedinis’ home pastor in Idaho for the counseling, but a look at the facebook traffic and the writings of these groups just prior to this 2016 post makes that a hypocritical charge. The ugly reality is that the avenue of working with the home church was effectively foreclosed because, long before Saeed’s plane from Iran had even landed, they had already demonized that Utah home church as “hiding” and “enabling” the abuser, until Naghmeh was rendered unwilling to submit to that pastor’s legitimate spiritual authority.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones Proverbs 12:4

WHAT DOES A GODLY, SCRIPTURAL ABUSE INTERVENTION EFFORT LOOK LIKE?

When banks train their staff how to recognize counterfeit bills, they are said to have them spend some time closely studying the real thing. We can profitably do the same here. These are the traits of a biblically-faithful and effective abuse and endangered-marriage ministry:

(1) It prays that the justification and sanctification experience will be genuine and renewed in both marriage partners (Luke 13:3; Matthew 7:21-23)

(2) It counsels a sole regenerated partner in servant-leadership and seeing their offending spouse the way Jesus sees them (1 Peter 3:1-7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-13, 16)

(3) It refrains from suppressing the uncomfortable truth about the eternal and societal consequences of our individual choice to obey or disobey God’s commandments (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:7-8; Hebrews 13:4)

(4) It banishes the evangelical weasel-words: “ideal”, “design”, “purpose”, “intention”, “best” (etc.) from reference to marriage indissolubility, and replaces those words with REALITY, and COMMANDMENT. (Matthew 19:6; Malachi 2:13-15)

(5) It draws a scripture-based distinction between lawful and unlawful marriages, and counsels accordingly, with souls and generations in mind (Matthew 5:27-32; Luke 16:18-31; Matthew 19:9b-KJV; Mark 10:11-12; Malachi 2:14-15)

(6) It recognizes the spiritual warfare, demonic nature of holy matrimony destruction, and trains the believing spouse(s) in the spiritual weapons (in a separate session with the believing spouse, if necessary) – Ephesians 6:10-18; 2 Corinthians 10:4-6

(7) Where criminal behavior is evident and provable, it counsels toward criminal court, not “family court” (Romans 13:1-4; Matthew 22:20-21; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(8) It frankly warns that a holy God recognizes neither man’s “divorce” nor attempts to “remarry”, despite the widespread iniquity they observe in the church (Matthew 19:8; Matthew 5:32b; 19:9b; Luke 16:18b; Romans 7:2-3; 1 Corinthians 7:39)

(9) It builds a deliberate knowledge base about the biblical validity, theology, practice methods, track record and faith of other marital therapists, and makes that available

(10) It attempts to advise against and mediate with authorities to eliminate relationship-hindering elements such as objectively-unnecessary no-contact and restraining orders

(11) It attempts to mediate with the pastor if there is an unbiblical element of the home church’s doctrine on marriage, divorce or remarriage, and it encourages submission to the leadership of the home church unless there is a biblically-solid reason not to (for example, unqualified pastor who is divorced and remarried)
– 2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6

(12) It teaches the biblical authority / responsibility structure of the home (1 Corinthians 11:3)

(13) It cooperates with biblically-administered church discipline, and it helps to bring either or both spouses back into soft-hearted submission to valid church authority (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5; James 5:19-20)

(14) It organizes essential material resources that enable the spouses to follow God’s instructions to separate chastely, and remain married (James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5:3-8; 1 Corinthians 7:11)

(15) It hones a skill set in defusing unhelpful, divisive emotions on both sides, and models longsuffering (Jeremiah 17:9; Galatians 5:22; Matthew 16:24)

(16) It leaves the control of the timeline in God’s hands, honoring Christ’s commandments not to take our own revenge and not to resort to pagan courtrooms (2 Peter 3:8-9; Romans 12:19;
1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

(17) It operates under the fruit of the Spirit, and educates everyone involved about the works of the flesh, including the fact that all forms of humanistic thought directly conflict with following Christ, and examines common wrong assumptions and motives for humanistic thought. (Galatians 5:22-23; Matthew 16:24-25)

Of course, these steps are the very antidote to secular humanism and temporal values that today masquerade as “discipleship”. Several of these elements expressly conflict with the feminist ideology of these groups. “Standerinfamilycourt” makes no apologies for any of them, however “enabling” and “misogynistic” they may be deemed to be. Most importantly, several of these ministering essentials cannot be accomplished in the virtual world, nor by buying the hawked publications on offer. Hence, these “ministries” have virtually no biblically-valid role in the kingdom of God.

Now that we have a picture of what a biblically-valid ministry to physically and emotionally-battered spouses looks like, we’re ready to meet the people and examine the philosophies behind Spiritual Sounding Board, and A Cry for Justice, while holding their characteristic dogmas and practices up to the light of scripture.

Julie Anne Smith, owner of Spiritual Sounding Board is a Washington resident who began blogging a few years ago on what she views as “abusive churches”, following an incident in 2010 or 2011 that affected her and other friends and family members at Beaverton Grace Bible Church, where the pastor at the time was Charles O’Neal, who remains the current head pastor. Unlike her former pastor, Julie Anne doesn’t really tell us too much more about her own background, except that she was a home-schooling parent for 23-1/2 years. Presumably, she’s been a homemaker for the bulk of her pre-blogging career. She does not disclose on her site her education, professional experience, or even her account of coming to faith. The summons of the dismissed suit quotes several online statements by her and various co-defendants, but none of the allegations are specific enough to cite any biblical authority to substantiate those opinions. She apparently gets extensively interviewed around the Pacific Northwest area as a result of the dismissed lawsuit, but to her credit, she is apparently not hawking books. A defining quote from her “About” page gives an idea of what she defines as church-orchestrated abuse:

“Another part of my story is connected with the Homeschool Movement – the subculture within the fundamental Christian homeschool group which includes practices such as: full-quiver, courtship, Patriarchy, stay-at-home daughters, modesty/purity teachings (the church/pastor who sued me also was connected with the Homeschool Movement).

“As a long-time homeschooling mother (23+ yrs), I have seen how some of these practices, especially the ones that devalue/depersonalize women and girls, have caused great harm, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We have a big problem with abuse in our Christian groups!”

While the primary purpose of this blog post is not to critique churches, we must start by saying that just because disaffected congregation members may personally disagree with biblical concepts such as encouraging large families, modest dress, chastity, honoring homemaking as a career choice, submission to the biblical family-structure, discouraging contemporary dating practices, none of this automatically renders a church “abusive”, unless members are chained there and not permitted by some strong mechanism to “vote with their feet”–or there is substantive evidence of financial abuse of church resources, or perhaps sexual immorality in the leadership.
The church’s website does not make any disclosure of a church board or plural leadership, which discerning folk should probably take as a potential “red flag”, especially where there is more than one campus–which appears to be the case here, but this is the typical operating model for that denomination. There seems to be pretty good disclosure of these facts on BGBC’s web page, which should best be left to the judgment of the public, in the absence of non-public malfeasance that could not be resolved according to biblical principles with Pastor O’Neal. If there is any scriptural authority for any of Mrs. Smith’s opinions, she does not seem to cite them in her blog posts (even though she does appear to provide an extensive list of links to the work of others on a separate Resources tab). Indeed, even when she is citing “experts” in her own writings on handling marital abusers, the typical link is not to a social science publication, but to a newspaper summary of an emotion-gripping incident, itself having no links to social science support.

The best that can be said of the 2012 lawsuit incident is that both sides seem to have behaved unbiblically. The fact that the suit was dismissed, while the outcome seems correct and just, does not exonerate the public slander, reviling and lack of submission on Mrs. Smith (and company’s) part to biblical authority while voluntarily a part of the church.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, outbursts of anger, DISPUTES, DISSENTIONS, FACTIONS, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The fact that Pastor O’Neal felt compelled to bring the matter before pagan judges to protect perceived financial interests does not speak very well of him, either, by biblical standards. Neither party seemed to have acted in a way that was a good witness to the community. Smith does not give a “what we believe” section, and tells us nothing further that creditably justifies her site, but she does provide what looks like a good resource list to help individuals decide for themselves whether they are involved with an abusive or controlling church, and ought to simply move on quietly. Smith’s motives, however, seem vengeful and controlling (at least, intimidating) in their own right. It should go without saying that church discipline and biblical admonition are valid and scriptural in the absence of any factors indicating mistreatment of those elements, and are not, in and of themselves, “controlling” behavior, as Spiritual Sounding Board frequently alleges.

Mrs. Smith goes on to tell us about her association with another blogger on the topic of church abuse, by the name of Brad Sargent, who goes by the moniker, “futuristguy” . His role in this site does not seem extensive, but he’s described as having compiled the library of links to the lawsuit documents, and as a “survivor of church abuse”. Evaluation of his materials will be outside the scope of this blog, while noting that he did write a blog on the Mars Hill Church controversy that led to the litigious 2014 removal of founding pastor, Mark Driscoll for pastoral misconduct. Sargent’s own blogsite does not seem to be fixated on interference with families, but he did also weigh in separately on the recent Paige Patterson controversy.

It was to Spiritual Sounding Board that Christian homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt reportedly brought the year 2000 radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and scheduled speaker for the mid-June annual conference in Dallas of the Southern Baptist Convention. In magpie fashion, Mrs. Smith proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women. This inflamed the likes of Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition with over 3,000 signatures for Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post, which is scheduled to be discussed tomorrow, May 22. Swallow-Prior has been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men. Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel. There are suggestions that various Southern Baptist arms, including the ERLC, have benefitted from the largesse of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and this Dallas seminary coup, if successful, has strong implications for the unilateral divorce repeal debate in Austin that resumes with the 2019 legislative session.

In the four-minute audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused. Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”, and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce. Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing he could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries”, already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth. Not that Dr. Patterson should be required to bow and scrape before these militant hussies, it is an important point of chronology that this interview pre-dated the inception of these groups by several years, so it is a bit unreasonable to even accuse him of “insensitivity”. From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about. (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact). He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady, rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as in their smear campaign.

He told this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’…. Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard. He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken. He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her. Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’ Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.

Folks, that’s how it’s supposed to work in the kingdom of God!
In fact, something similar happened nearly 40 years ago in SIFC’s home.

...Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.
– Matthew 21:31

That formerly abusive man will get into heaven before any of these harpies trying to remove Dr. Patterson will, trust me. No civil paperwork needed. In fact, the rebellious filing of a divorce petition, in direct violation of 1 Cor. 6:1-8, is the trigger that tends to create much of the violence, along with the illicit presence of an immoral relationship which an insecure woman who is not submitted to Christ will often herself introduce, in her own abusiveness toward the marriage. On the other hand, a biblical, chaste separation, where the abuser knows and trusts that their spouse remains committed to the home and to reconciliation, will often lead to genuine repentance.
I find a little bit of flaw with Dr. Patterson’s articulation, but no fault whatsoever with his conduct. The fact that these condemning women have so much open disdain for God’s word and for His ways tells me all I really need to know about their characters, and about their qualification for the “ministry” they claim.

