Category Archives: Spiritual Warfare

Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

The Other Side of the “No-Fault” Appeals Coin: Activist Family Court Judge in Mississippi (2017) Shot Down

May 14, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.
– Leviticus 19:15

Earlier this year, “standerinfamilycourt” shared a detailed analysis which showed that the State of Mississippi was the only state in the nation that substantially respected the 1st and14th Amendment fundamental rights of Respondents ( religious free exercise and conscience, parental and property rights, equal protection and substantive due process rights ) as well as the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of state government.

Little did we know at that time that a case had been filed in 2017 with amici by domestic violence activists asking the state Supreme Court to affirm a family court ruling that Mississippi’s mutual consent-restricted statutory “no-fault” grounds for divorce (Code Section 93-5-1) was “unconstitutional”. Though the outcome of this case (which, according to news reports, and the resulting opinion, was not a case alleging any sort of abuse). The record shows that the wife who backed out of a mutual consent petition before it was finalized was serially adulterous, including in prior marriages. This case, triggered by, Judge Jennifer Schloegel, an activist “family court” judge from Harrison County, and appealed by the innocent, rejected husband, was ultimately unsuccessful in its claim of “unconstitutionality”.

Per the Clarion (October, 2017):

“The Harrison County case does not include allegations of domestic violence, but anti-domestic violence advocates and others have said Mississippi’s antiquated divorce laws make it difficult for an abused spouse to escape a marriage and help prolong dangerous family situations.” (Translation: this is as good a vehicle as we’re going to get for our ideological straw-man, so we’d better run with it.)

Under the Mississippi court system, such appeals go directly to the state Supreme Court.

Little did we know as well, that by the time our February, 2019 piece was posted, the Mississippi state legislature was heading for adjournment in March of their annual legislative session, while the only divorce “reform” bill that had been on the agenda was defeated in committee in early February. Rather than seek repeal of the mutual consent provision of the statutory “no-fault” grounds, SB 2529 sought to add non-cohabitation grounds that even the abandoner could trigger after a period of time. This Senate defeat constitutes two pieces of good news in one development. The legislative measure would hardly have been a “reform”, and would have added a decidedly unconstitutional provision to the statute, one that had no available due process defense, beyond perhaps a token right to produce evidence that the charge of non-cohabitation was false in some regard.

Certainly, as borne out in this very case, there would be many more innocent Respondents upon whom this non-cohabitation was imposed against their will than abusive Respondents from whom a battered spouse was fleeing. It would have been a decidedly anti-family measure, and redundant of the existing provisions for a battered spouse to bring objective evidence of abuse under fault-based grounds, or pursue a criminal remedy that didn’t seek to “dissolve” the marriage. No abandoner of a marriage should ever be preemptively and automatically rewarded for the abandoning act. Fault-based abandonment remedies, where they exist, should be exclusively available to the abandoned party. We are grateful that the 2019 legislature did the right thing by the state’s families, after the high court also did.

Several studies of the causes of divorce have discredited the “abuse” and domestic violence lore, consistently showing that adultery or the desire to adulterously remarry is by far the most common driver, and placing abusive marriages far down the list. Yet the unjust expectation of the media and Leftist activists is that this one assumed cause should control family law policy as if it were dominant. Some ascribe “emotional abuse” to all the other traditional “legitimate” grounds, in order to justify this.

(Please click to enlarge)

This case also showcases the biased obnoxiousness of the liberal press around this “issue”, as media outlets from Thailand to Seattle, Detroit, Memphis (and back), including the Associated Press, all parroted verbatim the original Clarion article, which crowed its approval of the rogue, overreaching family court ruling , but went dead silent about both the Supreme Court outcome and abortive result of the ensuing legislative effort they had so confidently hyped. Why? It doesn’t exactly fit the “abuse” narrative when it turns out the truly “abused” person is actually the cuckolded Respondent, does it?

But just how obnoxious was the media over this case when it broke? Here’s a 2017 sample:

“Lawmakers are expected again to debate divorce law reform and other measures to reduce domestic violence and related issues.

“Last year after much debate, lawmakers passed a measure that allows judges to grant a divorce for “spousal domestic abuse” based on testimony of the victim spouse.

“But Mississippi and South Dakota remain the only two states without a unilateral no-fault divorce ground. An investigative report by The Clarion-Ledger last year showed how Mississippi divorce laws, little changed over 100 years, trap spouses and children in abusive situations and financial limbo. One spouse who does not want a divorce or wants it only on his or her terms can hold up finalizing one for years — in some cases a decade or more.

“State Sen. Sally Doty, R-Brookhaven, the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence and others are vowing to continue to push this year for divorce law and other reforms to combat domestic violence.”

( SIFC: Anybody care to hazard a guess who the unnamed “others” are who vowed to fight on for divorce law “reform” in this news story?)

This case would have been even more satisfying to read if it had been the case of a God-fearing husband and father forgiving his “wife” (she had been previously divorced and this was an adulterous remarriage in itself, by biblical standards). But true to the way of the culture, it was a case of retaliatory adultery also within the marriage, with no clear evidence of who started it or who retaliated. The Gertzes were in the process of finalizing a mutual petition under the existing (supposedly “unconstitutional”) law when she decided to withdraw her consent to the terms of the previously-agreed property settlement and child custody arrangements, leading both to charge each other with adultery. The media clucked about how the case had “unconscionably dragged on” as if the husband had been responsible for that.

The actual facts per the high court:

“In January of 2015, Michael informed Joesie that reconciliation was impossible and that he wanted her to sign and finalize the divorce papers. Joesie, upon the advice of her attorney, surreptitiousy told Michael that she also was ready to complete the irreconcilable differences divorce. Based on the advice of her counsel, Joesie waited until her summer [2015] visitation had begun pursuant to the [2013 property settlement agreement] until her son was physically in Mississippi before withdrawing her consent to an irreconcilable differences divorce…”

It gets crazier from there, with the account of Judge Schloegel’s arbitrary actions, with which neither the husband nor the wife agreed:

“After a temporary hearing on July 13, 2015, the chancellor granted physical custody to Joesie. The trial began in December 2015 and concluded May 2016. Six months later, in November 2016, the chancellor entered a final judgment and decreed that a divorce should be granted, but that neither party was entitled to a fault-based divorce. She found that Joesie had failed to establish adultery. She found that Michael had proved adultery because Joesie had admitted it, but that Michael had condoned Joesie’s adulterous conduct. Then the chancellor sua sponte declared the statutory scheme under Mississippi Code Section 93-5-2 (Rev. 2013) unconstitutional and granted an irreconcilable-differences divorce. Joesie was granted custody of their child…. After the chancellor’s November 15, 2016, final judgment was entered,
Michael and Joesie, along with the State of Mississippi,

( SIFC: Well, yeah, the state AG is supposed to be given advance notice – 30 days in most states – when a constitutional challenge is being brought against an enacted statute – why would a family court judge not also be held to this same standard which common citizens and their attorneys are required to observe?)

…asked the chancellor to reconsider her judgment, because no party had asked for, pleaded, argued, or offered proof on the unconstitutionality of the statute….The State appealed the chancellor’s sua sponte adjudication of Section 93-5-2 as unconstitutional. Michael also appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by (1) declaring Section 93-5-2 unconstitutional, (2) failing to award Michael a divorce on the ground of
adultery, (3) reducing Michael’s summer visitation, (4) awarding Joesie a portion of Michael’s retirement benefits, and (5) awarding custody to Joesie. We affirm the chancellor’s finding regarding custody and child support, but we reverse the remaining judgment and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

It would have been nice to wave this ruling under the nose of the Texas Family Law Foundation’s chief lobbying Stephen Bresnan when he got away with making the opportunistic claim before the Texas Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee last week, that “no court in any U.S. state had ever declared [unilateral] ‘no-fault’ divorce unconstitutional” (even though most honest constitutional attorneys say that it certainly is on numerous counts – the real issue is fair access to the appeals courts and applying the correct standard of review due to political fallout for elected judges.) It would have been nice to follow up with a witness who said, “maybe not, in 2018, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that state’s mutual consent-only ‘no-fault’ grounds, which has stood since 1972, to be constitutional. They can’t both be constitutional.”

But, alas, this was only a technical ruling, and can’t really be considered a ruling on merits due to the lack of substantive arguments or evidence either way. The ruling was only that the Mississippi statute was not proven to be unconstitutional, by the trial judge or anyone else who was party to the case.

So what was the Judge Schloegel’s basis for determining on her own that mutual consent-restricted “no-fault” grounds was unconstitutional? Only her own subjective opinion, apparently:
“the chancellor sua sponte declared that “the present Mississippi statutory fault-based divorce scheme . . . unconstitutionally restricts and, in some cases, denies [a host of] fundamental rights and freedoms. . . . although “the parties did not execute a formal consent for the
Court to adjudicate contested matters on this basis . . . , [t]he parties are constitutionally entitled to a divorce without the mutual consent of the other.”

Au contraire, said the Mississippi Supreme Court.

This appeal was also important due to the high court remanding the case back and requiring the trial judge to consider marital fault (attributed by the high court to the wife who failed to prove her husband committed either adultery or cruelty and inhuman treatment), also failed to prove–in light of her repeated lying and deception about her own adultery, that her husband had condoned her illicit relationship while he attempted reconciliation, and had admitted her own adultery, she was not entitled to all of the alimony the trial judge attempted to award her. The high court also determined that Judge Schloegel could not arbitrarily set aside the couple’s previous mutual custody agreement in order to reduce the husband’s time with their son for no just cause.

Perhaps it’s not so much that the mutual consent statute is actually “unconstitutional” but more accurately, the feminist judge (chancellor) had a problem ideologically with assigning legal fault to an adulteress, somebody merely exercising their sexual autonomy when she would have been perfectly free to do so with minimal legal and financial consequences in several other surrounding states. If a surrounding state legalized (or, in fact, incentivized) murder or infanticide, does it really follow that this would automatically make Mississippi’s law penalizing those acts “unconstitutional” because its law…”restricts and, in some cases, denies [a host of] fundamental rights and freedoms” ? That’s not really too far-fetched a question these days, given recent successful infanticide legislation.

As for the bid by the domestic violence activists to hitch their opportunistic wagon to this case, the high court tossed their amicus brief to the side, saying: “The amicus called for affirming the chancellor, because the statute deprived domestic-abuse victims of constitutional rights. However, no domestic violence was pleaded or proved in this matter.” Given the ideological outrageousness of Schloegel’s ruling, who knows but that connections might run a bit deeper with this MCADV organization than meets the eye? SIFC struggles a bit with the feminist fantasy of a “constitutional right” not to have to prove allegations with evidence just because one is an alleged domestic violence victim, but after both the Brett Kavanaugh and Roy Moore episodes (“believe the woman”) this virulent, unconstitutional ideology had obviously taken hold in a lot of places.

Lastly, it’s not hard to see this case as the flip-side of the debate that has been going on in Texas about emulating Mississippi’s law, which appears to have operated fairly well in this particular case in levelling the playing field between an offending wife and a her offended husband. It’s refreshing to see a veteran get fair treatment for once, and for the militant feminists to lose for change.

Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged, yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before Him. But it will not be well with the wicked; nor will he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he does not fear before God.
– Ecclesiastes 8:11-13

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Miami Megachurch Had Covenant Wife Literally Arrested for “Standing”

May 13, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” – Matt. 5:11-12

The covenant marriage “stander” community has its leaders who organize weekly conference calls where testimonies and other encouragements are offered to those who are believing God to pull their prodigal spouse out of an adulterous state-sanctioned (perhaps, even church-“sanctified”) but God-forbidden “remarriage”, thereby restoring justified, regenerated souls to the kingdom of God once the sin is confessed as sin, and renounced by the penitent prodigal spouse. This, of course, is the only “biblical grounds for (man’s) divorce” that has ever existed, from the beginning. In all such cases, the biblical ground is based on the fact that God has never created a one-flesh (Greek: sarx mia) entity due to the undissolved prior covenant and unlawful nature of the union. This is why Jesus consistently and repeatedly calls such legalized unions where there is a living, estranged true spouse adultery — not so much for moral reasons, but actually for metaphysical reasons, and because a holy God cannot and will not ever covenant with sin. The word of God is crystal clear that only physical death, not man’s paper, dissolves original God-joined holy matrimony unions between a widowed or never-married man and a widowed or never-married woman.

These online groups are so vital to this marriage permanence community because standers, and those who do exit their papered-over adulterous “marriages” in Spirit-led repentance, can often find themselves subject to intense persecution, some of the most vicious of which is at the hands of other so-called “Christians”, and inexcusably, sometimes by churches that have some scurrilous reason to aid and abet an adulterous legalized union. Such was the riveting testimony of Tracy Jordan in a recent conference call – link to the May, 2019 audio replay is here. Listening to the audio is strongly encouraged for readers who have the time, as there are details and drama of the story not highlighted in this post.

Tracy relates on the call that she was five years into her first covenant marriage when her husband began a pattern of infidelity, and that there had been a generational legacy of divorce in her birth family. She married her husband in 2000 after several years of cohabiting, and was happy that he would be the sole-provider and she a homemaker after the biblical model. She was concerned about the curse of the family legacy of fragmentation, and hoped that this marriage would be until death. When her husband asked her for a divorce after a few years of standing for her adultery-embattled marriage, she refused to sign the papers, and started going to church on her own. She then found out that her husband had applied to become a deacon in a Miami megachurch at the same time he was in the process of unilaterally divorcing her, under Florida’s family-hostile “no-fault” law, in order to continue and cover up his ongoing adultery with a member of that church.

Tracy made an appointment with the leadership of the church who had made her estranged husband a deacon, Tracy following the biblical model for addressing sin in the body of Christ, and Paul’s guidelines concerning the qualifications for church leadership. She was not allowed to see the head pastor, but was granted an appointment with an assistant pastor. When she arrived at the church for the appointment, she found her husband and his adulteress in the assistant pastor’s office, and as she was soon about to violently find out, they had, perhaps without the head pastor’s knowledge, pre-arranged for a police squad car to pull up out front of the church. Also in the office were two church security goons, at the ready. Tracy pleaded scripture to the assembled group, warning of the sin of this church in facilitating the planned adulterous nuptials between this pair, quoting Mark 10:11-12 and Romans 7:2-3. She says she was then seized by church security and bodily thrown to the ground outside. The waiting police then arrested her, charging her with “simple battery” because she had tried to push the church security guards away, telling them, “don’t touch me!” Not only was the assistant pastor guilty of collusion with the adulterous pair and the police, but the police were guilty of collusion in being eyewitnesses to the unprovoked assault by the security guards, in basically “reversing the charges”.

Tracy writes this in a Sept 2016 post:

“I commend you once again sister Henry.. (addressing an author and leader in the marriage permanence community who left an adulterous remarriage of 17 years, Sharon L. Fitzhenry)… for your stand and dedication on this critical issue of marriage, divorce and remarriage. I was arrested a couple of years ago in church here in Miami, because my husband divorced me and married another woman in the church.

“I confronted the Leadership with Matthew 19:9, during a bible study lesson and there was a uproar in the congregation with me being arressted. I would have done the same thing over again, because it wasn’t like I was John the Baptist, going to be beheaded! I was with my husband for 19 years before he divorced me. I tried to fight for my husband’s soul, because I didn’t commit adultery, and I knew what state that would put him in. A lost state! he had no biblical right to divorce me. The church, cosigned, condoned and contributed to adultery. After the drama was over, I moved forward with my children, unfortunately two years later, my husband developed lung cancer and died. He died in his sins!

“God took one Rib! not spare Ribs! No man should divorce his wife, because she gained two pounds or burned the chicken last night! My husband was a deacon of the church! I warn those that teach this damnable Doctrine, because many souls will be lost because of it. Marriage is a Covenant, not a Contract!
It’s until her last breath or yours!

“I didn’t make the rules, I just follow them. A pastor told me that there was no such thing as an adulterous marriage. Once you remarry, the second time, God honors that marriage. That’s not what the Bible teaches! As far as divorce and reconciliation to your first marriage partner, we find in Jeremiah 3:8, that God divorced faithless Israel and gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away, because of her adulteries, but God reconciled himself back to Israel, once she repented! The story of Hosea and Gomer, depicts God’s undying love for Israel. Hosea was God! God was married to Israel! As husband’s and wives, we need to love like that. We need to forgive like that. We need to drag the hurts we have been harboring against each other in our hearts to the cross of Christ- it’s where we lay our burdens of guilt and shame. Only in him will we find true forgiveness. When we fully forgive each other , our minds will be released from the bondage of resentment that has been building a wall between us, and we shall be free to grow in our relationship with each other as husband and wife in holy matrimony!”

Covenant marriage standers bear many sorrows, but the loss of their one-flesh’s eternal soul to death before repentance (with the full complicity of a harlot church) has to be the very worst of these. Every stander living under the crushing burden of an unreconciled marriage and family dreads this occurrence beyond anything else. Many have this burden lifted by the return of their prodigal home to the Lord and to the home in this life, sometimes after decades of running away from Him. A tragic few do not. Tracy’s husband died in his adulterous remarriage only a few years after entering it.

Tracy relates on the conference call that she was eventually exonerated and acquitted of the criminal complaint after a trial that went on for eight months, and which depleted her financial resources. This is the all-too-common lot for an innocent spouse who dares to seek any kind of justice for what modern “family laws” routinely inflict on them by giving preference to the offending spouse, and subjugating the fundamental rights of the non-offending spouse.
In too many such cases, the innocent spouse is punished by both civil and criminal laws, though they’ve done nothing morally wrong. Tracy relates that she was ultimately unsuccessful in recovering civil damages for the false arrest because one of the officers subsequently went to prison for an unrelated matter. She eventually received an apology from the head pastor of this church that conspired to have her arrested.

Tracy is now married to a biblically-eligible man, but at an unthinkable, staggering eternal loss, following the untimely, unrepentant death of her first husband. Today Tracy is a grandmother, and she works as a volunteer in a shelter for abused women in Florida.

And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
– 2 Timothy 3:12

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Death of a (Postmodernism) Sales(person): The Sad Passing of Rachel Held Evans

May 8, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. – Hebrews 9:27-28

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019, divorce law reformers were again in front of the Texas House of Representatives, testifying in an effort to get the repeal of unilateral (non-consensual) “no-fault” grounds to advance from that committee, a bill identical to the one that had been voted out of the same committee two years before, whereupon that bill died a mysterious death before it could be brought to the floor of the full house for a vote, and before the legislature adjourned for two years. This time, related bills under discussion, HB922 and HB926 occupied about an hour of the late evening 3-hour session for testimony, while one bill seeking to protect wedding officiants from (homosexualist) liability by allowing them to recuse themselves, where conscience before God would be violated, (HB2109) preceded this debate and took more than 90 minutes of that time. During the discussion of the supposedly “homophobic” recusal bill, one recently-elected millennial lawmaker from a district north of Austin responded to the testimony of Cecilia Wood, a family law attorney of 32 years, there to testify in support of HB922 eliminating non-consensual “no-fault” grounds for divorce, but also a supporter of the right to recuse from officiating weddings based on religious conscience, as follows (@ 8:30):

Rep. Talarico: “Two comments and a question: of course, allusion to the civil war (sic) important, but there was also a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war. Second, you mentioned Christians staying home. There are many Christians on this dias, including me who don’t hold discriminatory beliefs….”

“Woke” social justice writers like Ms. Held are largely responsible for the extrabiblical notions of young Mr. Talarico and too many of his generation:

(1) Belief that one can be a follower of Christ without embracing and obeying His teachings on morality and sexual ethics, as plainly described in the bible – both on a homosexual and heterosexual basis.

(2) The belief that biblically-immoral sexual behavior choices can constitute an “immutable” identity which can then be parlayed into valid comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1860’s and 1960’s that were based on race, biological sex and religion, i.e. “a right side to that war and a wrong side to that war…” to pass prudent moral selectivity off as “discrimination”. (It should be noted, however, that homosexualism is quickly becoming a sect of the larger secular humanist de facto state-religion of the United States ruling political class.)

(3) The asserted moral superiority of “social justice” Christianity over a holiness-based discipleship that better comports with the full teachings of Christ, the apostles and the early church fathers, especially in the area of sexual ethics. The fact remains that this humanist pseudo-religion is the very antithesis of actual Christian discipleship in every respect.

(4) That false analogies (in general) are excusable for the greater “good”.

To this last point, a woman’s purported “right” to disobey Christ (such as by divorcing her husband in a pagan civil court) is obscenely compared with Martha’s sister, Mary choosing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him, in the RHE illustration we’ve opened this post with.

While this testimony was occurring in Austin, TX, another kind of eternal tragedy was occurring in Tennessee in the Evans household, a covenant holy matrimony union of 16 years, with two children.

Dan and Rachel Evans wedding, 2003

The news site, AL.com wrote on April 19: “During treatment for an infection, Rachel began exhibiting unexpected symptoms. Doctors found that her brain was experiencing constant seizures. She is currently in the ICU. She is in a medically induced coma while the doctors work to determine the cause and solution…” By May 1, her condition was deteriorating due to brain-swelling after she failed to come out of the coma. As reported by CNN: “…Over the next 10 days and transfers between three facilities, Evans was comatose. Doctors began weaning Evans off coma medication Tuesday, but she did not return to an alert state during this process…Thursday [the coincidental date of the committee vote in Texas], Evans had ‘sudden and extreme’ changes in her vitals. A medical team found “extensive swelling of her brain” and took emergency action”.

That emergency action was unavailing, and she died on Saturday, May 4. Out of respect for the Evans family and their grieving process, we will be publishing this blog a day or two after her funeral.

This is the sort of dias-sitting “Christians” that Rep. Talarico was referring to in his hearing remarks were, no doubt, influenced in great measure by the evangelical darling of CNN, the Huffington Post, and a host of other liberal publications, secular and evangelical. SIFC has a grown, married daughter four years older than Mrs. Evans, who also started adopting RHE’s views around the time her writings gained prominence on CNN, and quoting similar homosexuality-sympathizing “Christian” writers such as Jen Hatmaker. This tragedy hits very close to home for that reason. It’s normal for young adults who have been raised in Christian homes to go through a season of questioning, but in these evil last days, it can be eternally fatal to purchase a home there (and turn it into a real estate office, as RHE did, with the backing of crooked investors). Hopefully, SIFC’s daughter is “just renting”, and moves to a home with a Rock foundation in time.

Mrs. Evans joined Soros-funded Baptist feminists (Karen Swallow-Prior, Beth Moore and an acclaimed homosexual journalist) in the leftist smearing of Rev. Paige Patterson, resulting in his removal from his leadership posts in the Southern Baptist Convention last year because of his fully biblical anti-divorce views which rejected the morally rabid “abuse” doctrines of this evangelical feminist cult. She was quoted by Baptist News Global at the time: “Patterson’s comments need a swift and thorough rebuke from the SBC and all Christians of good faith.” At least indirectly, Mrs. Evans was the epitome of the “rent-an-evangelical” cadre that Soros operatives openly bragged about recruiting.