In contrast to Spiritual Sounding Board, the “ministry” A Cry for Justice is a bit older and more established.
(Note: we have removed the earlier reference to tax-exempt nonprofit status which was in error, after ACFJ advised this was not correct.)

When founded in 2012, it was run by Pastor Jeff Crippen, of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon, and by Barbara Roberts of Australia, who claims to have come out of an abusive marriage, and is presently in a biblically-adulterous remarriage with a man she also says has come out of an abusive marriage. Both have written various books on the topic of domestic abuse / violence and the “acceptability” of divorce, since 2008-9. Crippen is a former law enforcement professional, and bolsters the “authority” of his books with that background. He appears to be in a 40-year covenant marriage. Crippen makes various charges in this 2012 post against conservative Christian denominations and fellowships, some biblical, and some not-so-much, for example:

“Taking Stock

Therefore, if your church:

embraces a theology that presumes a church member/professing Christian really is a Christian, regardless of how they are living,
emphasizes the headship of the husband and father and the submission of the wife and mother without getting right down to the “nitty-gritty” of what abuse of headship actually looks like, so that the men in the church even “squirm” in the pew if they are guilty,
does not, like we used to, permit women to vote or to pray aloud,
teaches that the marriage covenant is not to be broken, that divorce is wrong (that sounds biblical, but what it usually translates into is the clear implication that abuse is not grounds for divorce)
teaches that abuse victims, normally women, are pleasing God and suffering for Christ by remaining in a marriage to an abuser,
discourages (in some cases forbids) a wife from saying anything negative about her husband (this is often expressed as a discouraging ‘gossip’)

…then I suggest to you that it is not fundamentally the troubled marriage that is threatening the health of your church, but it is the climate that has been created which inevitably deals injustice to victims.”

“Injustice Destroys Unity

“As more and more people in the congregation begin to realize this injustice, unity is destroyed. As we, pastors and leaders, dig our heels in further, all the while telling ourselves that we are standing faithful for Christ in this, we only add fuel to the fire.

“There was still another hard thing that I had to face: just what do we think of women? The fact is that most conservative, Bible-believing pastors like ourselves actually look down upon women. We see them as inferior beings. We object to this charge, but our actions betray our real attitudes.

“I had to ask myself, “Jeff, just exactly what is it that is going on in your head when a woman walks into your office and asks for help?” The answer I ultimately saw was “I see her as an inferior being and I talk down to her.” Really, and with ruthless honesty – “What does Pastor _________ think about a woman who walks into his office?” “What does he think about his wife?” Don’t rush to answers. The first responses we give are usually wrong.”

(Extracted from “An Open Letter from a A Pastor to Pastors”, September 6, 2012)

Crippen reportedly stepped away from the ACFJ “ministry” in 2017, leaving it in the hands of Barbara Roberts and her assistants. Roberts was the author of the decidedly unbiblical book, “Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion”.

Of course, the very title of this tome suggests a reliance on the too-common eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:15, which itself relies on an abusive translation of the Greek term “douloo” to include the marriage bond, and in so doing, fabricates an out-of-context “exception” for both divorce and remarriage based on a spouse’s desertion. No one-flesh supernatural, inseverable joining for this bunch — that “demeans” women and “enables” abuse! This book was written in 2008, and Ms. Roberts entered her adulterous union in 2011. While our Lord says all divorce is man-fabricated, Roberts claims there is a “distinction” between a “treacherous divorce” and “disciplinary divorce”…

“Disciplinary divorce is permitted by the Bible. It applies in cases of abuse, adultery and desertion, where a seriously mistreated spouse divorces a seriously offending spouse.

“Treacherous divorce is condemned by the Bible. It occurs when a spouse obtains divorce for reasons other than abuse, adultery or desertion. I did not invent those terms by the way, I got them from another author. To explain the scriptural basis for the distinction between disciplinary and treacherous divorce took a whole book, so I’d best not try to go into it here!

“Understanding the biblical principle of disciplinary divorce is liberating, especially for the victims of domestic abuse, who have been the Cinderellas in the divorce controversy for centuries. God doesn’t say that abused spouses have to stay, put up and suffer. They are free to separate, divorce and, if they choose, remarry. They don’t have to be sacrificed on the altar of the institution of marriage, at the hands of a cruel spouse and a judgemental [sic] church. They can seek freedom from bondage and rebuild their lives, without guilt or condemnation.”

(We would add…without much of a healthy fear of God!) So, this brings us to the nitty-gritty of the issue to remove a seminary head who is committed to biblical marriage permanence and whose actions reject the falsehoods of the “social justice gospel”. The full (and grossly errant) ACFJ “Position on Divorce” can be read here.

ACFJ defines “abuse” that justifies divorce as follows: “A pattern of coercive control (ongoing actions or inactions) that proceeds from a mentality of entitlement to power, whereby, through intimidation, manipulation and isolation, the abuser keeps his* target subordinated and under his control. This pattern can be emotional, verbal, psychological, spiritual, sexual, financial, social and physical. Not all these elements need be present, e.g., physical abuse may not be part of it.”

ACFJ goes on to claim on their site (without biblical authority) that the marriage covenant is “broken” by this “abuse”. On the contrary, our bible states that, although many things violate the marriage covenant, only physical death actually breaks it. Somebody’s obviously lying here: either it’s Barbara Roberts, the self-interested, legalized adulteress, hoping to sell her apostate book, or it’s Jesus and Paul. What do you think?

There is some misapplied-but-interesting lore behind ACFJ’s iconic Facebook cover: “Saint Lucy was a rich Christian woman of Sicily who refused marriage and gave her money to the poor. Her rejected suitor (a pagan fellow to whom her mother had betrothed her) denounced Lucy to the authorities during the Diocletian persecution. The Governor of Syracuse ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When she refused the Governor sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword in 304 AD. A later legend says that Lucy’s eyes were gouged out as part of the persecution but were miraculously restored at her death. In the painting Lucy is standing before the Governor who condemned her at the behest of the abuser who sought to marry her. She is pointing upward to Heaven, warning the judge of the wrath that will come upon him for siding with the ungodly. The Holy Spirit hovers over her.”

If the Holy Spirit is hovering over this (purportedly, persecuted) organization, it is a grieved and quenched one.

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to conclude this post with some balancing thoughts by Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, and Research Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, The Independent Institute, and the Inter-American Institute, from his 2017 article, “How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution”:

“The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally, fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice.

“Even more serious are fabricated accusations of domestic violence, a well-known weapon in divorce courts and a tool of the feminist lobby for creating single-parent homes and depriving children of fathers. They constitute another clear and direct attack on justice. Some Christians have indeed weighed in—unhelpfully.

“In ‘Freeing the Oppressed: A Call to Christians concerning Domestic Abuse‘, Ron Clark parrots standard, patently preposterous feminist claims (“every 15 seconds a spouse kills his wife”). His personalized definition of “domestic violence” bears no relation to plain English, with “manipulation,” “self-pity,” and even “apologies” classed as “violence.” His books are a litany of government falsehoods that are used to exacerbate the family crisis and augment government power. But even if Clark is right, then why are the other churches so silent? Here too, the church should have something to say, one way or the other. But here too, as with divorce generally, as with rape accusations, they are silent.”

We note that Dr. Baskerville is a tireless critic of our immoral and unconstitutional unilateral divorce laws, whose proponents are constantly seeking to justify with “straw-man” arguments, such as claims that stripping ALL (offending and non-offending) divorce defendants of their basic Bill of Rights protections is imperative to reducing spousal suicide from “feeling trapped in abusive marriages”. While correlation studies have indeed been done that show a slight drop in spousal suicide rates with the rise in states that have passed unconstitutional “family laws”, those studies ignore important resulting factors like the hefty social costs, the suicide, homicide, physical and sexual abuse rates of children in the resulting broken homes, and the suicide rates among legally-abandoned spouses, especially those alienated from their children due to no fault of their own.

You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. – Deuteronomy 16:19

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

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

January 30, 2018 standerinfamilycourt 2 Comments

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:

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

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.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Knickers (and Facts) in A Twist over Repeal of Texlahoma “No-Fault”

April 22, 2017 standerinfamilycourt 5 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

It has been an exciting spring legislative session in the southwest this year, as young lawmakers in Texas and Oklahoma have introduced common-sense bills curbing non-consenting unilateral divorce, and as both bills have recently made it out of their committees fairly intact. The liberal press has been shrieking and howling its disapproval, especially in Oklahoma, where the measure also ends the perverse economic incentives from unilateral divorce by restoring stiff marital fault penalties to property division.

As is so typical of liberal grandstanding and industry lobbying, we’re hearing not of the millions of fathers whose fundamental right to protect and raise their children is being severed though they’ve done nothing objectively wrong, nor of the adulterers sailing off with the unconscionable award of the innocent spouse’s retirement funds after a decades-long union which is suddenly deemed “irretrievable” by the court. Instead we are hearing about the classic “abused poor woman” who will now find it harder to get a divorce because she might now have to actually prove the abuse with (gasp) evidence thereof. As one of the expert witnesses giving testimony in Texas accurately pointed out to committee members on March 8, lawmakers cannot legislate to the extreme case (13:00), as the liberals would like, but must do what’s best for society as a whole.

Rep. Travis Dunlap is a young lawmaker from Bartlesville, OK who was elected to the state house from his trade as a piano tuner. Though he does not have the constitutional law background that his Texas counterpart has, he probably drafted the more effective of the two pieces of legislation in actually rolling back the abusive “no-fault” regime. According to media accounts, the original HB1277 drafted by Dunlap made it impossible for a court in Oklahoma to grant a divorce for “incompatibility” (the equivalent of “irreconcilable differences”) if the couple met one of three criteria:

– married for more than 10 years, or
– had a living child under age 18, or
– a partner involved objects to the divorce.

A committee modification allows petitioners who fall into one of those categories to have a divorce granted by the court for “incompatibility”, but they must first go through an educational program about the impact of divorce. Previously, petitioners only had to do that if they had a child under age 18, and the educational program was focused on the impact of divorce on children. While this does not seem a particularly helpful modification from the standpoint of constitutional protections, this bill has a very important strength that the Texas bill lacks: it restores marital fault to the property settlement that results, as follows,

“However, where the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that one spouse caused the dissolution of marriage by committing at least one of the grounds for divorce, other than incompatibility, listed in Section 101 of this title, the court shall award only one-quarter (1/4) of the marital property to that spouse and the other spouse shall retain the remaining three-quarters (3/4) of the marital property…….