SBC leader under fire for comments about divorce, abuse

The following was typical of her views on man’s divorce, finding purported legal “dissolution” a necessary “right choice” to prevent the exploitation of women, and imagining the true protection of women under the biblical leadership of her husband “legalistic”….rather than the metaphysical impossibility Jesus taught that divorce of an original holy matrimony union actually is. In effect, RHE was a popular writer because she excused hardness of heart, telling her fans what they wanted to hear – at a time when nearly 70% of unilateral “no-fault” divorce petitions are filed by women, and almost nobody takes provable abuse through the criminal justice system, as the bible would instead direct.

Jesus’ words about divorce were intended to protect women who were being exploited by the system. That they have been turned into legalistic laws that often harm women is a tragedy. A marriage is not more sacred than the people in it. Sometimes divorce is the right choice.

— Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019) (@rachelheldevans) April 29, 2018

“…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

“Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” – Jesus, Matt. 18:7-8

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. – Romans 1:32

“standerinfamilycourt” would vigorously challenge the late Mrs. Evans’ assertion about the “purpose of Jesus’ words on marriage”. Rather than protecting women from “exploitation by the system”, those words were to protect society as a whole from self-absorbed individualism, and keep fathers firmly in authority over the generations of their families, per God’s design.

Challenging the authority of scripture on such a matter, and then (apparently) dying unrepentant is very eternally costly, at least according to one early church bishop who was martyred early in the 2nd century….

Meeting this fate while still very young illustrates the extreme danger of achieving broad influence and acclaim which is built on a foundation of sand. It’s a mercy that God sometimes removes high-impact siren voices from our midst. When He must do so while they are so young, it’s a strong sign of how many they were leading astray, and of His foreknowledge of whether they would ever repent. Apparently, Mrs. Evans knew John Stonestreet of the Colson Center (Breakpoint.org) very well because they were from the same town in Tennessee, and (while he can’t quite bring himself to vocalize it), he is wondering if she ever repented before she passed into eternity last week. We can only hope so.

We are bracing for the howl we’re going to get from the antinomians out there, as we did when remarriage adulteress Joey Feek passed away young and unrepentant in her “marriage” to another woman’s legally-estranged husband. That blog post elicited comments from hundreds of people for days. We didn’t write that piece to be “mean” to the divorced-and-remarried, nor will we apologize for reminding people that all of the apostles warned repeatedly about the possibility of wandering away from the faith, as directly evidenced by the levels of repentance, and spirit of obedience to Christ’s commandments, in the life under discussion. If those who would take offense insist on doing so based on extrabiblical denominational dogma, their souls are in their own hands. If the past is any indication, some will read this and insist that SIFC has “judged” and personally consigned these erring souls to hell, as if feeling deputized by God to do so. This is irrational (to be as kind as possible in expressing it). What SIFC has done is tell the audience what God’s word and early church fathers clearly said about similar situations.

“standerinfamilycourt”, as Mrs. Evans did, feels called to the role of a teacher of God’s word on the family, approaching it with a holy fear of God, and ever-mindful of the stern warning from Christ’s brother, James, about the eternal impact on the audience….

“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. “

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

Legislative Learning Curve: The Fate of Texas HB 922 To Scrap “Insupportability” Grounds

May 3, 2019 standerinfamilycourt 3 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

This will be a good news / bad news account of the third consecutive unsuccessful try in Texas to restore fundamental constitutional protections to “Respondents” sued by their own spouses in “family court”. Re-introduced into the 86th Legislative Session by Rep. Matt Krause, HB 922 would have limited the “no-fault” grounds for divorce to cases of mutual consent and have required cases where the spouses do not mutually agree to the divorce to submit proof of existing fault-based grounds, while HB 926 would extend the waiting period for “no-fault” divorce to 180 days. Testimony for these bills occurred at a very late evening hour on May 1, 2019 with just 2 business days’ notice of scheduling. More about that unfortunate circumstance follows below.

The latter bill extending the waiting periods made it out of committee on Thursday, May 2 and still has a remote chance of being scheduled for a floor vote in the House in time to go to the Senate before the 2-year adjournment. During the 85th legislature, this bill made it out of committee unanimously (versus 5-3 this time), but was killed by adverse lobbying of someone in the Calendars committee. HB 922 was killed by the Democrat-dominated JJFI committee, and will need to be re-introduced in the 87th session in 2021. It also passed out of this committee in the 85th session but met the same special-interest lobbying fate before it could come up for a floor vote or proceed to the Senate.

This blog post will be something of a post-mortem: what went well, and not so well, and will shine some light on some long-festering process issues in the Texas legislature that has, over time, made legislative reform of family laws a bit of an uphill battle structurally. Family structure activists are not deterred, even though the demographic trend in Texas points to an even more liberal-dominated legislature in 2021 when it next convenes.

Is a Constitutional Amendment Needed to Allow the Texas Legislature to Convene Annually?
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 46 state legislatures meet annually today. The remaining four states—Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Texas—hold session every other year, each in the odd year. Illinois convenes annually but holds approved, pending bills open for two years, rather than require them to be reintroduced each session, which seems to be a cost efficiency to the taxpayers, not to mention, a bit of a safeguard against the effects of voter fraud and rapid demographic change (such as via unchecked illegal immigration) in elections, and possibly curbs the sort of Calendar Committee chicanery the Texas House is bloody infamous for. In each span between legislative sessions, committee membership changes along with the makeup of the House, with a definite recent “bluing” trend in this (once) deep-red state, as people move into Texas from economically-failing liberal states losing several large employers each year.

The frequency of legislative sessions is set by the Texas Constitution, which reads as follows:

Sec. 5. MEETINGS; ORDER OF BUSINESS. (a) The Legislature shall meet every two years at such time as may be provided by law and at other times when convened by the Governor.

Hence, any change would require passage of a measure to put a statewide referendum on the ballot to change Article 3, Section 5. This actually brings up one key example of the effect of biennial legislative sessions in Texas: we are coming up next month on 4 years elapsing since the capricious Obergefell decision legislated a “right” to gay “marriage” from the Federal bench, and nullified all of the DOMA (defense of marriage) amendments passed by citizen referenda a decade or so before, in numerous states. Although a bill, HJR 64 was debated to put the DOMA repeal measure the ballot in the fall, astonishingly it still sits in committee, with only three weeks remaining in the session. It appears that both the Texas marriage statute and the Texas constitution will continue to officially define marriage as being only between one man and one woman well into 2021, the 6th anniversary of Obergefell, since the constitution must be amended before the statute can be changed.

As the moral fabric of society has continued to fray, at least in part due to the societal destructiveness of divorce-on-demand, so has the legislation load perceived by citizens and their state leaders as necessary to manage all of the ever-worsening symptoms from this disease, now in its 3rd and 4th generations since enactment (boomers, gen-X, millennials, nextgen). The NCSL article cited earlier makes this interesting observation:

“In the early 1960s, only 19 state legislatures met annually. The remaining 31 held biennial regular sessions. All but three (Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia) held their biennial session in the odd-numbered year. By the mid-1970s, the number of states meeting annually grew tremendously—up from 19 to 41.”

Gun rights activist Rachel Malone provided her Facebook followers this statistical breakdown of Texas bill activity as of May 1 or so:

722 bills passed by the House (693 are HB’s)
640 bills passed by the Senate (632 are SB’s)
37 bills passed by BOTH chambers (but some still in process / conference)
16 bills sent to Governor

In the past 6 sessions, an average of . . .
– 6,363 bills were filed
– 1,382 bills were passed by both chambers (trending downward to the 1200’s)
– 1,342 bills were signed by the Governor / went into effect
– 389 bills died in Calendars (about 25% of the bills sent there)
– 258 bills passed the Senate but died somewhere in the House
– 368 bills passed the House but died somewhere in the Senate
– 11 bills died on the House floor
– 0 bills died on the Senate floor

How does this compare with other populous states that meet annually, such as Florida and California? A good topic for study!
In the meantime, anyone can see that there’s basically only a 5% chance per biennial session that any bill in Texas would make it to the governor’s desk, including (apparently) a SCOTUS-dictated matter from 4 years ago– and plan their activist activities accordingly.

The power of life and death is literally in the hands of the Committee Chairman’s scheduling choices
Attorney Harold Dutton has been the Chair of the Juvenile Justice and Family Issues committee for the past several legislative sessions. He is a man with a very checkered family life of his own, and has apparently treated this standing appointment as a personal fiefdom, according to a 2007 article in the Houston Chronicle. The Chair of each House committee controls the hearing calendar for that committee, a fact which is absolutely key to the difference in what occurred this year with HB’s 922 and 926.

Not that Rep. Dutton had all that much to fear in terms of a repeat of the 4-3 party line committee approval that occurred in 2017 for HB 93, the predecessor bill to HB 922, since the Democrat majority on that committee was now 5-4, with 100% turnover in the rank-and-file members. But just to be on the safe side, a bill filed in January was not scheduled for a hearing until May 1. Two business days’ notice of the scheduling was given after business hours on the Friday before. The hearing was scheduled on a day when there was a very heavy agenda on the House floor, typical for this point in the year when the session’s calendar days are dwindling, so the hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. didn’t actually start until after 7 p.m. That was tough enough, but these bills were heard alongside a litany of bills whose numbers indicated they were filed substantially later on, including an albatross of a bill opposed by an army of LGBT activists: HB2109 which sought conscience-based protections from liability for wedding officiants to recuse themselves from certain weddings. This testimony was, of course, prioritized to lead off (and, cynically, it set the political tone for) the entire evening.

SIFC expects that Chairman D was giving himself high-5’s for preventing the parade of constitutional law attorneys who testified in 2017 before his committee that Texas’ divorce law is profoundly unconstitutional, and replacing that with a literal Gay Pride parade twice as large. Despite the bills being introduced for the 3rd time by a practicing constitutional attorney, and despite ever-faithful veteran constitutional attorney Shelby Sharpe reprising an abbreviated portion of his 2017 testimony (given only 2 minutes this time instead of 3 minutes), and despite another family law attorney echoing the unconstitutionality with handouts to the committee, what wound up resounding from the testimony was the technically-true but woefully-incomplete declaration of Texas Family Law Foundation head lobbyist Stephen Bresnan that “no court in the United States has ever found no-fault divorce to be unconstitutional.”

The final injury came in the departure from the room of most of the GOP members shortly after the gay rights debate, which ended around 8:30 p.m. After powerful reprise testimonies by Kristi Davis and Jeff Morgan and a few other excellent witnesses, none of them got any questions from the committee members, mostly because there were few or no Republican committee members present any longer to give them a hand. Ditto for when Texas Values Sr. Policy Analyst Nicole Hudgens was peppered by feminist committee members with repetitive ideological “questions” she couldn’t quite handle to everyone’s satisfaction (partly due to coming off as being a bit unprepared). Last time, executive director Jonathan Saenz testified in favor of the predecessor bill. Whereas the victim witnesses got no questions, Ms. Hudgens’ 2-minute debut testimony evoked 6 contentious minutes of questions from the remaining committee members.

Another pivotally-damaging moment in the testimony questioning….

Rep. Callani to Ms. Hudgens: “Why do people get divorced?” (@1:57)

Texas Values’ Nicole Hudgens: “There are a number of reasons you can get divorced, but you have ‘insupportability’ which is no-fault divorce but this is not talking about…in the case of abuse or in the case of neglect..others, this is simply talking about ‘no-fault’ divorce…”

Rep. Callani: “Right, but what do you think the reason for that is?”

Hudgens: (pause) “It can be a number of reasons.”

Callani: “Just one of them”….(after longer Hudgens pause)…”Like a reason that people would get divorced…other than abuse?”

Hudgens: “Other than abuse?” [Way to affirm Callani’s pet ideology there, Ms. Hudgens!]

Callani: “So in your work for the Texas Family Law Foundation….”

Hudgens: “That’s Texas Values”

Callani: “OK, Family Texas Values…and you’re against divorces…so when…what types of divorces have you seen being…that were insupportable…what was their reason for wanting to get divorced?”

( SIFC: Noooo, Nicole, please don’t assent to her rhetoric again!! Proper response: “there can’t be any ‘insupportable’ marriages in the legal sense because the term has not even been objectively defined in the statute.” Legislator lecture coming in….4, 3, 2, 1… )

Hudgens: “There could be a number of reasons. We’re for government promoting a policy that keeps families intact as much as possible, so…it could be a number of reasons…right now you can just get divorced for pretty much any reason.”

Callani: “All I want you to do is just give me one reason why people would get divorced.”

Hudgens: “A lot of people would say ‘it’s complicated’…”

( SIFC: Callani could easily have gone in for the kill right here, but she was having herself a ball playing like a cat with her helpless prey….)

Callani: “But what do you think is complicated about it?”

Hudgens: “One person says they don’t want to be in the relationship anymore….”

Callani: “So if that’s reason, if this bill were to pass, it defeats the whole purpose.” (She didn’t say of what, but it’s clear that she believes in the “force people to stay married” dogma.)

( SIFC: While every question couldn’t have been anticipated, less than two minutes invested in a Google search would have produced this fairly accurate study information, courtesy of AARP, which places “abuse” far down the list, and would have put up a far better fight against Callani’s media-driven assumptions…the fact is that the vast bulk of divorce is driven by adultery, and in a lot of cases, deliberate spouse-poaching in older, more affluent couples with older kids, and often grandkids….creating massive retirement problems, and rewarding the offenders while severely penalizing the non-offenders. If this kind of informed content had filled those 6 minutes, they would at least have had something substantial to chew on, and it would have raised the opportunity to educate the committee on at least two important points that almost never get talked about!)

(Please click to enlarge)

Perhaps the most harmful moment that carried the evening, as a result of the GOP lawmakers all leaving the room, is the patently false statement by TFLF lobbyist Bresnan which went shamefully unchallenged because nobody remained present who was both entitled and motivated to debunk it at that point:

Bresnan: “And the third thing I’d like you to consider is leverage. If I’m in a relationship with someone and they can’t leave without my permission,
I have extraordinary leverage over them. I want the kids, I want the car, I want the house, I want the business. I want everything. If you want out bad enough, that’s what you’ll give me. Right now, people are on an equal basis and they can dissolve their marriage, and in no way should you allow the law to..uh..change the leverage in a relationship.”

But suppose GOP Rep. Faithful had been in the room, wide awake and on the ball — despite it being 9 p.m. by then (since the liberals somehow managed not to take a dinner break, no doubt because of the wherewithal for campaign contributions that were on the line here)….

Rep. Faithful: “that’s certainly an interesting point of view, Mr. Bresnan. Let’s probe that a bit further, if you don’t mind. Do you think it’s really necessary, in the best interest of the family as a whole, for the idea of “leverage” to be a zero-sum game, where the petitioner has 100% of the leverage and the respondent has zero percent? How do you see this as being an ‘equal basis?’ The AARP has rightfully been growing concerned because the most recent studies show that due to the effect of no-fault divorce laws on younger adults opting not to marry at all, the only growing category of no-fault divorce is what is commonly called “gray divorce”, often where a couple has been successfully married for decades. Often these divorces leave an innocent spouse, who wanted to save their marriage, with half or less of their retirement savings, 401K’s, IRA’s and pensions. So, AARP published a 2004 study report showing that the chief driver for these gray divorces is adultery and / or the selfish desire to marry someone else, and the divorce petition filer is typically the adulterer. Let me ask you: should the adulterer have 100% the leverage over an innocent spouse who has done nothing substantial to harm the marriage? Should they get the house, the business, the kids? Could you tell us how that is good for society, Mr. Bresnan?

Of course, back in December, following the disastrous 2018 mid-term election results which reflected the changing demographics in Texas, Rep. Krause tried to warn us (privately) that there “would be little appetite for” family law reform in the 86th session. He was a little reluctant to re-introduce the bills, but thankfully was persuaded (late). The video feeds showed him looking a bit disengaged, overtaxed and disinterested throughout the May 1 committee proceedings, and he apparently did little to encourage his conservative peers to stay in the room when their pushback against commercial / special interest testimony was absolutely crucial.

Taking the picture as a whole, SIFC believes it was still right to keep re-introducing the bills despite the formidable obstacles to enactment rehearsed above. William Wilberforce did this before Parliament for more than 20 years, across the entire spectrum of political circumstances, in order to engage the uphill battle to abolish the slave trade. The activist community can do a much better job of supporting Rep. Krause’s political courage by taking all of the following steps:

(1) praying for Dutton’s defeat in 2020. He’s been over the JJFI committee for far too long, and was morally ill-qualified for that pivotal Chair to begin with

(2) making a lot of off-session visits to allies for educational purposes, especially Texas Values, but also sympathetic family law attorneys like Cecilia Wood (who seems as well-informed as anyone). Ideally, we’d be visiting those same committee members with educational materials, but historically each session typically sees new faces under Dutton on that committee, so perhaps the only solution is to see all incumbent Reps in the off-session season, and from Nov. – Jan. 2020 visit the newly-elected (who are likely to wind up on the committee). This means Jeff Morgan, who has purposed to focus on enlisting the support of the state’s churches in the off-season, will need a lot more hands.

(3) re-courting the constitutional attorneys who testified in 2017

(4) entreating Rep. Krause to file his bills on Day 1 of filing rather than in January, so that testimony in both chambers can occur by March

(5) prioritize the courting of Senate concurrent sponsorship

(6) recruiting the testimony of once-divorced couples who remarried each other (#somuch4irreconcilabledifferences)

(7) solidify ties now with the Constitution Party of Texas who might be able to help Jeff Morgan with some of the ground work over the next two years

(8) write Rep. Krause a heartfelt thank-you now, hoping for his re-election, and advising him how we will be doing our part to better support his efforts next session

For just one example of potentially effective connections, HB 2109, the wedding officiant recusal bill, which had six co-sponsors (Reps. Flynn, Bonnen, Dean, Schaefer, Springer and White) has already died on the vine this session, which really need not become a tragedy that leads to a similarly ill-considered Alabama-style reaction. Would these gentlemen not be great candidates for some timely education on why the successful repeal of unilateral forced divorce would make their issue go away altogether — by quickly killing the demand for gay “marriage”? This is before even mentioning the budgetary heroes and rock stars they would become over the next few years! According to a 2008 study, unchecked unilateral divorce was costing Texas taxpayers almost $3 billion each and every year. This might be a great conversation to have with these gentlemen even before this session adjourns at the end of the month, if their attention can be had during crunch-time.

The debate on HB 2109 was (in reality) about compelled moral approval for sodomy-as-marriage, and by extension, the morality of sodomy in general. May 1, 2019 needn’t have become Gay Day in Austin, and it needn’t have been a Democratic committee member pointing out how this bill reflected a “fire, ready, aim” mentality
(Flynn testimony: “I thunk it up mahself”) behind it. Passage of HB 922 (accompanied by the future repeal of Sec. 6.006 – forced divorce with a 3-year delay in redundancy of Sec. 6.005) would have made that whole debate moot and unnecessary. Hence, there seems little reason why all six should not have been co-sponsors on Rep. Krause’s bills during the 86th session, and why they shouldn’t be courted by our team to become co-sponsors during the 87th session.

“standerinfamilycourt” is retired from corporate life, and lives several states away, but would have loved to spend part of 2018-19 in Texas for the reasons mentioned above. Steps are being taken to find a way to monetize Unilateral Divorce is Unconstitutional so that the finances to do so, and to start working other states, become available in 2019-2020. Prayers are appreciated for success and God’s direction in this fundraising vision. We have a formidable adversary, but a mightier Lord, so it all boils down to: who’s hungrier to win?

Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
– Hebrews 10:35

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

#RuthSummit 2019 – How Did It Go?

April 30, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

For by wise counsel you will wage your own war,
And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.
– Proverbs 24:6

As soon as the speaker list was released, this blogger knew that this conference was simply not to be missed, come hell or high water (SIFC literally experienced a little of both before arriving there, but that’s a story for another day). “Standerinfamilycourt” has always had the greatest respect and admiration for its sponsor, The Ruth Institute. Many of the scheduled speakers have long been personal heroes (and heroines). The trip to Lake Charles is easily 15 hours each way by car, but that was no obstacle. This will by no means be a post about “buyer’s remorse”. There is no question that some very important connections were made at the Summit, and much cross-awareness “landed” for the participants, SIFC included.

And, there’s no question that what transpired in that venue absolutely fulfilled the objectives for the gathering that the Ruth Institute promised in the promotional information…

“Discover why the Church has been right all along about marriage, family, and sexual morality!

Stories from:

Children of Divorce
Abandoned Spouses
Children of Same-Sex Parents
Refugees from the Gay Lifestyle

Learn what it’s costing: in child trauma, clergy sex abuse scandals, runaway government power, and more.”

But…a day after returning, some of us were still feeling the effects of a few unmet hopes, including the action-oriented hope that it would be considerably more “shirt-sleeves” and interactive in its format, at least for the sessions involving “activist” panels. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse was careful to explain to participants that The Ruth Institute is not a lobbying organization (according to IRS rules for 501c3 and 501c4 educational organizations, TRI being the former). However, the distinction seems to be more philosophical than strictly legal in how “Ruth” defines her mission and organizes the organization’s engagement with issues and social change. For example, according to the website:

“In the summer of 2013, the Supreme Court’s decisions in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases signaled a new level of governmental commitment to the Sexual Revolution. Dr. Morse and the team at the Ruth Institute concluded that the opponents of natural marriage hold a commanding position on the legal and political fronts. At that time, the Ruth Institute made a strategic decision to enter into the cultural and social fray in a new way.

“With Ruth’s renewed focus on the social and cultural arenas (as opposed to the political and legal arenas)…”

Tidy strategy, this is: hoping to drive culture change in order to ultimately reform the vicious “teacher” that this law has become —except that, all the signs of the times ( for example, 70 years elapsed since Israel’s re-establishment as a nation, the emergence in Europe of mandatory RFID chipping of corporate employees, Russia’s renewed aggression, Trump’s move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple) ….seem to point to the Lord returning and rapturing away His church long before such a strategy might ever come to fruition, after which, the bible tell us the influence of the Holy Spirit will be removed from society remaining on earth, and the Antichrist will have a brief reign that will make all of this moral concern seem wildly irrelevant anyway. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the U.S. has already been “given over”, as described in Romans 1 because heterosexual moral reform has been rejected, especially in the church, long before the Windsor / Perry / Obergefell decisions of 2013-2015. Those of us who are impatient about the timeline of family law reform are impatient mostly because the souls of loved ones remain in serious jeopardy in the meantime. Some of us want the drag queen fired as “teacher” yesterday, and a morally worthy role model hired in “her” place for the sake of our kids and grandkids. No society in all of recorded history has survived more than 3 or 4 generations in the utterly bankrupt moral climate we have now, almost all of it driven by nefarious family laws and institutional acquiescence to them.

What’s largely forgotten in that 2013 strategic thought process at TRI is the need to change not one, but two grossly sinful cultures that sprang from the Sexual Revolution, the sodomy-as-“marriage” culture, and the sequential-polygamy-as-“marriage” culture (still seen by most in Christendom as what TRI refers to above as “natural marriage”). As our friend, Pastor Jack Shannon pointed out in his 2017 book, Contra Mundum Swagger, those heavily invested in the second culture (relying on either RCC “annulment” or evangelical hypergrace) tend to see the first culture as befalling them from out of nowhere, and by no fault (pun not intended) of their own, seeing it fatalistically as a “test” or “cross to bear” rather than as an immediate call to individual and collective repentance. It was not lawful for Herod to have Herodias, his (living) BROTHER’S wife, and a man of God gave up his own saved life to warn their souls. It is no more lawful today for a few of these repeal movement leaders to have their current mates, while SIFC has not shrunk back from warning them in various ways (and is probably not on the short list of suitable conference speakers for that reason alone).