“Upon granting a decree of dissolution of marriage, annulmentof a marriage, or legal separation, where the court finds by apreponderance of the evidence that one spouse caused thedissolution, annulment or separation by committing at least one of the grounds for divorce, other than incompatibility, listed in Section 101 of this title, the court shall order that party to paythe other party’s expenses, including attorney fees.”

Perverse and unjust economic incentives play such an enormous role in the abusiveness of existing family laws, and so drives the egregious behavior of the divorce industry “professionals” who have far more interest in shredding families than defending them, that no reform is likely to be sustainable without addressing this, as the Oklahoma bill has nicely done. As a direct consequence, Rep. Dunlap has predictably drawn the venom of the state Bar and the unrelenting scorn of Oklahoma’s leftists in the press. The committee vote was 7-5 on February 27, to refer the bill on for a floor vote which must occur by the May 26 end of the Oklahoma 56th legislative session. The Senate sponsor of the bill is Sen. Josh Brecheen of Coalgate, Oklahoma. Unlike Texas, Oklahoma does not have a strong family policy council any longer, and videos of the committee testimony do not seem to be available. One recent article says this, “Dunlap, who represents District 10, said he now does not expect the bill to see a vote in the House but is interested in continuing his efforts. ” We hope and pray that Rep. Dunlap does just that.

Rep. Matt Krause’s Texas bill was the subject of an earlier blog post. That bill, which simply eliminates no-fault grounds where there is not a mutual-consent petition has been favorably referred by a 4-3 committee vote on April 12, and must somehow achieve a floor vote by the May 29 end of the legislative session. This bill does not address several onerous provisions that would remain unchanged in the Texas Statute which could effectively still result in a contested dissolution being granted to an offending spouse over the moral objections of the non-offending spouse, including this provision:

Sec. 6.006. LIVING APART. The court may grant a divorce in favor of either spouse if the spouses have lived apart without cohabitation for at least three years.

Often, the innocent original spouse who does not believe in marriage dissolution because of scriptures such as Matthew 19:6 and 8, Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Cor. 7:10-11 and 39, has non-cohabitation forced on them by the offending spouse, and has little or no control over this circumstance, especially if the offending spouse is in an adulterous relationship or has a history of physical abuse of household members. This should therefore not be left under the sole control of the offending party if unilateral divorce is to be eradicated, and constitutional protections balanced. We should also note that the [unchanged] “cruelty” ground contains this phrase which still refers to “insupportability” but does not objectively or measurably define “cruel treatment” :

The court may grant a divorce in favor of one spouse if the other spouse is guilty of cruel treatment toward the complaining spouse of a nature that renders further living together insupportable

(Apparently, rogue attorneys and “abused poor women” can restore “insupportability” simply by alleging cruel treatment under sec. 6.005, which this bill still does not, for all purposes, make them actually prove under its ongoing vague definition — how novel!)

In the unlikely event that Texas HB93 achieves a floor vote by the end of the session, there’s no question that there will be some back doors left wide open to unilateral divorce, but the period of time required will be lengthened. If it dies in the 85th session without being voted on, we hope it will be re-introduced next session with some of these issues further addressed.

We covered a list of practical actions Texas and Oklahoma citizens can take to support these bills in the last blog on this topic, but let’s run through a few briefly again:

(1) Call the state capitol and ask for a floor vote:
Joe Straus
Speaker of the House (Texas)
(512) 463-1000
(512) 463-0675 Fax

Charles McCall
Speaker of the House (Oklahoma)
(405) 557-7412

(2) Engage your church and pastor – ask for a few minutes to talk to the congregation about the religious freedom and due process issues with the so-called “no-fault” system and how it has led to every other kind of immorality, from same-sex attraction to the high abortion and suicide rates. Explain that citizen engagement is needed at the grass roots to counter the overwhelming divorce industry lobby and liberal press. If they sent busloads of the faithful to the state capitol 2 or 3 years ago to combat gay “marriage”, challenge them on why this isn’t every bit as weighty a matter to the church’s families.

(3) Call Texas Values and ask what they are doing to support HB93. (Unfortunately, we’re not aware of a functioning family policy council in Oklahoma at this time).

(4) Sign a petition if you get a chance. The Ruth Institute has one for Texas that can be found here.

(5) No matter which state you call home, please take time to call and write to encourage Reps. Krause and Dunlap. Pray for them, and let them know it.

Divorce Reform, Repenting Prodigals and Covenant Marriage “Standers”
While there is broad agreement in the marriage permanence community that repealing unilateral divorce is best for the future of our nation, many of us have either already been unjustly divorced and seen our spouse remarry adulterously (by biblical standards, that is – since we, their true spouse in God’s eyes, are still alive), or others of us have come to biblical conviction that we had wrongfully “married” someone else’s divorced spouse, and needed to exit that union to be right with God. So, though meaningful reform of the unilateral family-shredding machine remains a long shot with plenty of deep-pocketed, well-connected opposition, we should look at where such reforms leave our wandering spouses who need to exit those immoral, civil-only unions and rebuild their covenant families. The subsequent divorce rate is significantly higher for legalized adultery resulting from the divorce culture, and it escalates with each round of serial polygamy under easy divorce laws. Just how hard will divorce reform make repentance from remarriage adultery under the two bills being considered ? Here’s an analysis for each:

Oklahoma, under HB1277: Mutual-consent petitions continue to permit no-fault grounds, but if the adulterous union produced a minor child or has lasted at least 10 years, an education class must be attended before dissolution can be granted. It is likely that a repenting prodigal exiting the adulterous remarriage will leave 75% of the marital assets with their ex-spouse unless that spouse has committed a serious, provable offense against the marriage. Assets can be replaced, but souls certainly cannot. Even so, assets brought in from the “dissolved” covenant marriage (very importantly including retirement accounts) are not considered part of the marital assets of the subsequent faux marriage and would not be forfeited by decree, however the repenting spouse would also likely have to absorb all the legal costs of getting free of their legalized adultery. Waiting period: 180 days.

Texas, under HB93: Mutual-consent petitions permit insupportability grounds but if the subsequent spouse does not consent and the repenting prodigal separates in order to end the practice of adultery (as he / she must do regardless), then after one year the now-abandoned spouse may file a fault-based petition which will be granted upon evidence, or they may agree to a mutual-consent petition sooner, and if HB65 also passes, the waiting period will be 180 days. Alternatively, if the repenting spouse moves back in with their covenant spouse, grounds of adultery are then available to the now-abandoned subsequent spouse. If the non-covenant still declines to file a grounds-based petition, the repenting prodigal may file after 3 years of continuous separation on the basis of non-cohabitation. Assets would be divided on the same basis as current law but this would not include any assets brought from the prior covenant marriage.

“Standerinfamilycourt” always encourages mutual petitions rather than dragging anyone into a pagan court (1 Cor. 6:1-8) in the process of repenting of an adulterous remarriage, as a growing number are doing these days upon learning the biblical truth on the matter. If prayer doesn’t produce a consenting, mutual petition, repenting prodigals can always take comfort in the biblical fact that no state has dissolved the marriage of their youth in God’s eyes, nor was the subsequent “remarriage” ever considered valid in His courtroom. They are free to resume their union without the state’s blessing and are not actually in sin if they do so. The Lord will then sort out the legal matters in His own way.

‘So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man 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.“ Matt. 19:6, 8

And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Matt. 12:17

(SIFC: Would like to give a shout-out and thanks to Bai MacFarlane of Mary’s Advocates, who has established contact with Rep. Krause’s office and has provided some of the not-yet-posted details needed to complete this post.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Let’s Take an AUTHENTIC Stand for Marriage, Christian Right

January 15, 2017 standerinfamilycourt 4 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

February 7 – 14 is National Marriage Week.
During this week, there will be much going on that is vital and valuable to our nation, but there will be no getting away from the fact that in the corrupted culture of contemporary evangelicaldom, it will be “finders keepers”, and millions in faux “marriages” which are not holy matrimony, will be encouraged to stay there at the peril of their very souls. The excellent organization, Breakpoint.org promotes it in this audio link dated January 5, 2017.

Talking about marriage “permanence” is politically acceptable to this crowd, but it will not resolve the nation’s problems because it will not touch the root issue. Rather, the message needs to be around the far more relevant and offensive topic of holy matrimony indissolubility, according to Matt.19:6,8 and Luke 16:18. This needs to be in the heaven-or-hell terms that Jesus and Paul unflinchingly cast it.

Some crucial topics not likely to be on this year’s agenda:

– When will pastors stop performing weddings that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous (and tell the congregation why) ?

– When will pastors stop signing civil marriage licenses that reflect the only unenforceable contract in American history, and which since 1970, in no way corresponds to Christ’s Matt. 19:4-6 definition of marriage?

– When will pastors stop smearing and stigmatizing the growing stream of true disciples of Jesus Christ who are coming out of adulterous civil unions in order to recover their inheritance in the kingdom of God?
[1 Cor. 6:9-10; Mal. 5:19-21-KJV)

– When will repealing unilateral divorce in all 50 states become as high a moral priority as outlawing the slave trade, or repealing Roe v. Wade, or ending sodomous “marriages” ?

Given what Jesus and Paul both had to say about remarriage adultery (repeatedly by each), true revival when it arrives, is going to look horrifying to the organizers of National Marriage Week, but it will be pleasing to God. The horror will not be due to the repenting prodigals, but due to five decades of false, hireling shepherds not doing the job the Owner of the fold gave them to safeguard souls first, and then covenant families.

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Equal Protection, Prayer, Religious freedom

No Day in Court for (Stander) “Jane Doe” – Our Story, Part 4

December 4, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 3 Comments

An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.

Proverbs 31

by Standerinfamilycourt

The two-year ride through the Illinois family court system may be nearly over for Standerinfamilycourt, several months ahead of our scheduled appeal docket date. On December 2, 2014, the 2nd District Court of Appeals denied our appealed motion for anonymity to bring our religious freedom and equal protection challenge to Illinois’ unilateral divorce law, just as the trial judge had done back in August. Our constitutional attorneys have confirmed that this denial cannot be appealed any higher. This very important matter was firmly in God’s sovereign hands all along, and it was the subject of much prayer, both mine and that of our small band of supporters in this cause. God’s people are right to obediently show up dressed for battle, but we must never lose sight that the battle belongs to the Lord, as does all choice of weapons and timing for the battle.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8

Why was anonymity so important? Doesn’t the public have a “right to know”? In this case, probably so. A consulting firm which employs an emotionally ill man in a very responsible position, seeks new clients who will rely on this firm’s fiduciary integrity over $ million+ long-term contracts. That firm allowed this principal to install a girlfriend under his direct supervision, and at least two blood relatives into jobs in the firm, possibly ahead of other more qualified people. It further allowed per diem payments for lavish trips, and short-sightedly did not care that its employment policies were not only destructive to the families of its employees, but it tolerated illegal sexual harassment discriminatory to the rest of its employees in condoning and knowingly facilitating a known boss / subordinate adulterous relationship for many years. SIFC is an employee of the sort of client who might hire such a consulting firm, and in fact, her employer is a chief competitor of this firm’s main energy industry client. If SIFC can simply go to Bing and type in the first and last name of this regional business director who manages very important international engagements, and bring up all the sordid facts about this firm and that consultant in a published appeals case opinion that provocatively challenged the constitutionality of a long-standing state law, she might well advise her employer to steer clear and find an alternative vendor who manages their business with far less drama. Such is indeed the public’s right to know, and such are the facts already captured in the trial transcripts.

That said, I love my Lord who unconditionally loves both of us as one person, and I unconditionally love my life companion of more than 40 years. I have no desire whatsoever to be out of alignment with either of them, unless my beloved is out of alignment with his Lord. According to God’s clear word, SIFC remains the one-flesh covenant wife of this emotionally tormented man until God’s divorce parts us (God spells divorce “D-E-A-T-H”) . By God’s design, nothing happens to this petitioner husband of mine that does not directly happen to the one-flesh wife of his youth, regardless of anything the civil authorities will ever have to say on the matter. Nothing happens to us as a covenant couple that does not impact the lives of everyone close to us: extended family members on both sides of the family, employers, friends and neighbors. Which brings us to why anonymity was important in asserting this constitutional challenge in a godly way, if that indeed remains the Lord’s assignment for this time:

It would cover my distraught husband’s “nakedness” while he is haplessly under Satan’s control (Genesis 9:20-23)
It would be merciful, allowing him an avenue to return to walking with the Lord, without immense public humiliation to live down when God’s discipline eventually catches up
It would be equally merciful to his adulterous and extortionist partner whom the court record reflects received massive cash payments from my husband
It would protect innocent family members who became ensnared in my prodigal’s elaborately sinful scheming
It would avoid the appearance of vengeful or materialistic motives on my part in making a name for myself which would be a poor public witness for this much larger godly cause impacting our entire state, and possibly the nation

Job #1 for any Christ-follower who has been given a covenant life partner, is to unconditionally love, to fast and to pray that partner all the way through this life and into the Kingdom of God – period. Every other pursuit is secondary and human divorce decrees are totally irrelevant to that mission. We will all stand before a Holy God who will ask us, how did you steward the gifts I gave you, including the most important one, that husband or wife with whom you were joint heirs of My Kingdom and with whom you were made by ME one-flesh during your life walk? Since we’ve been empowered by the Holy Spirit in a way that transcends time, distance and circumstances, with a holy authority that outranks civil authority, and since all of the host of heaven is fighting on the side of defending our covenant marriages, He is not going to accept as an alibi that some civil judge, with no Kingdom authority whatsoever over what God divinely and permanently joined, has somehow excused me from His assignment just by writing out a sham human dissolution order that means nothing before His throne.

SIFC has repeatedly found throughout this legal journey that being restoration-minded, as God’s ways require, is totally incompatible with functioning under the unilateral divorce regime, even with Christian lawyers. Even its godliest legal practitioners cannot seem to get their heads around maintaining truly biblical behavior and motivations in this profoundly wicked realm. The very best of them truly fear what failure to submit to the thuggish web of state-sanctioned lies will do to their clients’ cases. In this instance, my Christian attorney and his associates felt compelled to file his motion to proceed under fictitious name claiming in that document that I “feared political backlash” from those who support the continuation of no-fault grounds and who favor continuation of the tyrannical public policy banning marital fault as a basis in settling property and custody disputes, rather than pleading the true family preservation reasons I have just stated. I will always wonder whether the outcome might have been different if my attorney had simply filed his motion petition with the truth concerning my motives. “She does her husband good and not evil all the days of her life.” What if my Christian attorneys had had the integrity to truly speak for me with the mind of Christ in that legal motion?

I hope that sharing my learnings through this legal journey will help people understand more about what is keeping such an immoral and unconstitutional family law regime so deeply entrenched in our system of “justice”, and how very much the idolatry of doing so is costing us as a nation. As time marches on, a growing percentage of us have never known any other way! Many presume that a law that has gone unchallenged for so long must be inherently right. Indeed, it takes the lens of God’s word to truly appreciate all that’s wrong. Many whose consciences tell them they should be challenging this immoral and unconstitutional singling out of a disfavored class of citizens, unfortunately fear men more than they fear God. All of the powerful gatekeepers (judges, legislators and attorneys on both sides) are members of the legal community who economically benefit from it at the expense of all of the rest of society. Goliath continues to taunt God’s people and there appears to be no champion in the land to ask His anointing on a stone and a slingshot to bring this giant down. The expected champions, those national organizations who faithfully take on every other political threat to the traditional family and to every other form of religious freedom violation, quake in fear or denial on the sidelines when it comes to this particular Goliath. Jesus rightly said we cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.

If I am unable to bring my case without destroying my life partner of over 40 years, how long until God raises up another David with the same reverence for holy matrimony, sufficient finances and zeal for God’s kingdom? Under those circumstances, I have to have faith that nobody is indispensable, and I have offered my God everything I have in this effort, except the irreplaceable soul of my covenant husband which is, and which must remain, my very first priority and responsibility.

“Jane Doe” was not only fighting for the integrity of her own family, but for the families and for the fundamental 14th Amendment rights of all innocent contesting Respondents as a class: Jack , Jill and Joe Doe, in bringing a constitutional challenge to a blatantly unconstitutional law. As the politically powerful homosexual movement demonstrated over the past year, actions need to be replicated in many (perhaps not all) states for unilateral divorce in our democratic nation to fall into the dustbin of perverse human history , where it undeniably belongs.

As individual Christ-followers, we are told we must follow Jesus in emptying ourselves of our individual “rights”. So how does this biblical wisdom “square” with asserting legal rights in the family court system as I and some other lone-wolf believers before me have sought to do? I think it helps to take one step back from our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and hear what these documents say about all liberty and all justice being given by God as His gift and as a purposeful privilege. Jesus said, “to whom much has been given, much is required.” What we think of as fundamental rights can actually be revoked if abused by selfish motives, or if left unprotected through cowardice or slothfulness (i.e. prayerlessness, thanklessness and personal moral compromise) in how we defend them. The possibility of revocation makes these things divine privileges, more so than rights with responsibilities attached, in sharp contrast to the way most of us have become accustomed to thinking of our constitutional rights.

As providence would have it, the day I received the notice from the Appellate Court denying our anonymity motion, I came home to my devotion book published by Revive Our Hearts, Nancy Leigh DeMoss’ ministry to women, True Woman Manifesto – the chapter next up was Day 11: Selfish Insistence on Personal Rights ( is contrary to the spirit of Christ who humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant, and laid down His life for me.) This devotion further challenged:

“Have you been acting more like a temporary servant of God or like His willing and permanent slave?” Being honest with myself, I journaled: “the idea of being a permanent slave, unentitled to the personal fruit of my time, treasure and talent is haunting and chilling to me. Help me, Lord!”

On the one hand, many years of experience with the Lord has shown me He never fails to restore what the enemy has stolen, and in fact heretofore has always restored it in a multiple! That is not the issue for me. The issue is being willing to lay down all the research, financial sacrifice, suffering and risk to my own family, to wait and pray while God accomplishes this momentous state-wide and national task His way. The issue is continuing to have faith while being humbled and possibly obscured for now.

This devotion reflected on the writings of Elisabeth Elliot, widow of missionary Jim Elliot, both graduates of nearby Wheaton College, who was murdered with several colleagues on the mission fields in Ecuador. Nancy Leigh DeMoss writes:

‘What are some of the rights that as Jesus’ disciples we need to be willing to surrender? Here’s the list that Elisabeth Elliot came up with:

First is the right to take revenge (Romans 12:19-20). (if not against my husband, perhaps against the judge who brutally punished me for my convictions?)
The right to have a comfortable, secure home. Jesus said, “The birds of the air have nests, the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:57-58). The right to have a comfortable, secure home. It’s a right we surrender to Christ.
The right to spend our money however we please (Matthew 6:19-21).
The right to hate an enemy (Matthew 5:43-48). We have to surrender that right.
The right to be honored and served (Mark 10:42-47).
The right to understand God’s plan before we obey (Hebrews 11:8).
The right to live life by our own rules (John 14:23-24).
The right to hold a grudge (Colossians 3:13).
The right to fit into society (Romans 12:2; Galatians 1:10).
The right to do whatever feels good (Galatians 5:16-17; 1 Peter 4:2).
The right to complain. “Ooo. I can’t have the right to complain? ” No. That’s a right you’re to give up. By the way, you find that in Philippians 2, verse 14: “Do all things without complaining or murmuring.”
The right to put self first. That’s the passage we’ve been looking in, Philippians 2:3-4).
The right to express one’s sexuality in ways that are contrary to the ways of God (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
The right to rebel against authority (1 Peter 2:13-15). Acceptable to do so only where there is a clear conflict with God’s law.
The right to sue another believer (1 Corinthians 6:1-8).

(SIFC was summoned into court in this instance because as a follower of Christ she refused to sign a document that affirmed the civil charge of “irreconcilable differences” even though doing so might have protected more of our family’s [in reality, God’s] assets.)

The right to end a disappointing marriage (Matthew 5:31-32). ‘

There’s more we could say about all those, but just a sample list from God’s Word of rights that we’re asked to surrender as followers of Christ. – Nancy Leigh DeMoss, www.reviveourhearts.com.

Being a student of the bible, I know it is not acceptable to God to shrink back in fear from a God-appointed battle. I also observe from the ill-fated battles of the bible that complete obedience is required in all aspects of a God-favored battle: timing, tools, size of army, willingness to accept seemingly impossible circumstances and trust God, instead of our own resources, to overcome unfavorable circumstances and obstacles for His glory.

2 Chronicles 14:11

Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said, “Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. Lord, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you.”