The Lord may not continue to forbear for two or three more decades for culture to change, under a strategy of incremental influence, in order “ease into” legal reforms. It might be different if we were not citizens of a constitutional republic that His extreme favor gave us in the first place, and which we are now basically squandering when we fear reprisal, or fear suffering persecution and loss of comforts – steep costs that the early church joyfully bore in order to introduce the world to true Christian morality, though they had little or no formal voice to the Graeco-Roman government systems at all.
For anyone, with both a representative vote and a state of living estranged from their true, God-joined spouse, to compare a reticent approach toward contemporary government engagement with the example set by the early church is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Wrote Anglican church historian Kenneth E. Kirk in the 1940’s:

“What is more astounding than the mere fact that the early Church taught and practiced the complete indissolubility of marriage for so long, is the fact that the Church chose to take its stand against the strong contemporary lax social and legal attitudes toward divorce which prevailed so universally all about them. The Church, today, feels that it is on the horns of a dilemma, because so many divorcees are coming to her for help and encouragement. Shall she accommodate the Scriptures to the apparent need of the unfortunate divorcees, or shall she uphold the Biblical standard of the indissolubility of marriage for any cause while faithfully discharging her duty to such distressed individuals? Every church of today which considers the lowering of its divorce standards should remember that the early Church stood true to the Biblical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage in a world that was pagan and strongly opposed to the moral and marriage standards of the New Testament. Not only did the Church maintain her stand on the indissolubility in the early centuries, she changed the attitude and standards of the whole world toward it. Even today the whole Church of Christ and the entire western world is still reaping the rich benefits of that heritage. Shall the Christian Church of today be less courageous and faithful than the Church of the early centuries of the Christian era? Does she not under God have the same spiritual resources?

“There were other grievous social evils in the early Christian centuries. Slavery enveloped the Roman Empire of that age, yet the Christians did not set themselves to change the thinking of the masses against it, but they did set themselves to change the thinking of the masses toward marriage and divorce. Why did they not attack slavery with the same vehemence? The reason was that the Apostles had not received a “thus saith the Lord” from Christ respecting it. They had, however, received such in the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. No sect or school of philosophy is known to have influenced the early Church in this teaching. From whence, then, did she get the teaching? Certainly she received it from the teaching of the Gospels and from the teaching of the Apostles, who had earlier conveyed the same orally (as well as in writing) to the leaders of the early Church who succeeded them.”

(Marriage and Divorce. 2nd ed. London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.,1948)

For the action-oriented participants (who would like to stay God’s hand in the timing of His finalized judgment), important collaboration items had to be relegated to the conference breaks, such as asking Fr. / Dr. Sullins how one might get important outdated research refreshed, or undertake a child-outcome study for a sociological group that has never been addressed before (children of biblical standers being segregated out from those of generic and incomparable “single parents” because the former are likely skewing that measure by their growing numbers and superior child outcomes from walking out biblical principles in the home).

Perhaps there’s no avoiding the fact that panelists addressing the hydra-headed issue of what’s being done to reform unilateral no-fault divorce laws (and resulting injustices) would have a more difficult time being brief enough to allow feedback and interaction afterwards in a uniform allotted time slot, which was 30 minutes total. This seemed to be less of a problem with the personal testimony panels where there was ample time for some follow-up, in most cases. As it turned out, there was no time for such in the “activist” panel led by Matthew Johnston, Jeff Morgan and Christopher Brennan (~47 minutes into this link). The personal testimonies, while significant and powerful, mostly represent the symptoms of the disease, while the “activist panel” (in effect) represents a proposal for the surgical approach to excising the disease that is causing the cascade of symptoms. Yes, this does involve a process for influencing policy and legislation to some extent, but the IRS has given 501(c)3’s a little bit of leeway for potential indirect involvement in this:

501(c)(3) organizations ARE allowed to take part in small amounts of political lobbying. There are two ways to determine how much nonprofits can legally lobby: 1) Insubstantial Part Test and, 2) Expenditure Test. In the first option, an organization’s lobbying activities cannot constitute a substantial part of the organization’s total activities and expenditures in any tax year. This option is somewhat vague, as it does not define “lobbying activities,” “substantial amount,” or how that amount will be calculated. The second option is somewhat clearer. The Expenditure Test defines permissible lobbying activities and measures an 501(c)(3)’s lobbying activities only by the amount of money spent on lobbying activities.

Surely, providing an annual venue for meaningful strategy development, and possible nonprofit mentoring (or incubation) for an allied-but-separate non-profit that could take a more activist role which complements TRI’s core strategic mission would not get TRI into any difficulty with the IRS, nor divert significant resources from “Ruth’s” preferred core activities. The fact that TRI awarded an “Activist” recognition this year is a good demonstration of that point. Quite often, when a problem seems complex and intractable, effective solutions are “both / and” rather than “either / or”, meaning that involved organizations can certainly specialize where they feel their strengths are, while maintaining supportive ties with other organizations whose strengths may be complementary but not duplicative.

Perhaps some time allowance is necessary for “ice-breaking” when diverse allied interests and players (who started out not knowing each other very well) begin coming together for the first time, but the road home from this conference felt as though an untamed “adhocracy” will continue to be aimed in 2019-20 at the political realm, rather than a purposeful coordination of collaborating efforts based on experiences shared, and consensus-finding. This seemed like a sad waste of the rare and valuable face-to-face time we were afforded in Lake Charles. Hopefully, some of this occurred at the smaller dinners that were organized for the invited speakers outside the formal agenda. From SIFC’s seat, it appeared that some panelists were not in consensus with each other about specifics of the way forward. When the other side plays dirty (as we know they do), one option indeed is to wait until conditions are more favorable before ever engaging, another is to peck away randomly which isn’t likely to be very successful, and the third way is to go after them with a solid, coordinated and well-vetted battle plan that takes into account a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that is updated at least annually. One possible solution for the next conference might be some breakout time by interest area.

We all tend to come to these events with a few individualized sub-agendas, in addition to the main agenda items. SIFC is the first to admit that what will be gleaned from this year’s Summit participation and deemed most valuable is steps to meaningful reform that will come sooner rather than later, and divert that many more precious souls from hell (at least, on account of dying while in a sinful subsequent union). Another sub-agenda, for somebody else, might be gleaning whatever will most quickly lessen parental alienation or reduce onerous child support payments. Some standers in the room might prefer for divorce to remain cheap, easy and certain so that their prodigal spouse has an easier path to repentance some day. Some individuals will be looking to make or continue a livelihood from the reform effort. These things will, of course, cause some differences in preferred approach and timeline to reform. Possibly, a sub-agenda for the Summit sponsors is to be inclusive of non-Catholics while not doing anything that might unnecessarily alienate the material support of RCC hierarchy for the organization’s efforts and vision. Can a mutually-supportable action path be found through all these sub-agendas? Possibly, but not if insufficient interactive discussion time is allotted among key stakeholders in the program agenda! This is the first major conference in recent memory attended by SIFC where some sort of general participant evaluation feedback was not requested.

It did not take long for word to get out among the covenant marriage stander community of this #RuthSummit, and of the livestream video resources that Family Research Council staffers so generously provided. “Standerinfamilycourt” awoke to an email from a male leader in the movement Tuesday morning, sharing that another abandoned, standing husband had emailed most of the faithful pastors in the movement, and several other standers. This young husband who originated the email chain had been texting me on Friday, eager to get to the livestreaming links before the opening dinner got underway. All of this is truly a blessing to that large community, who has (admittedly) mixed views on the actual repeal of unilateral, no-fault divorce laws and the biblically-appropriate level government engagement by Christ-followers.

“Standerinfamilycourt” would like to wrap up this post by giving a hearty “thumbs-up” to a few points in the long list of positives from #RuthSummit 2019 over this past weekend:

1.) Auspicious, God-orchestrated timing: As we sat at dinner Friday night, while Texas activist Jeff Morgan was receiving TRI’s award as “Activist of the Year”, SIFC received a text on the cell phone: Both HB922 and HB926 had been scheduled for their committee hearings on only 2 business days’ notice. SIFC is “sure” there was no mal-intent with this timing, which is “done all the time”, we hear. Little did House committee chairman Harold Dutton know that his maneuver increased the joy of the evening, as the veritable who’s who of activists in were in the same room to receive the news while gathered over dinner. This would include Dr. Morse, Leila Miller, Matthew Johnston, Chris Brennan, blogger Kristi Davis, Dr. Stephen Baskerville, and new repeal enthusiast Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon. Just picture the phones ringing off the hook in Austin all day today and tomorrow, and the prayers going up for some of these folks who will be there in Austin testifying tomorrow at 10:30 local time.
The timing actually helped increase the chances that if both bills fail against the very long odds of getting to the House floor for a timely vote, there will at least be solid backing for simultaneously introducing them in both chambers (with needed improvements) in 2021, next legislative session. The Lord works in mysterious ways. – praise Him!

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
– Gen. 50:20

Dear Readers, here is the list of committee members and their contact information.

ACTION REQUEST: Would you consider being a part of history-making and giving each of these committee members a timely call, asking them to support both bills? You do not necessarily have to be from Texas to weigh in, but if you are from Texas, and either you or somebody you know from Texas has a restored marriage after a Texas “no-fault” divorce, this will be very important information to leave with the staffer when you call, in order to deliver a strong message that “insupportability” is nothing more than a subjective legal fiction on which no law depriving citizens of their parental or property rights should be based in a constitutional republic.

A key tidbit about Mr. Dutton, the committee chairman: he went through a messy divorce in the 1990’s. Among other traumas from his own divorce, he experienced the horror of having his wife’s live-in boyfriend physically abuse his sons without being able to do anything about it, like many other young men who are subjected to forced divorce. If the situation is that he did not actually initiate his divorce (almost a 70% chance), this could provide something to widen his perspective a bit.

The current legislative session in Texas adjourns for two years at the end of May. If you are interested in watching tomorrow’s proceedings live tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1, try this link (no promises they will actually have it on camera, but there’s a chance). Alternatively, it’s likely Jeff Morgan will be videoing capturing the testimony for upload to you his youtube channel as he did two years ago.

UPDATE: Testimony on the bill to repeal one spouse’s subjective and unsubstantiated declaration of “insupportability” as a ground for divorce in Texas was heard on May 2, 2019. On May 3, the bill failed to achieve the necessary votes in the Democrat-dominated Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee to move on to the Calendar Committee, despite having done so two years earlier, and despite dozens of covenant marriage standers calling these committee members’ offices in support of HB 922. It will now have to be introduced again into the 87th legislative session in 2021.

2.) Wonderful connections with another strong group of Catholic standers was forged: We already have solid connections with Catholic standers through Bai MacFarlane’s wonderful ministry, Mary’s Advocates. SIFC learned at the Summit that Covenant Keepers has been working closely with a well-established group of Louisiana standers who have formed a weekly group locally called “Hosea’s Hope” (no apparent online presence). These standers shared another tidbit of good news: it appears that Covenant Keepers has worked recently to cleanse its local group leadership of adulterously remarried leaders, which would be an update on our earlier reporting, if confirmed.