Though I was by now pleading with the Lord to write His instructions on my wall, I still felt as though I was not getting any clear answer from Him whether to pursue or drop the appeal without the anonymity protection for our family. I had (perhaps wrongly) treated this anonymity item as a Gideon-style “fleece”. Was God spanking me for not having more spiritual maturity after 35 years of walking with Him, or was this His actual revelation according to that extended “fleece”? I had no peace with either pursuing the appeal under our actual names for the sake of the people of our state and all that has been invested, nor with dropping it for the sake of our family’s peace, privacy and recovery. So, I located a comprehensive study of all the biblical battles, their issues and outcomes, and I spent a couple of days studying it, hoping for more clarity. To get inside the skin of another long-sacrificing soldier of Christ with a similarly monumental task of marshalling an army to change both internal church culture and government policy on a profoundly vital moral and human rights issue on which the future of nations turned – ending the African slave trade, I dove into Eric Metaxas’ biography of William Wilberforce, called Amazing Grace. Could some of Wilberforce’s processes be applicable to my approach to this hard decision, and more specifically, to my discipleship path in this?

One passage in this Wilberforce biography seemed jump out and grab me, standerinfamilycourt, by the throat:

“And so he took stock of himself. He well knew his mind’s natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose — indeed, he called it his ‘butterfly mind’…..He knew that his world-class wit could turn into the vicious and wounding sarcasm, and that his ability to mimic others and joke and sing and generally be charming could be used to merely draw attention to himself, merely to exalt himself and to feed his personal and vain ambitions….Wilberforce alone knew how constitutionally weak he was with regard to self-discipline…”

Ouch! It’s encouraging to reflect that God with whom nothing shall be impossible still found a way to astoundingly use such an inherently flawed vessel! When I went on to read about the elaborate and regimented tracking lists Wilberforce used to hold himself accountable for correcting these flaws, I sincerely wonder if I could stay at it for long. Is that the bottom-line cost of success in an endeavor so much bigger than can be handled in the natural?

In the meantime, some external events transpired that were very encouraging, making it very clear that others are forcefully carrying this banner alongside me. Our facebook community page, Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional has rapidly gained international followers, including a couple of like-minded U.S. state and national organizations, despite its intensely unpopular cultural message. By the hand of God, one re-post of Dr. Albert Mohler’s 2010 blog on the hypocrisy within the church’s official position on divorce and remarriage which sharply conflicts with what Jesus taught, was directed into the strategic hands of some seminary theologians and a group of Catholics who care about this subject. It has been re-shared 21 times in 5 days as I write this, and has had over 8,000 views, with dozens of thoughtful debate comments by important people that seemed to take on a life of its own. Other posts are also getting large audiences and great feedback very suddenly. I made personal connection with no-fault opposition pioneer Judith Brumbaugh, who has extended us the honor of her helpful background guidance for which we are so grateful. Perhaps most significantly, standers from all over are beginning to message our page for prayer and guidance.

With all the praise and the thanks to God, the Illinois legislative session miraculously adjourned without passing the deplorable bill HB1452, or the ERA (equal rights amendment) bill. Both would have been monumental threats to Illinois families. Many prayers went up across the state for their defeat, and God was faithful.

Last month, the Catholic-leaning religious magazine First Things started an excellent debate on whether pastors should continue to sign off on civil marriage certificates, or should force a godly separation between God-joined biblical unions and the world’s severely-devalued civil constructions brought on by nearly 5 decades of destructive redefinition. Additionally, they published the excellent article, Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce, by Drs. Thomas F. Farr and Hilary Towers. The article very significantly validated what the national religious freedom legal organizations are so reluctant to acknowledge: that divorce Respondents do suffer genuine religious persecution in the family court system, (as all perceived opponents of the sexual revolution do). Perhaps it’s this group of Catholics through whom our post was circulated so wildly beyond our expectations this past week. Did some influential people get a good look at our pages and think concretely about a potential alliance? It is very comforting at a time like this and on the cusp of such a pivotal personal choice that I have to make to see God’s hand and some strong evidence that all of this is part of a larger move of God in which I may not have to be a very significant player nor the lone voice in the wilderness. May God give me the mix of humility and ambition that is most appropriate here, since I’ve lost all hope of a “cloak”, and only He can see the larger picture ahead. May He direct my thoughts and my steps!

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court is reportedly going to decide whether to hear arguments in cases that upheld state constitutions in their voter-approved traditional marriage definitions coming out of the 6th Circuit which conflict with rulings in several other Federal Circuits around the country. Some of those rulings and cases assert the fundamental right to remain married. What is the sustainability of unilateral divorce if the Supreme Court affirms the fundamental right to maintain civil marriage intact? SIFC was on the Washington Mall with 10,000 other traditional marriage supporters on the chilly day in March, 2013 when the first round of marriage definition arguments were heard during the March for Marriage sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage. No doubt there will be a similar rally organized in 2015 on the date of these new arguments. The speeches SIFC heard that day from inner city pastors and the young adult children of divorce galvanized this stander’s resolve that unilateral divorce must be abolished. SIFC is likely to be there again.

Yesterday I mailed off to the attorneys an envelope containing the case history and analysis I researched on prior constitutional challenges to no-fault divorce laws in various states since 1970, and a glossary of legal concepts that have been impacted by very recent cases. After much prayer I’ve come to the place where I will not feel any peace about dropping the appeal until my Christian attorneys have reviewed this work and also sought God’s direction specifically concerning the 14th Amendment equal protection and due process aspects of the case. If our attorneys are willing, I will find the funding somehow for this round of the appeal, but if we win that, God will have to step in and provide the finances to go up against the deep state pockets we would then be facing. If they discourage me from this aspect of the case, and I can’t find a suitable legal team, it is unlikely I’m going to be comfortable putting my family through any further litigation rigors. Prayer warriors reading this post, SIFC would be so grateful if you would pray for our family and our two law firms.

Even with dropping the appeal, the Lord will have other, slower avenues to work toward the goal of ending the tyranny in the family court system. I am confident He is about to raise up further opportunities for challenge across the country. Important alliances are being formed in the background, and I see SIFC’s pages as a linkage between people and needed resources in the future. I see these pages as a continuing resource for committed Christ-followers in having the difficult conversations within their churches and denominations to begin to change the culture much the way the abolitionists slowly changed the culture in Wilberforce’s time. Perhaps with the social media resources we now have and the Lord’s end times timeline, the process will be much more rapid. We’ve seen the meteoric speed with which evil social change can sweep the nation in the past 5 years. Yet the word of God says “greater is He that is in us, than he who is in the world.”

Until the hearts of the leadership of the state family policy councils and of the Christian public service legal funds change to embrace our cause legislatively and judicially, I have a vision for starting a fund that will help people in other states in the appeal stage who have been bullied for their convictions by the family court system. I don’t have any idea how I’m going to accomplish this just yet, but I know Who must be the Provider. While we probably can’t afford to fund primary divorce challenges, there are some legal aid groups who may be able to fill that role, and perhaps knowing such resources may be available at the appeal stage may encourage individuals to do as I’ve done in challenging the “irreconcilable differences” civil charge in order to gain standing to bring a 14th Amendment constitutional appeal in other states. Perhaps the presence of an appeal fund may reform the egregious behavior of the legal community including the bench.

Meanwhile, I challenge the state family policy councils, and indeed the many Christian denominations at headquarters level – what are you willing to do to be a godly voice on the offensive in changing these laws? Will you trust God enough to risk offending some donors or losing some members ? When your next meeting comes to debate the cultural “relevance” of your official position statements on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage, will you honor God and move back toward scriptural purity and eternal relevance?

I challenge the religious liberty legal funds whose mission statements all say they defend the “traditional family”: same sex marriage is going to be a waning issue by next year, and there are credible reports that some of you are already feeling it in reduced coffers. Honor the One you should be looking to for those coffers, as well as for the tide to turn in court. Why not look to help the millions who would be only too willing to send in their $50 in exchange for your pledge of solid commitment to this cause, rather than appeasing larger donors out of an unexamined and untested fear that they may be offended because their lifestyles may be biblically immoral. Soon enough, everyone is going to see the obvious and unavoidable connection between unilateral divorce and same sex marriage.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands. – Ps. 90:17

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 1

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part 2

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part 3

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, marriage, Religious freedom

You Asked: How Can “No-Fault” Divorce Laws be Unconstitutional?

November 16, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

This post goes out to Barney, who raised a very valid question last weekend on our companion facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nofaultequalsnoaccountability/posts/1527839317455483

Considering the current reach of our fairly new page, there must be dozens of critical thinkers like Barney out there with the same question. SIFC is thankful for the question and the engagement, an opportunity to contribute some expanded thought. All great social reform conversations began exactly this way, and we of course could have just as easily been ignored, so Barney (and his silent counterparts) are sincerely a blessing. Our legal team will, no doubt, get the very same question from the bench next spring. Indeed, I can quote a recent definition-of-marriage judicial assertion very much to the point from Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the (liberal) 9th U.S. Circuit:

“If the defendants [states of Idaho and Nevada] really wished to ensure that as many children as possible had married parents, they would do well to rescind the right of no-fault divorce, or to divorce altogether. Neither has done so. Such reforms might face constitutional difficulties of their own, but at least they would further the states’ asserted interest in solidifying marriage.”

– Latta v Otter, October 7, 2014

Judge Reinhardt, we’ll notice, stopped well short of saying that such reforms would be unconstitutional. As the spate of 5-4 Supreme Court decisions clearly demonstrate in cases where the competing fundamental rights of the opposing parties are actually valid on both sides, these competing rights must be prioritized and must be carefully balanced. Brilliant legal minds can honestly disagree on the appropriate balance of fundamental rights based on their particular world view, and hopefully they are not wasting taxpayer dollars by accusing one another of misunderstanding the Constitution.

In this blog, we could paste in links to various cases, but we’ve actually done so in several earlier posts, and will be doing so in the very next planned weekly post on relevant legal definitions, so for brevity we won’t do so here. We’ll come back later and make appropriate linkages.

The basic rule is that a law is presumed to be constitutional if it is aimed a legitimate state purpose (however ineffectively). That is, it is deemed constitutional unless it intrinsically, or by its means of implementation, it deprives a citizen or class of citizens of one or more fundamental rights. In one recent example, various U.S. Circuit Courts have ruled that homosexual couples legally married in one state have a fundamental right to stay married if they move to another state:

What are some other fundamental rights? They are basically anything in the Bill of Rights, or that an authoritative ruling has established as a binding precedent: (free exercise of religion, life, defense of property, family privacy, parental rights in the education and direction of their children, the equal right to bring a defense against a criminal or civil accusation that would strip life, liberty or property, etc.).