3. ) The value that covenant marriage standers bring to the effort to save biblical marriage was publicly recognized at the Summit. Dr. Morse asked all the standers in the room to “stand” right after the panel on marital abandonment spoke. We were able then to identify each other, perhaps half a dozen people. Hard copies of this recent blog post , “7 Important Contributions Covenant Standers Are Making Toward the Repeal of Forced Divorce” were brought to the conference for handouts, and Dr. Morse very graciously gave us impromptu table space in the venue. She told the invited stander speakers, “when the history is written that this ship got turned around, y’all are going to be mentioned…” This was said in front of some of the most important Christian scholars we have today by one of the most important Christian scholars we have today, and it went out over the Family Research Council media machine. It was a mighty proud moment for standers everywhere. Dr. Baskerville gets a lot of feedback from the (justifiably) angry MGTOW crowd (“men going their own way”). It must have been refreshing to hear for once about grace-filled men and women going GOD’s way under the same profoundly unjust circumstances.

4.) Dr. Baskerville hit yet another one “out of the ballpark” (opening wide the eyes of some very influential people). These were the exact words of a stunned Dr. Gagnon on his Facebook wall after hearing Stephen Baskerville’s riveting 40-minute address:

“Dr. Stephen Baskerville, professor of government at Patrick Henry College, hitting his critique of “No Fault Divorce” out of the ballpark. It is one of the most anti-constitutional measures imaginable, incentivizing family break ups, rejecting basic standards of justice, and giving the state unlimited tyranny…”

Most serious standers who follow our pages were not surprised by this at all, since it is quite customary for the blunt Dr. B to hit things out of the ballpark every time the mic is on. That said, there is a famous moment in the movie, “Amazing Grace” where MP William Wilberforce has conspired with the head of the Tories to take one well-heeled set on a party-barge tour of the harbor, complete with powdered wigs, wine, hors-d’oeuvres, and a string quartet. SIFC could go on to describe the proceedings, but it would be more fun to just let the readers watch it instead, while emphasizing that in no way are any Summit leaders or participants being compared with the insensitive lot in the movie, but the “turning point” feel of that moment is still quite similar indeed. Picture Dr. Baskerville on the bridge of the sailing vessel that carried the slaves – not hard, is it?

5.) The language of the thought leaders in the room appeared to be slowly changing for the better (and root causation finally being acknowledged out loud). Dr. Gagnon also gave an excellent address Saturday afternoon. Although it was (by title) about homosexualist twisting of the scripture, he had a lot to say about holy matrimony. Across several of the speakers, we started hearing a bit less about the looser “standard” of “permanence”, and considerably more about the far more demanding state of indissolubility that Christ laid out. Desirably, we also started to hear a lot about the one-flesh state, notably at ~ 11:55 in Dr. Gagnon’s address, when he says this about the one-flesh state (echoing Paul in Ephesians 5): “…so whatever you do to your spouse, if it’s a negative thing, it’s a self-inflicted wound.” And again, at ~ 21:30, and at ~40:00 where Dr. G comes oh-so-close to appropriately recognizing the instantaneous, supernatural, metaphysical nature of the God-joining that is the very Creational basis for indissolubility, and for “remarriage” while an original spouse still lives, constituting papered-over adultery 100% of the time. It’s not the repeated physical uniting that creates the one-flesh state, according to Jesus in Matthew 19:6,8 and Paul in Ephesians 5:31, it’s God’s actual hand in the wedding itself that permanently does so. If this were properly acknowledged, the witness against homosexual “marriage” (and practice) would become so much more powerful than any attempts to “rank” soul-corroding sexual sin.

At ~ 18:00: “When Jesus talked about marriage in Matthew 19 as being indissoluble, permanent, lifelong…a vision largely lost by the church, which is the beginning of our problems. We would never be at this place on the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism if we hadn’t already lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage…if we had not caved on those issues, we would not have come to this extreme point, and we are at an extreme point now.”
(SIFC must still respectfully disagree with any attempt articulated between 22:00 and 40:00 to claim that one sexual sin is “worse” than another, when Paul said this in 1 Cor. 6:18-20, about heterosexual defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and warned at least twice, “do not be deceived” : both receive the same eternal outcome if unrepented, we’ve lived to see that both equally undermine the biblical family, hence entire societies, sending the unrepentant to hell in both cases. SIFC believes such a philosophy is a large part of the reason we “lost the battle on the longevity and permanence of marriage”, as Dr. Gagnon had earlier put it.)

We believe it’s the patient, continued voice of the scholar-standers who are respectfully challenging the comfortable presumptions of the more conventional and acclaimed scholars and bringing about this necessary evolution in the latter.

6.) There also seemed to be a “lessons-learned” readiness to jettison the unhelpful idea of 5 years ago, that the sexuality debates can leave God out and prevail. The best indication of this maturation, of course, is the theme for the Summit: “Why the Church’s Teaching Was Right All Along” (that is, “right all along” if you ignore the 12th century fabrication of “annulment” doctrine under Pope Innocent III, and you also ignore Luther’s humanistic 16th century innovations.) The absurdity of this notion should have been obvious on its face in 2013: “we battle not against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities and dark forces in the heavenly realm.”

7.) Satan so feared the impact of the #RuthSummit livestreaming result that he felt compelled to harass the Family Research Council technicians on both days. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit was invited in both days in prayers to open and close the sessions. Organizing this kind of an event around a controversial topic that brings together people of different faiths, but the same biblical truth, is never as easy as it looks. This one came off very well, and was an endless encouragement to thousands of covenant marriage standers around the world who were not able to attend, but wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

We are looking forward to next year already!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, Equal Protection, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

Myth-Busting: Will Restoring Fundamental Rights to Respondents “Trap” People in Unwanted Marriages?

April 23, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17

As sure as death and taxes, any time a “family law” reform bill is before a state legislature which seeks to curb unconstitutional, non-consensual “no-fault” grounds being allowed to shred a family at the selfish whims of one of the spouses, there are two media responses:

(1) loud howling about people “trapped” in “bad marriages” (the Left), and

(2) deafening silence (the hypocritical Right).

“standerinfamilycourt” humbly submits (and will demonstrate) that these objections are overblown and way out of proportion in the “fairness” picture.

The model reformed “no-fault” statute will do a few essential things (all are a necessary minimum):

(1) limit the use of subjective grounds like “insupportability”, “irreconcilable differences” and “irretrievable breakdown” to a mutual, joint petition, where all the terms and conditions are agreed by the parties at arms-length (rather than by strong-arm). The mutual petition part is important here. No-fault dissolutions should never be obtainable by default judgment, or where the effects of divorce are not mutually agreed. All default judgments should be fault-based, without exception.

(2) restore the availability of fault-based grounds in the alternative, which is important because many state legislatures have eliminated and disallowed these.

(3) ensure that desertion or “living apart” grounds are only available to the non-offending party.

(4) ensure that marital misconduct is a material consideration in child custody and property division judgments if the parties cannot agree these things mutually and state them on a joint petition.

Yes, this kind of reform will (at least temporarily) leave some parties legally married against their wishes. However, there are several reasons why both the time frame of delay in legally “dissolving” the marriage, and the number of such cases has been greatly exaggerated. This is especially true in contrast with the millions involuntarily divorced today against their consciences and against the best interest of the children and grandchildren of the marriage.

Here’s why:

=> although this 1980’s statistic needs to be refreshed by a study, 20% of dissolution requests are mutually agreed between the spouses. It is quite possible that the legalization of homosexual “marriages” has increased this figure a bit.

=> of the remaining 75-80%, perhaps half (under current law ) do involve fault grounds, but the Petitioner is choosing “no-fault” grounds for cost and privacy reasons. Cost should not be as big a deal as it’s made out here, since the statutorily at-fault party can ultimately be made responsible for the costs if the non-offending party has no resources for filing and legal costs.

=> in the case of endangerment, there will be restored fault-based grounds and fault-based remedies available immediately., as covered above.

Of the remaining 40% of potentially negatively-impacted parties being compelled to remain legally married longer than they’d prefer, the following mitigations still remain:

=> nothing in this reform prevents an unhappy spouse from separating and living apart — an act that is biblically forbidden in an original marriage unless there is danger to family members (covered above), and living as immorally as they wish with whomever they wish. They will simply no longer be rewarded by the powers-that-be for doing so.

=> in the case of abandonment, the story is the same, with perhaps a delay of a year or two. This is not really an unreasonable delay for the sake of restoring the ongoing integrity of our Constitution and our society.

One canard that keeps surfacing is very true, but very selectively applied by the shameless propagandists who skillfully trade in emotional manipulation: “you can’t force people to stay married”.
Indeed! We’ve shown here that over a year or two time frame, anyone who wants to legally “dissolve” their marriage, or cause it to be “dissolved”, has a clear path to doing so under virtually all circumstances in a meaningful “family law” reform scenario. The more accurate saying is “you can’t force someone to live with a person they don’t wish to”, but their legal marital state is irrelevant in any case. What is relevant is WHO PAYS under the law.

The emotionally manipulative howling in the press is really about the economics and incentives changing from those that reward the offending spouse and divorce industry, to those that protect the spouse who is committed to family integrity and the true best interests of the children and grandchildren.

Non-consensual “no-fault” divorce laws strip non-offending spouses of their free speech, free religious exercise and conscience rights, along with other fundamental Bill of Rights protections including the right to raise their children according to their convictions, the right to free association with family members on both sides of the family, their property rights, 4th amendment rights against warrantless search of their finances without being accused of a crime, their right to live under an enforceable marriage contract, their right to a jury trial when confiscation of those things is sought by the state. The best and only way to distract from all of these harsh truths is to howl loudly about very shallow considerations. In interests horribly adverse to the nation as a whole, they strip us of the separation-of-powers guaranteed by Article 3, allowing the legislatures of these states to override constitutional separation-of-powers protections by legislating away true judicial discretion, true cause of action, and true due process.

Justice exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable.
– Proverbs 14:34 (Douay-Rheims Version)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Can The Sexual Revolution Be Defeated With Only Secular Arguments? (Why I Respectfully Dissent)

April 19, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.

Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
– Matthew 10:28-33

Since the rise to power of homofascism started to rivet the faith community’s attention to the excesses of the Sexual Revolution in earnest about ten years ago, it quickly became an article of faith that some other way had to be found to articulate existential truth to the larger society and policymakers than the out-of-fashion Bible. Statisticians pointed to the year-over-year increases in the measured ranks of the “nones” (people surveyed to have no religious preference or affiliation) and hastily concluded that they were rejecting the Spirit-breathed content of scripture rather than the easily-observed rampant sexual hypocrisy in the mega-church down the street. We were cautioned that if we threw our pearls before swine (i.e. the LGBTQxyz political machine), they would be merely trampled under foot and would turn on us. Turn indeed they did! Here is an example of the swift rebuke that ensued from the “swine”….

The very influential national Catholic voices among us (for which we remain so grateful to God) touted “natural law” as the way to crack this nut without offending non-religious and cross-religious sensibilities. However, to some of us, “natural law”, as it tends to be applied, sounds like a much watered-down version of God’s law–designed to protectively fence off from moral reform (repentance) the heterosexual root of our “homosexual” sin problem. One uniformly overlooked element of “natural law” so-applied seems to be chronic, however: the inconvenient fact that no disease of the body has ever been healed by treating only the symptoms.

– Why is this secularized “natural law” ideal so tempting to Christian and Jewish social conservatives?

After 50 years of the unchallenged reign of unilateral (so-called “no-fault”) divorce laws throughout the land, some 60% of adults are now living day-to-day in “marriages” that Jesus habitually called adulterous because a legally-estranged spouse is still living. As displayed above, even malicious, casual bible “scholars” know this. Don’t bother to bore them with our evangelical “biblical exceptions”, which they see right through! Since picking up our cross and following Christ tends to be economically costly as well as morally costly, the adulterously-wed among us tend to also be the very deepest pockets in the land. How can we afford to do battle against such urgent, existential threats to society as transgenderism, unsafe public restrooms, wedding industry artists bankrupted and hauled off to jail, pornographic indoctrination classes in our schools, on and on, without lots of financial and political support gathered as rapidly as we can humanly gather them? And how can we gather sufficient funds or political support if we dare call adulterers adulterers?