If it’s established that a citizen’s fundamental right is being infringed by a state law, then it is no longer good enough just to have a legitimate state purpose behind it. In that case, the state must prove two additional things for the law to still be deemed constitutional: (1) that the state interest is compelling, AND (2) they are implementing it by choosing among available alternatives only the means that least infringes or deprives citizens of that fundamental right. The Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that the 14th Amendment requires this. Meeting both the compelling interest and the least restrictive means tests becomes very difficult for the state where there are indeed fundamental rights being intruded upon!

And how should valid but competing fundamental rights be balanced? For example, in late term abortions, shouldn’t a 7-month pre-born child’s right to life be prioritized over the mother’s asserted right to privacy? Does the state truly have a compelling interest in guaranteeing the mother’s right to privacy under the 14th Amendment, to the extent that it actually supercedes another person’s right to life?

How should someone’s fundamental right to liberty and freedom of association be balanced against their innocent spouse’s right to protection of property, to defend against a civil accusation (as “irreconcilable differences” most surely is) that would strip their freedom of association (with children) or strip their property (such as their retirement funds while the other spouse has committed financial abuse in pursuing an affair)?

Many states do not allow marital fault to be considered in either dividing property or determining child custody. What is the state’s compelling reason for this, given that a dozen or so states do take marital fault into consideration for these purposes, and given that not doing so sets an offending spouse up to actually profit from their own destructive acts against the marriage? In fact there may be some legitimate state reasons for this, but this surely does not offset a non-offending spouse’s fundamental right to due process over their property and parental rights! In practice, some states may only allow the defrauded spouse to prove any financial abuse in court if they agree with the state and their petitioning spouse that a marriage is “irreconcilable”, which may conflict with their biblical convictions, and conflict with any right a few states still give to bring evidence that irreconcilable differences do not actually exist (as in the case of an emotionally ill spouse who in reality needs treatment more than they truthfully need a divorce). What about a discarded spouse’s right of conscience, guaranteed by the 1st Amendment and by most state constitutions, to act according to their biblical conviction if they believe and obey the truly startling and radical words of Jesus (Luke 16:18):

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

The state may have a legitimate reason for seeking to provide a low-cost exit from a marriage, but since all 50 states’ current no-fault laws infringe on the fundamental constitutional rights to stay married, and to family privacy and self-governance for both spouses and any children, what’s the compelling state reason for not having minimum requirements and evidence of professional counseling before accepting only one spouse’s opinion concluding that “all efforts to reconcile have failed”, or that “future efforts to reconcile would not be in the best interests of the family”? What’s the compelling state interest in not considering other impacted family members’ views on their best interests? What’s the compelling state interest in facilitating and sanctioning adultery in preference to the existing low-conflict marriage, or in shielding the offending party from incurring meaningful natural financial consequences of divorcing for selfish reasons? Given the vast amount of damning evidence on the cost of unilateral divorce to state and local governments (hence, taxpayers) over the past 45 years, isn’t the compelling state interest actually in the opposite direction?

It’s also instructive to look at what marriage has become under the no-fault regime. Unilateral divorce was supposed to “reduce acrimony” (although stripping all of the fundamental rights of one spouse to give blatant legal preference to the other makes it seem like the framers were smoking something), it was supposed to “protect the children from harm in watching their parents deal with conflict” (never mind the tenfold physical and emotional abuse that is typically in store for the kids at the hands of the live-in boyfriend or girlfriend that has replaced the legitimate mother or father). When individual sexual autonomy started to trump the compelling interests of society and the extended family as a whole, the meaning of government’s role in protecting marriage profoundly shifted. Another recent ruling on a gay marriage case stated this point brilliantly, in SIFC’s estimation:

“One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex…..one can well appreciate why the citizenry would think that a reasonable first concern of any society is the need to regulate male-female relationships and the unique procreative possibilities of them. One way to pursue this objective is to encourage couples to enter lasting relationships through subsidies and other benefits and to discourage them from ending such relationships through these and other means. People may not need the government’s encouragement to have sex. And they may not need the government’s encouragement to propagate the species. But they may well need the government’s encouragement to create and maintain stable relationships within which children may flourish.”

– DeBoer v Snyder, November 6, 2014

Judge Jeffrey Sutton, U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals

Unilateral divorce laws intrude into the integrity of the family in a tyrannical attempt to regulate mere affection. Or, as Texas attorney Ed Truncellito describes our post-1970’s stripped-down version of matrimony in his blog “Why No One Is Married“:

“In truth, our no-fault laws, as implemented, abolished true marriage…….Although cohabitation is handicapped in many ways, it unfortunately has one important advantage: ordinary cohabitation keeps government out of the home. In contrast, the registered cohabitation that we still call “marriage” invokes the jurisdiction of government officers. They receive authority to manage the lives of both spouses and their children with legal force. ”

So given all this, what would a constitutional no-fault law look like?

(1) Irreconcilable differences as a non evidence-based ground for divorce would be available only by mutual or cross petition — with fully agreed child and property terms, otherwise it would revert to fault-based procedure to protect the due process rights of the non-offending spouse who for moral or religious reasons does not want to end the marriage.

(What we currently have, while deceitfully called “no-fault”, is actually forced, unilateral, guaranteed divorce that excuses and often rewards destructive behavior toward the marriage).

(2) Proof and balanced consideration of marital fault would be restored in all contested cases where property and child custody matters could not be agreed between the spouses, and would be done without intrusive and non evidence-based court assessments of when the marriage allegedly broke down. Proof of dissipation and marital fault would be merged and would simply follow the full proven time frame(s) of the offense(s).

(3) Contested, non-mutual out-of-state and offshore divorce decrees where the grounds and agreed settlement terms do not conform with (1) above will not be honored against assets and child arrangements domiciled in the state, and in-state marital fault proceedings will be required to effect those divisions.

(4) Equal evidence parameters and time frames to bring proof of fault would be restored to both spouses by abolishing court rules and operating procedures which are currently designed to suppress evidence of fault in order to give preference to the Petitioner over the Respondent.

Will these reforms force people to stay married against their wills? That’s an interesting question since studies show that 80% of spouses in this country are divorced against their will. It’s also an interesting question because additional studies show a high rate of remarriage to the same first spouse after civil divorce and even after subsequent remarriage(s). Other studies show a 60-70% divorce rate for second and subsequent remarriages, and a 97% failure rate for any relationship begun in adultery (this may include cohabitation and marriage combined). In practice, these reforms will more likely just even out the power balance between spouses in resolving their differences, possibly increasing the percentage of mutual petitions if honest reconciliation efforts fail. It will certainly make non-mutual divorces more expensive in some cases. In a rare few cases, people unhappily married to a non-offending religious objector to divorce may not be able to obtain an in-state divorce because they can’t prove serious fault where none exists. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, that’s as it should be.

Parting wisdom from Jesus: “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning……”

The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” – Matthew 19:10

Indeed. One may freely choose their behavior, but they should not get to also choose the consequences.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt. com

Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, morality

Why No One Is Married

October 27, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: Mr. Truncellito is the Texas attorney written about in the book “Stolen Vows” by Judy Parejko. Mr. Truncellito’s research into the Texas statute after unilateral divorce was enacted exposed a fraud, but to no avail. The original enactment of the Texas “no-fault” law was to be by mutual consent only. However, the legal community conspired to implement it as unilateral divorce. Mr. Truncellito appealed his case up through the Texas Supreme Court based on his investigation, but failed to win relief for the people of Texas, with the final determination entered in November, 2000.

Ed Truncellito, J.D., September 2000

Marriage today is no more than “registered cohabitation” because no-fault divorce was misinterpreted as “no cause and no proof” divorce. If you can divorce without true cause–then you were not truly married in the first place. You were merely cohabiting, as in ages past, regardless what name it’s called.

You could always walk away from a disagreeable cohabitation, but marriage was defined in its protection by law. You couldn’t get out of a marriage just because you wanted out. You had to have true cause: abuse, adultery, abandonment, or the like. And not only cause, but genuine proof of it.

When the well-meaning no-faulters tried to take adversarialism out of the divorce process, to make it friendly, it failed. The door swung wide open to “no cause and no proof” divorce. Meanwhile, adversarialism went right back into the property and custody battles.

The old “fault” laws needed overhaul to bring spousal equality, and to make the system friendlier, but no-fault’s “no cause and no proof” divorce, administered by warring lawyers, was the wrong implementation. The law should have required that spouses be taught how, and helped, to settle differences as co-equals, to deliberate justly and fairly, with self-control, while honoring their partner and the vows they made for a permanent union.

Beforehand, almost any man could rule his wife and settle disputes by physical force. But spousal equality demands at least a little education, a working knowledge of civilized diplomacy and reasoned compromise — for both genders.

The no-fault laws did not train the partners to solve any problems. The laws simply — and grievously — empowered the courts to settle all their disputes for them, in one grand sweep, by divorce, no matter how whimsical or trivial the disagreement. No-fault did not elevate the status of wives as co-equal family managers. It lowered the status of both spouses, while it elevated the courts as the new, and not-so-charitable, family managers.

The no-fault divorce system, as implemented, funded divorce. It channeled money from troubled families to divorce lawyers, now at hourly rates in three digits, in exchange for dividing children and property. The court’s officers were hired and paid to terminate marriages, not to save them.

The no-fault legal system, as envisioned, was to be a family hospital, to comfort the hurting spouses and bandage the wounded marriages. Instead, it became a family morgue. It promised to give relief from the former hostilities of the “fault” legal system, but it became more hostile than ever.

Reconciliation dollars, facilities, and assistance were promised, but they never materialized. A generation and a half later, we know that the experiment did not work as planned.

In truth, our no-fault laws, as implemented, abolished true marriage. After many years of no-fault, we no longer even respect the solemn covenants that partners make between themselves and God. Instead, we respect the solemn covenants that lawyers make between themselves and a judge.

Although cohabitation is handicapped in many ways, it unfortunately has one important advantage: ordinary cohabitation keeps government out of the home. In contrast, the registered cohabitation that we still call marriage invokes the jurisdiction of government officers. They receive authority to manage the lives of both spouses and their children with legal force.

No wonder people cohabit. No wonder we have so many broken homes. Partners can walk away from the slightest inconvenience, at any time, with court assistance. They don’t ever have to conciliate, or swallow their pride and say they are sorry, or try to please anyone but themselves.

When divorce was made into a guaranteed certainty, it became an easy way out of hard times. Partners knew they would no longer be pressed by embarrassing questions about covenants and faithfulness, as they moved on to their next cohabitation. Nor could they be stopped.

The fundamental attribute, the unique defining characteristic, the earmark, that always distinguished true marriage from cohabitation, is legal security — protection by law — protection by divorce law.

Today, that protection is gone. Genuine proof of true cause was always required for divorce, and anything else — but that — should have changed in an overhaul of divorce law.

It is one thing to let spouses decide, without intrusion, for their own private reasons, whether to live together, or to live apart indefinitely. But it is another thing altogether, for government not to question the cause, when government has already intervened, when government is asked to destroy a marriage, totally and permanently.

The legal security of true marriage cannot be a chain. But neither can it be a thread. It must be a sturdy fabric, a flexible but tough canvas, to weather the gales of life.

That’s why true marriage is so secure and stable for mates. When spouses cannot easily shake off their yoke, they soften it by mutual accommodation. In other words: spouses don’t stay together because they get along; they get along because they stay together.

And that’s why true marriage is so secure and stable for children. True marriage is underwritten by law. Children can rest assured that no passing storm will carry either of their parents away. They know that the whole force of government stands as a benevolent guard to protect their homes and both of their providers.

We are not in the midst of a divorce crisis. It is a marriage crisis.

No one is married, and no one can marry. The right to marry was taken away.

The happy voices of the bride and the bridegroom are gone from our land.

Attorney Ed Truncellito spent over 1,500 hours researching the legislation that created “no-fault” divorce in Texas in 1969. He found that the law was meant only to apply to uncontested divorces. He has filed suit against the State Bar of Texas, alleging that they, like the tobacco industry, covered up what they knew to be a destructive product, and that the State Bar knew all along that the no-fault law was being misapplied but covered it up for financial gain. See Mr. Truncellito’s website at www.no-one-is-married.com. His email address is no_one_is_married@juno.com (use underscores).

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom

BUCKING “NO-FAULT” DIVORCE: CONSTITUTIONAL CASE HISTORY IN THE U.S. 1970-Present – Part 2

October 26, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 4 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

Part 2 – 2000 – 2014 (Part 1 – 1970-1999)

Pharisees: “Tell us then, what do You think? Is it lawful to give a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?”

But Jesus perceived their malice, and said, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the coin used for the poll-tax.” And they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” Then He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.”

Matthew 22:17-21

Blogger’s Note: the discussion that follows reflects only my own research and independent thought, and does not necessarily reflect the advice of my attorneys.

God said let Us make mankind in Our image. He created marriage to bear the image of the Godhead, the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, including its permenance. Marriage, therefore, cannot bear “Caesar’s” image and cannot “belong” to the State. Everything the God of Angel Armies said about marriage is contrary to everything the State now decrees, to devalue marriage and distort its true purpose.

Standerinfamilycourt began Part 1 of this post by relating the story of the train ride downtown with my divorce attorney to consult for the first time with the constitutional law attorneys whom we hoped would agree to take our religious freedom case. We had just received notice and copy of a response motion by opposing counsel in the property division trial, and we were going over it in the hour it took the train to reach downtown Chicago. According to my attorney, this opposing document was filed rather superfluously, in response to a motion we had filed as a formality to reserve our right to bring our anticipated constitutional appeal. I was stunned to see the following assertion in that document, though perhaps it didn’t shock my attorney:

“…Petitioner affirmatively states that by the Respondent’s logic, one could use their religious convictions to delay or defeat or enhance any law, just by arguing religion. The Courts have reaffirmed the traditional doctrine that marriage is a civil contract between three parties: the husband, the wife, and the State. If the parties were allowed to use religious arguments or feelings to obviate, obfuscate, or obliterate the provisions of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, then the entire system would fall to the whims or beliefs of 11 million people.”

(Obviously, there’s at least one liberally-minded attorney who needs to crack out her copy of Illinois’ very brief Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or her Bible – preferably, both! I’d love to know which state my covenant husband and I were supposedly “wed” to, since we don’t originally hail from Illinois, and we were married by our pastor in a state that didn’t adopt unilateral divorce until 2010. – And, since there’s an Omnipotent Creator Authority and Righteous Judge in heaven to whom marriage sovereignly does belong, may the entire system indeed fall! )

A couple of religious freedom cases follow from Texas and Ohio, and an oddball Tennessee case from 2014 where some folks, who weren’t married in God’s (or that state’s) eyes to begin with, were clamoring for a divorce.

7. Truncellito v Truncellito, Texas (2000) Sup Ct of TX 00-826

Texas is a very colorful state in which to study this topic of history. Many states saw the enormous flaws and inequities in UMDA, and legislators were understandably reluctant to enact it verbatim. In addition to rejecting the standard “irreconcilable differences” language, the Texas legislature also rejected the notion that the “no-fault” process was appropriate where one of the spouses (with clean hands) did not want to end the marriage. In other words, they voted to maintain the balance of fundamental rights to liberty, property and autonomy of family life free from court intrusion, by not allowing the courts to apply “no-fault” unless the petition was mutual or uncontested.

Herein lies the unexamined difference between unilateral (involuntary or forced) and “no-fault” (mutual and voluntary). Using the latter interchangeably with the former and comparing the result to a car insurance policy is intellectually dishonest. This is another one of those false analogies so prevalent in immoral social movements and their resulting legislation.

The Texas no-fault grounds language reads: “On the petition of either party to a marriage, the court may grant a divorce without regard to fault if the marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marital relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation.”

Mr. Truncellito was a divorce attorney who was the Respondent in his wife’s 1998 unilateral petition. Mr. Truncellito was representing a client, another contesting Respondent husband, when he discovered that the transcribed statute did not match the enacted statute which expressly provided for “no-fault” grounds only in non-contested cases, otherwise, the requirement for fault-based grounds still applied.

Truncellito brought an appeal of his own divorce decree on that technical basis, which was overruled in the appellate court, and that decision was affirmed by the Texas Supreme Court.

(SIFC Commentary: In her book, “Stolen Vows” and in subsequent published articles, author Judy Parejko commented on the strong economic interests in the Texas legal community in ensuring there was strict unilateral application of the “no-fault” law, rather than the voluntary application the legislature intended. Surrounded by states with strict unilateral divorce laws, there was an economic fear that clients would be lost to out-of-state divorce travel. The situation is totally opposite today, with Texas attorneys actively advertising to poach clients from states who are re-thinking unilateral divorce.)

8. Waite v Waite, Texas (2001) C.A. 14^th District, Houston

As noted above, the Texas no-fault grounds language reads: “On the petition of either party to a marriage, the court may grant a divorce without regard to fault if the marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marital relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation.”

The constitutional challenge brought by the Respondent husband was a 1^st Amendment Establishment Clause challenge alleging that the language and definitions in the statute are intrinsically religious and therefore entangle the court in areas where they should not be making inquiry. Further, the challenge asserted that unilateral establishment of grounds violates the Free Exercise clause by requiring the court to interfere in a religious dispute, contending that the terms “legitimate ends of the marriage” and “reasonable expectation of reconciliation” have an unavoidable religious dimension.

There were additional challenges that were based on unique clauses in portions of the Texas constitution which are not analogous to other states or to the U.S. Constitution. One of these challenges implied a due process complaint, but did not reference the 14^th amendment. The appeal also asserted that the “no-fault” proceedings violated the privacy of documents. These were all overruled, except for the privacy issue which the court said was not ripe for review because it was unclear which documents had been produced.

(There was no challenge brought in this case that the statute limited the “no-fault” proceedings to uncontested cases. The Truncellito challenge had been dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court the year before, on November 22, 2000.)

The court applied rational basis review and held that it was bound to presume constitutionality upon the enacted law, disagreeing that a civil determination of the specific terms in the grounds required religious inquiry.

Highlights of Dissenting Opinion: The dissenting judge concluded that because Texas courts have recognized marriage as having a religious component, the term “legitimate ends of the marital relationship” cannot be construed to exclude that religious aspect. He went on to say that since the Respondent raised a “rights of conscience” issue. The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) test should have been applied and the state been required to establish a compelling need for the language in question, and shown that they had undertaken the least restrictive means of meeting that interest. He concurred with the state’s authority to enact a “no-fault” law (as possibly contrasted with a unilateral law), but the state had to do so while complying with the First Amendment.

Per the 2-judge majority:

“Although courts may observe as a factual matter that some individuals have religious beliefs concerning their marriages, and although courts are bound to protect every individual’s rights to have such beliefs, courts certainly could not make, and have not made, any legal decision regarding whether marriage has a religious component because that is neither a legal issue nor a matter that courts may constitutionally decide, contrary to the dissent’s numerous references to marriage as “a relationship that Texas case law recognizes as religious in nature,” to marriage as being characterized by our state courts as a divine institution ordained by God, to “a wealth of Texas jurisprudence characterizing ․ marriage as having a religious component,” and the like.

The Dissent:

Because the court rejects Mr. Waite’s state constitutional challenge under the “rights of conscience” guaranty of Article I, Section 6, I respectfully dissent. See Davenport v. Garcia, 834 S.W.2d 4, 11 (Tex.1992). The court should not reach Mr. Waite’s challenges under the United States Constitution because the statute violates the Texas Constitution. I concur in the court’s disposition of both Mr. Waite’s challenges to the award of attorney’s fees and all of his challenges to the Texas no-fault divorce statute under the Texas Constitution, except for his challenge under the “rights of conscience” guaranty in Article I, Section 6. For reasons explained below, I agree with Mr. Waite that the no-fault divorce statute violates this provision of our state constitution by impermissibly interfering with Texans’ rights of conscience in matters of religion.

( SIFC commentary: The religious conscience violation in this case was not tied with any punitive treatment by the court that directly led to wrongful impairment of property rights, as occurred in our case, but the dissenting opinion held the Respondent’s free exercise guarantee to be in direct conflict with the granting of a unilateral divorce because such judgment violated the Respondent’s right of conscience. [Loud whistling applause from this blogger! ] This judge showed uncommon insight in drawing a distinction between the state’s remit to establish a consensual “no fault” process, and the wholly unconstitutional practice of unilateral dissolution of marriage. As a further note, this was a 3-judge panel, so this case could have gone either way. Standerinfamilycourt believes the dissenting opinion was far better developed and informed than the majority opinion. Those who oppose true free exercise are usually fine with letting people believe whatever they wish, but they often refuse to acknowledge a person’s 1st Amendment right to actually walk out that belief without suffering negative sanctions for doing so.)

9. MacFarlane v MacFarlane, Ohio (2006) 8^th District C.A. #3155

In this case where the husband filed a unilateral petition in 2003, the couple was Catholic and the wife had always home-schooled the four children. The husband was not in agreement that the homeschooling continue once the children were high school age, and the resulting dispute between husband and wife escalated until the marriage deteriorated.