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, ⁶and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-6

Concern for children in “blended” families
Many promoters of the fenced-off “natural law” approach to legal and church reforms have legitimate concerns for children born into remarriages following a civil-only divorce, even if they agree, in principle at least, that these are the children of adultery according to what Jesus taught. “All children have an innate right to be raised by both their natural parents in an intact home”, they assert, and policies that thwart this amount to child abuse in their estimation. This makes it somehow “acceptable” for the wholeness of grandparent marriages to be subordinated in reaching for only limited legal reforms, even while our society is predominated by fragmented family units, and Bill-of-Rights protections designed as a human rights measure for all original marriages which have been trampled in “family” court for five decades will continue to be trampled. The Catholic voices for “natural law” are frequently joined by the Calvinistic evangelical voices (Billy Graham, John Piper and others) whose oft-cited banality is “you can’t unscramble the eggs”. Never mind their utter lack of concern, at the time the legal machinery was installed to civilly “unscramble” the COVENANT eggs of the original marriages that God’s hand joined, and never mind any concern for the legitimate children of those marriages. Never mind that these same church voices remain shamefully silent today while courageous Christian lawmakers in two states are presently travailing to uninstall that legal machinery. Never mind that Jesus pointedly said that it is the original eggs which cannot be unscrambled – as all of the Pandora’s Box of ever more-horrifying societal symptoms empties itself in Divine demonstration and testimony of. ( SIFC is very grateful for the recent breakthrough article by Catholic author Leila Miller – a very good read that begins to acknowledge what the Lord wants us to see about this.) Further details on why SIFC believes Calvinists are so prone to joining Catholics in this flawed view will be addressed below. For now, let’s touch on two more overlooked and overplayed facets of the misplaced concern for the “Ishmael babies”, valuable human beings and Image-bearers created by the moral carnage and dislocations of the Sexual Revolution, which hinder us in fully obeying God in this matter.

(1) there have been studies of the ill effects of remarriage after divorce on children of divorce, but there have not yet been any studies on the effect of reconciling original holy matrimony unions on the children born in the interim into legalized adultery, in eventually failed “remarriages” that followed man’s divorce, but preceded the covenant reconciliation. There is, however, lots of anecdotal evidence of excellent outcomes on these particular children. This segment specifically needs to be studied in order for these less specific overall studies to be complete and valid enough to support durable public policy. This will never happen so long as legal remarriages are deemed morally equivalent (or staying in them morally superior) to holy matrimony the way Christ defined it in Matthew 19:4-6.
Many studies have shown that each subsequent “remarriage” is statistically much more likely to also end in divorce than the previous one, covenant reconciliations being the stable exception, due to the lifelong inseverability of the sarx mia (one-flesh) state created by God’s hand. This too, is an indispensable element of “natural law”, according to Jesus and according to whole-bible witness entailed in all of the pagan and mixed-marriage couples whose unions God defended as indissoluble, but is completely lost if the biblical argument is discarded.

(2) the Bible tells us in very clear terms that the sin of remarriage adultery is intergenerational. Hence, living on in an adulterous remarriage does even worse generational and emulation harm to the children of that “marriage” than does physically separating and legally severing it. While there is limited hope from some studies that a few in the next generation are learning from the “sins of the fathers”, we are quite literally jeopardizing the future marriages of all children when we allow this malignancy to be cemented as a societal norm. (There is no “natural law” or secularized way to share this kind of a vital truth.)

One societal objection seems a lot easier to overcome than two Unfortunately, even among the faithful there are vastly different sexual ethics, most of which also deviate from the teachings of Christ while claiming to be following Him. As a result, instead of merely needing to build a bridge to the “nones” and atheists in order to do effective battle with the homosexualists, we need to hold together a shaky coalition that includes Jews, Muslims, Mormons, those who believe their church can “annul” marriage, and those who call themselves evangelicals but don’t believe that holy matrimony is indissoluble for life. In other words, in order to reach those who say there is no God and no binding moral standard, it is necessary to keep two kinds of religious polygamists onboard: concurrent and consecutive, plus a third type that thinks ecclesiastical paper (extrabiblically) takes people out of the second category of polygamy. No wonder the urge is so strong to leave “religion” out of it! But leaving God (as He actually is, not as we’ve reinvented Him) out of it, leaves all supernatural power out of it. As scripture predicts, “they hold to a form of godliness, but deny its power.”

They hope it will better unify allies in Christ who hold differing faith confessions
This sounds similar to the previous argument, but actually delves one level deeper. Keeping it secular seems so much easier when it comes to presenting a united front to agnostics than the hard work of sorting through issues like sola scriptura vs “tradition”, annulment vs. universal indissolubility, hell versus purgatory, and the Calvinist doctrine of “once saved, always saved (OSAS)” versus the disciples’ doctrine of “once saved, guard your heart“. Two things can be validly said about this issue: (1) the 1st century church willingly suffered gross persecution rather than leave God out of it, and they brought moral reform such as the world had never before seen, and (2) the diverse elements of the marriage permanence community squabble daily among each other on these matters, yet God still holds this shaky coalition together for His greater purpose, such that we learn from each other. We even do so online, right in front of the agnostics and seekers. He can handle it, and because of His hand in this, so can they! The famous Australian evangelist Ray Comfort speaks of leading people to Christ (getting saved) in these terms: “people need to know what they need to ‘get saved’ from, before they will weigh and accept this as a need in their own hearts.” He likens it to going through a commercial airline cabin handing out parachutes and urgently instructing the passengers to put them on. If they put the parachute on in their cramped seats, it’s going to be profoundly uncomfortable. They’re not going to do it unless they’re told the plane, with certainty, is out of fuel and is about to crash before it can land .….Which brings us back around to the strange bedfellows of Catholics and Calvinists, and why those are the voices we tend to hear most concerning “natural law” arguments against the Sexual Revolution. Both tend to believe that hell is for is not for their faithful, regardless of life choices or how people choose to die. Neither defines “faithful” in terms of bottom-line obedience to Christ. The Catholics believe God has a “holding tank” for the departed to “earn” one more chance. The Calvinists believe the worst that disobedience, and even dying while in a God-mocking lifestyle, can result in eternally is “loss of rewards” once “saved” (a single transaction)…as long as unrepentant homosexuality wasn’t practiced. To be fair to both, neither has allowed the Sexual Revolution to officially degrade their doctrine, such as it stood in the 1970’s, while most other denominations felt license to completely revise theirs based on a vote of their pastors and leadership. The Southern Baptists, in fact, took solid steps to shore up their family-related doctrine in 2000, even if actual practice would never quite match up. This unchanged doctrine perhaps has motivated both groups to continue to insist on a voice in the Sexual Revolution, albeit a mostly hypocritical voice in both cases. Discourse about breaking God’s “natural law design” goes absolutely nowhere out in the world if the best and only reason we can give for why that’s bad is the consequences on the kids. People using sex like a drug, and people who think this life is all there is are not going to care about the kids, even if they claim a born-again experience. They’re just not going to. God has to be part of the discussion so that we can tell the truth about heaven and hell, even if that offends some evangelicals. There’s no shortage, after all, of evangelicals who have signed on to the Sexual Revolution themselves, as we all know. God’s commandments and eternal consequences for disobeying them have to be part of the conversation so that we’re defining terms like “love”, “mercy”, “grace” and “compassion” in terms of eternity, and not just in terms of temporal comfort and feelings. God has to be part of the conversation so that we’re not misunderstood!

Illusion that policymakers will respond more favorably to a strictly secular argument
Only one thing to say here, now that we’re several years in: how’s that been working out for us? “standerinfamilycourt” respectfully believes what the Apostle Paul tried to warn us about in Romans 1 (which is not exclusively about homosexual practice so much as it is about idolatry, self-worship and misuse of our bodies, in various forms)….
For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. ( SIFC : Folks, the “impurity” Paul is talking about at this stage is the corruption, by whatever human mechanism, of heterosexual marriage as an institution, that is, any deviation from #1M1W4L which Christ laid out and commanded.)
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. Respectfully, you cannot prattle on about “natural law” to people who have depraved minds, even though they know the ordinance of God. You have to find a way by the power of the Holy Spirit to put the fear of God in them! You have to have resolve in reminding them that God will not be mocked, never lies, and that He keeps His promises. You also cannot pretend that “natural law” does not follow the full creation ordinance, which Jesus made clear marriage indissolubility except by physical death was just as much a part of as were the complementarian roles of male and female. God did not take a slab of ribs out of Adam, but only one rib. Adam’s reference to “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones” has a meaning that legal paper cannot ever change, and that’s a supernatural function of the hand of God. That fact cannot be explained to people with any number of secular arguments, yet it is at the core of why the Sexual Revolution has caused society to degenerate. God progressively gave them over because they refused to repent despite His ramping up the consequences. It is foolish to expect God to lift His escalation of our chastening, especially all the manifestations of virulent homosexualism, which He allowed for a reason, without our actual repentance all the way back to the #1M1W4L standard. When we speak to the worldly only of “natural law”, we have to keep in mind that “natural law”, as people generally understand it, has always included polygamy somewhere in the world. You can’t speak out against today’s polyamory, therefore, without raising God’s full creation ordinance standard. You can’t separate the author from the contents of His book! Expecting to claim “natural law” in order to hold onto a system of consecutive polygamy while denouncing and abolishing the array of sodomous practices and ideology (thereby rescuing our threatened religious liberty) will never be permitted by the God of the bible, Who is sovereign over all of it. Abolishing consecutive polygamy requires unabashed references to God and His moral standard, as well as to the full consequences of not seeking to reinforce His standard of holiness in our law and in our societal mores. Defeating the Sexual Revolutionaries requires His supernatural intervention because of the profound spiritual warfare involved, and we must entreat Him for that intervention as purified vessels, giving Him all the glory and honor when He accomplishes it for us. Being public about these truths costs potential book sales and probably won’t put “standerinfamilycourt” at the top of the list of speakers to invite to the next traditional family conference of any size and financial consequence. In the big picture, that really only matters with regard to fundraising for the 501c4 being contemplated to fill the enormous gap left by the Christian legal defense ministries who won’t touch constitutional and religious freedom appeals of state unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws against the deep pockets of the state AG’s, profiteering bar associations, Lambda Defense, HRC and the ACLU, should one or more of these challenges ever succeed in the lower courts. However, whenever Jesus wanted to get something big done, He provided a fish or two, and on one such occasion, it was even a fish with a gold coin in its mouth. And He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were unable to catch Him in a saying in the presence of the people; and being amazed at His answer, they became silent.
– Luke 20:25-26
www.standerinfamilycourt.com 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!

Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

Protected: I’m Your Federal Appeals Judge: Tell Me Again Why I Shouldn’t Just Do What’s Expedient Here?

April 14, 2019 standerinfamilycourt

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Prayer, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare, Substantive Due Process

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

April 13, 2019 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

The Marriage Moral Space Between The Bible and The Constitution – Conscionable for Christ-followers?

April 13, 2019 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:32-33

Video credit: Jeff Morgan. Matthew Johnston interviewing Dr. Stephen Baskerville, February, 2019

Our blog spends most of its time and words mapping out the moral space between scripture and unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, all the while being well aware that this is “taboo” space which is alleged to be at odds with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Actually, this moral space consists of three moral sub-spaces:

(1) the moral space between scripture and the allowance of fault-based divorce which does not violate the Constitution, but severely violates scripture (Matt.19:6,8 ) – Space “A”

(2) the moral space between fault-based unilateral divorce (Romans 13:4) and mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce – Space “B”,

and, finally

(3) the moral space between mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce and forced, unilateral “no-fault” divorce (Isaiah 5:20) – Space “C”.