(SIFC note: Since the original writing of this blog, I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with Mrs. MacFarlane, who now runs the very effective ministry known as Mary’s Advocates, and goes by the name Bai. As commonly occurs in such cases, the judge writing the legal judgment is not completely accurate with all of the facts, and Bai has contacted us requesting a correction in the last sentence above, which was taken directly from the court document. Here is Bai’s clarification sent to us:

[The judge had written this: On pages 4 and 5 of this court document it reads as follows:

{¶ 4} As part of their religious beliefs and desire to have control over the education of their children, Husband and Wife agreed that their children would be home schooled. Husband testified that he thought it would only be for their early school years and that eventually they would be put in a traditional school setting; Wife, however, wanted the boys home schooled until adolescence or high school.

{¶ 6} Husband testified that sometime in 2000, he started talking to Wife about enrolling the children in a traditional school. He also discussed moving to Canada, where he had made friends with a group of like-minded Catholics who had started their own school for about eight families. From the outset of these discussions, Wife was adamant that she did not want the children in a traditional school. This disagreement became a source of constant tension in the marriage.

Bai MacFarlane: ” In the year 2000, our oldest child turned 9, so it is a little early to be arguing about adolescence or high school homeschooling, which I assert that we were not arguing about during that year. When my husband abandoned the marital home, our oldest was 11 years-old which is still early to be arguing about high school homeschooling. Our youngest was 2. From the Cuyahoga County court’s perspective, stay-at-home moms have to find work outside the home if the Plaintiff-Dad does not want to continue supporting his wife and children as he had been before abandoning marriage. Our county also cannot tolerate children being taught a biblical-based view of marriage in which abandoning the home is equivalent to breaking the family. See excerpt from court psychologist here.” ]

Both husband and wife filed for legal separation, then the husband amended his petition to seek a divorce. After about a year’s proceedings, the wife started petitioning the court to defer the case to a canonical tribunal. She asserted the Catholic Church had the authority over their marriage by the couple’s prior mutual agreement.

The husband sought custody of the children and wanted to put them in parochial schools. Court records documented that both spouses had issues with erratic behavior, but custody was eventually awarded to the husband-Petitioner due to several hostile actions of the wife, some of which occurred in court. The wife went through several attorneys and appears to have been poorly-advised, since she acted in a way that, per court procedures, forfeited her early rights to arbitration. The wife’s appeal included a charge of religious discrimination on the basis the court decided custody in a way that precluded homeschooling for the children and, therefore, to raise them in the Catholic faith. The wife’s appeal also alleged trial court antagonism toward the Catholic faith because it referred to her outspoken advocacy of homeschooling perjoratively as a “crusade”, and lastly that the court failed to undertake appropriate consideration of a pattern of domestic abuse by the husband in awarding custody of the children to the husband.

The appeals court ruled that since there was no written agreement between the spouses to yield any marriage issues to Church arbitration, the state had the sole jurisdiction. They ruled divorce was appropriately granted, and custody appropriately awarded based on the recommendations of a court-appointed psychologist. With regard to Ohio’s constitution clause on freedom of religion, it cites “freedom of worship” (rather than religious exercise) and contains a conscience clause. The appeals court ruled that the court cannot consider religious preference in determining matters of custody, and that the court did not show preference between the husband’s beliefs and the wife’s, nor was it interfering with her freedom to continue to parent the children in her faith as the noncustodial parent.

The appeals court dismissed the wife’s allegation of court antagonism toward the Catholic faith. With regard to her domestic abuse assertions, the appeals court found the wife to be the “less credible party” and ruled that the trial court did not abuse its discretion with regard to her domestic violence assertion, which aside from some controlling behavior by the husband, appeared to have been an isolated incident rather than a pattern. The trial court was unanimously affirmed on all issues.

(SIFC commentary: here’s a case where an inhumane law served nobody in the family, and probably did great damage to the children, for all the court pontificating that took place about their welfare. The presence of “acrimony” where, by unilateral theory, there isn’t supposed to be any invariably gets blamed on the person whose fundamental rights are being stripped away. Both spouses had pre-existing serious emotional problems that were well-documented in the court record, but neither spouse was incentivized to get the treatment they both needed. Had the law not been unilateral, there would have been far more incentive to seek much-needed individual and marital counseling through this couple’s well-established church connections. Space should have been left for voluntary and informal church-based mediation without court involvement, which would have been more the case had fault still been required to be proven in order to dissolve the marriage.

Nobody was emotionally abusing the children until divorce and forced separation of assets and custody was imposed. It requires tremendous composure and inner grounding to remain stable during an imposed divorce that violates deep religious convictions, and nearly impossible for someone with a background of emotional instability. In the total absence of adultery, substance abuse, or domestic violence, the state’s mangling of this family is truly tragic.

Additionally, Ohio’s constitution seems a bit weak in its reference to “worship” instead of free exercise, but it was what it was. The wife’s access to religious protection under the stronger U.S. Constitution provision was probably out of reach, since divorce cases usually aren’t heard in Federal courts, and then there remained the problem of sorting between the gray areas of disagreement between two Catholic parents. Of note: Ohio did not have a Religious Freedom Restoration Act enacted at the time, but if it had, its application would likely have been moot unless Mrs. MacFarlane had asserted in a more effective way that the divorce itself was against her right of conscience and against the teaching of the Catholic church. This whole case is just sad. )

10. Borman v Pyles-Borman (Tennessee) 2014 Circuit Court, Roane County No. 2014CV36

In a very different kind of equal protection case, two homosexuals who went to Iowa to get “married”, came back to Tennessee to live, and were now suing the state for the “right” to get a divorce. They allege that the state is treating their relationship as a “second-class marriage” in not legally recognizing it for purposes of granting a divorce. (Never mind that the plaintiffs themselves are treating their own “marriage” as a second-class relationship!)

The theory of the plaintiffs is that “doctrinal developments” have changed the precedent whereby the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling decided in 1972 on a “rational basis” standard that though there was a fundamental right to complementary marriage, no 14th Amendment right existed to state recognition of homosexual relationships. One of those “doctrinal developments” seems to be that the state has reduced its purpose in recognizing and fostering the institution of marriage in purposeful protection of the natural family unit from generation to generation, to merely a registry of cohabitation (while it lasts).

“Equal protection” and “privacy” in the eyes of many lower courts is the unfettered right of the individual to be as immoral as he or she desires to be, but at the same time, individuals are treated by these courts as having no rights if they instead desire to live morally and as holy scripture commands, for the sake of the generations coming behind them.

This court agreed with all the other courts that marriage is a fundamental right, but stated that neither the Tennessee Supreme Court nor the U.S. Supreme Court has ever ruled that homosexuals have a right to marry someone of the same gender.

If an individual has an undisputed fundamental right to complementarian marriage, then it should follow that they have a fundamental right to remain married, absent any proof of just interest for the state in terminating legal recognition of the marriage. “Irreconciliable Differences” is the statutory grounds, but in a contested case (and it was not specified in the ruling whether Mr. Pyles-Borman was actually contesting) any such finding is merely a pre-mandated conclusion or inference if evidence to the contrary is barred, and not considered. The most important evidence to the contrary is always the non-offending, contesting spouse’s desire to reconcile the marriage in order to achieve the purpose for which the state originally had an interest in providing legal protections.

This case is being further appealed through the deep pockets of the homosexual rights movement, and if affirmed by the state appeals courts, it could be the first divorce case heard by a Federal court in decades. That would set an interesting precedent. However, the Federal case, Tanco v Haslam (and three other cases involving homosexual couples married in other states) and seeking recognition in Tennessee is likely to be ruled on first, having been heard in August, 2014 by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

11. Romero v Romero, Kentucky (2014) Circuit Court, Jefferson County

A lesbian couple married in Massachusetts in 2004 also brought a divorce case in a state that did not recognize out of state homosexual marriages. The case was dismissed in February,, 2014. A similar lawsuit was filed by homosexual legal activists to challenge the constitutionality of Kentucky’s definition of marriage on a 14th Amendment equal protection basis. However, the constitutional challenge in this case became moot when several homosexual couples suing to overturn the state’s ban on homosexual marriage prevailed in July, 2014.

SIFC Update: On November 6, 2014, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the Federal District Court decisions in four cases (collectively, DeBoer v Snyder) seeking to invalidate each state’s ban on recognition of homosexual marriage, therefore upholding those bans, including Tennessee and Kentucky – hence impacting both of the above cases. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to hear the resulting appeal after declining last month to rule on several others.

For now, the courts are fiercely asserting Federal and state ownership, definition and determination of that which sovereignly belongs to God, and was defined by God. That Divine and Sovereign definition entails both complementarity (Matthew 19:4) and permanence (Matthew 19:6).

Standerinfamilycourt believes that a return to the standard of complementarity can only be accomplished, over time, by a return to appropriate state respect and protection for the permanence of the marriage covenant, wherever there is neither mutual consent for dissolution, nor substantial cause for involuntary dissolution. Over time, the improved stability of true families will dissipate the demand for socially deviant forms of the marriage contract, whether to legitimize and financially enable adultery, polygamy or homosexuality. This was the case for generations, that demand for such contracts was low prior to the misguided unilateral divorce legislation. Although a return to the proven path may be painful, its result will be far more sustainable in the long run, especially for the budgets of local governments.

Why did I end this post about constitutional challenges to the “no-fault” law with a couple of homosexual rights cases? Followers of Christ believe that God, not the State, gave us both our fundamental liberty, as well as our state and Federal constitutions. I have already argued that in similar fashion, it was God who gave us His holy institution of marriage. All three are Divine, purpose-bestowed privileges that can be revoked if abused, both from individuals and from an entire society.

We read in Proverbs 14: “Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. “

I believe this timeless proverb from the Lord applies equally to Lady Justice, as we are seeing with the continued, escalating devaluation of both the purpose and effect of marriage in our society. There will come a day for fire, brimstone, and foreign invaders if we remain on this defiant path, but for the past 45 years, our patient Heavenly Father has been allowing America to suffer the natural consequences of her rebellion, as any loving father would hope for repentance from the heart, against His definition of the institution He defined and He created.

The second reason I end with these cases is my comprehensive study of all the 2013-2014 religious freedom and homosexual marriage rights cases, in my search to understand just what constitutes a legally viable class. With these cases, we’ve clearly gone well beyond limiting disenfranchised and politically-disfavored classes to immutable characteristics, as state and Federal rulings handed down across the land this past year have been “all over the map” in terms of the level of review or scrutiny applied. In some of the cases, judges are asserting that a group of people have a fundamental right to marriage based on a proclivity they were not born with.

Is it such a stretch from these recent decisions that a currently unprotected class of citizens should be recognized as a “suspect” class meriting heightened scrutiny over the unilateral dissolution of their longstanding marriages due to their shared, common convictions around its biblical and traditional permanence?

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

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Let's Repeal No-Fault Divorce!