(please click to enlarge picture)

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

“standerinfamilycourt” began pondering this due to the repeated persistence, in a small strategy discussion group, of a Catholic man who refuses to budge from Space “A” on both moral and constitutional grounds. He therefore stands opposed to the apparent consensus of the majority in that group: that our divorce law reform objective, particularly insofar as it encompasses the legislatures, should be Space “A” + Space “B”. It’s not at all that this gentleman believes per the bible that death is the only thing which severs and dissolves holy matrimony. On the contrary, as a “good Catholic”, he also believes that an “annulment” decree from the bishop does this, but in that case he would argue that some extrabiblical “defect” somehow made it “not a marriage”.

At the same time, a brilliant young legal scholar in the group also believes in reform encompassing only Space “A” – on technical constitutional grounds related to Articles 3 and 10 of the Constitution, but for pragmatic reasons, can settle for Space “A” + Space “B”, so long as this result doesn’t get overturned in court on those same constitutional grounds. (“Get ‘er done”!) The difference between the two gentlemen is in their motives and reasoning in arriving at the same end point. Our Catholic friend believes there are some instances other than physical death which lead God to assent to “dissolution” if church leadership does, and absent leadership corruption (a huge presumption), this would normally track with fault-based jurisprudence which would be better for the children of the marriage than their parents having an option to decide together to end their marriage. (Church tradition elevated above God’s commandment, by perceived “delegation”). Meanwhile, our millennial believes that God has delegated so much authority to the state that the Establishment Clause must override God’s law in order to prevent a “theocracy”. (State over God, because the alternative in a pluralistic society might be worse.) SIFC cannot agree with either view, because of Who God says He is, and the outright blasphemy involved with corrupting in any measure one of the key symbols of His holiness and His relationship with His people.

That said, SIFC can also “live with” a pragmatic reform result of Space “A” + Space “B”….but upon deep reflection, believes that if Jesus Christ were in this discussion group, He’d say that even Space “A” is too much “daylight” between the instructions He left us with and what we as Christian citizens will settle for in our family laws. Space “A” actually reflects the Pharisaical school of Shammai which He rebuked in Matthew 19, while Spaces “A” + “B” + “C” reflect the Pharisaical school of Hillel which He also rebuked in Matthew 19.

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter heaven. Matthew 5:20

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

Christ’s position would be: only God, and not civil government has authority over holy matrimony, and nothing short of holy matrimony is actually moral:

Space “A” + Space “B” + Space “C” – Space “A” minus Space “B” minus Space “C” = zero human authority to create holy matrimony or grant a divorce from it.

Christ would grant civil government the authority to track marriage and death records to support the union, but would say that all divorce is man-made and of no effect in the kingdom of God, unless the “marriage” it purports to “dissolve” was invalid and kingdom-unlawful to begin with. He would say that all authentic marriage is only God-made, and anything outside of that is adultery, which sends people to hell if they don’t repent of it, and for which He will eventually judge our unrepentant nation, especially if the shepherds of His church remain complicit. By contrast, one recent state is attempting to keep the usurped authority for the state to continue granting unilateral “no-fault” dissolutions, but prospectively only record God-joined unions (and all manner of other man-fabricated cohabitation arrangements) upon affidavit, and doing so in order that the state’s judges may escape perceived persecution and actual liability at the hand of the homosexualist community from conscience-based refusal to officiate sodomous weddings.

“Standerinfamilycourt” is sincerely wrestling with this….
So…just how acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for change in a law that is presently sending people to hell by the millions, in favor of a reformed law that maybe only sends people to hell by the thousands (on the prevention side), and increases the legal avenues for repentance which avoids hell (on the rectification side)?
How much more or less acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for a law that prohibits divorce altogether (that is, strikes the dissolution statute in its entirety — whether or not there exist what men might consider to be “fault-based grounds”), thereby sending few or no one to hell because they divorced their true spouse, but sending some to hell because they can no longer civilly-divorce a faux spouse, and which also closes off all avenues of biblical repentance via man’s law? After all, it can’t be emphasized often enough: the law is a teacher, (especially with regard to the unregenerated who have no way of being counseled from within by the Holy Spirit), for better or for worse.

“standerinfamilycourt” may never have the answer to this dilemma until actually standing before the throne of God, when all of a believer’s life works will be judged to see what survives the fire:

For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
1 Cor. 3:10-17

“standerinfamilycourt” is right to be concerned that all of the very costly and difficult activism, in terms of changing man’s divorce law, is only “wood, hay and stubble”. But if legal reform could also change hearts, reduce the massive number of people dying in a state of adultery, and increase the harvest of godly offspring who ultimately become citizens of heaven, that becomes a precious metal which will withstand the fire.

In Mathew 6, Jesus told us to seek His righteousness (presumably for ourselves, but perhaps also for others) while we’re first seeking the kingdom of God. In Matthew 5:6, He declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Both verses clearly promise a fulfillment from Him if our heart motives are what they should be, and we’re doing our part to obey the seeking, hungering and thirsting part.

Many earnest believers will argue either (1) “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he might please the one having enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4), and therefore eschews all political involvement by Christians, or (2) God’s law of marriage only applies to the redeemed. Although the first idea has some merit, the second is completely contrary to Christ’s instructions, so “standerinfamilycourt” respectfully rejects both notions, in times like these.

It seems, therefore, the moral focus needs to be on the net effect on souls arriving in the kingdom of God, in clean wedding garments. That is all that will survive the fiery test of our life works. Obviously, if the “dissolution” statutes were all repealed from the lawbooks of all 50 states and not replaced, the expected result would be a wave of both righteous and unrighteous marital abandonments, the former resulting in repentance from adultery , and the latter resulting in a massive, if not unprecedented, increase in adultery because of the cultural intolerance of being told by government what to do. As predominantly immoral as our society has grown in the past five decades (encouraged by the enactment of increasingly immoral civil laws), perhaps the effects would initially “wash”, then who knows what would follow after that?

Situational ethics and moral relativism are never healthy things, and are downright nauseating to SIFC. This is the mistake Moses appears to have made, in endeavoring to “manage” sin in a pretty identical situation (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) instead of strongly rebuking it, and Christ showed that He was less than impressed with this. After all, it was not Moses whom Christ commended as the “greatest among all men born of woman”. It was instead His cousin, John, who sacrificed his very head to try and warn two adulterers to repent to escape hell. The kingdom of God suffers violence, not appeasement and accommodation! In accepting moral Space “A” or moral Space “A” + “B” for pragmatic reasons, there is both situational ethics and moral relativism involved, because human compromise is being aimed at seeking to prevent a perceived greater evil anticipated from a stricter law, due to inherently evil human nature.

Talk like this can be very unsettling to those who have never had the constitutionally-false notion of a thick wall of separation between church and state meaningfully, intellectually challenged. Certainly, among millennials, there is a long-fed fear (much of it, historical-revisionism-driven and propaganda-driven) causing this generation to struggle in particular with the Establishment Clause, and almost elevating it over the Free Exercise, clause out of concern, (perhaps) that Christianity will lose its moral authority and representation if Allah, Buddha, Krishna and Marx are not given equal place with the Most High God of the bible in our society. A lot of it has to do with the time period in which boomers vs. millennials and generation X-ers lived and grew up. And that has a lot to do with (believe it or not) the downstream effects of enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce. Those of us whose hair is now graying grew up for at least a couple of decades during a time when Christian values indeed dominated, and families under all religions actually thrived, even if they were prevented from dominating or having equal representation. That’s because we still HAD our families, directly due to Judeo-Christian domination of power structures and government.

In another February interview, Dr. Baskerville told World Magazine ,

“The churches withdrew from private life? And the state moved in. What had been the role of pastors and priests became the role of lawyers, judges, and social workers. The church has never tried to reclaim its turf, and has been a major contributor of secularization, of people feeling the church is not part of their life when it’s not enforcing the marriage contract.

“What can be done now? The church has got to step in. Much of the history of the Christian church has been brave churchmen speaking out when the state overreaches its authority. This whole area of sexual morality is, frankly, our turf and God’s turf. The state has a role but is overstepping.”

Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s. And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.
– Luke 20: 22-26

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse posted another excellent question from that interview on the Ruth Institute facebook page: Q: Were churches sleeping when no-fault divorce emerged?

A: Some churches did raise their voices, but much of their attention was diverted at the time by Vietnam and civil rights. There was very little debate, very little discussion. No-fault divorce, the welfare state, and the cohabitation explosion were all usurpations of the church’s role by the state. Governmental power was inserted into a realm of private life that had been the realm of the churches.”

All of the above is true enough, of course, but does not represent the whole picture, at least with regard to the Protestant churches:

[standerinfamilycourt 3/6/2019 on this Ruth Institute Post ] Martin Luther & co are partly to blame for the church apathy. Forced divorce would be a much bigger issue had he not turned over the authority to the civil state to regulate holy matrimony in order to obtain access to man-made “dissolution” certificates, then established the Reformation church on the outright heresy that original holy matrimony bonds can be severed by anything but death. The real insult to the church is that the civil state is deigning to regulate marriage at all, much less on a “no-fault” basis, but heresy reigns supreme, and revised bibles back it up. For the church to do much to oppose state regulation of marriage, much less any kind of tyrannical divorce law, they would have to acknowledge that all resulting “remarriages” are morally and spiritually invalid adultery in all cases. When they can get away, and indeed grow rich, with not doing so, that’s too big a morsel for most to bite off.

One of Martin Luther’s more outrageous quotes (actually acknowledging that only death dissolves holy matrimony, and providing a very creative solution) goes thusly…

Dr. Morse’s Roman Catholic Church has their own canon law, and has continued to claim its authority over marriage, notwithstanding the state’s competing claim to that authority. Both claims are overstated and distorted from a kingdom of God perspective.

Perhaps it’s best to step back and look at the behavior of our nation’s founders and their choices with regard to allocating authority over marriage, between human government (Caesar) and God’s commandment that marriage was indissoluble except by physical death. It was these men who claimed “certain inalienable rights” directly from God, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is interesting to note that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any of the original state constitutions eventually ratified in the thirteen colonies even attempted to allocate the authority to regulate marriage to civil government at all, even though Federalism and Article 10 left the states this space. Based on this, SIFC believes it is fair to say that our nation’s founders started off on the conservative end of Space “A”, fairly aligned with biblical instruction, and this is one of the reasons God incubated and fostered our nation, making it extraordinary in its greatness. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of moral space between the Bible and the Constitution until case law and legislatures put the moral separation space there later.

A Word About Our Founders, the Framers of the Constitution
Were all of our principal founders followers disciples of Jesus Christ? No. Many were deists and humanist subscribers to natural law, including Thomas Payne, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and Benjamin Franklin. Others, like John Jay, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster were unequivocal about following Christ. Virtually all of them knew and expressed an overt warning that the form of government they had designed and bequeathed to the future citizens of this nation would only continue to function in an environment of national biblical morality.

Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence said: “Without morals a nation cannot subsist for any length of time.”

John Adams said, “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.”

Though widely assumed to be a deist, Benjamin Franklin said, “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid?”

( SIFC: That can be the rise of a nation for a kingdom purpose, or it can be tolerated rise of a malevolent stronghold into an empire to punish an unrepentant nation that once enjoyed His extreme favor, and in yesteryear faithfully carried out that purpose, but now is leading the world into deeper debauchery and idolatry.)

Also, observed by Ben Franklin: “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports”, and, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the bible.”

John Adams declared, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

(Tell us 21st century citizens about that, Mr. 2nd U.S. President!)

Finally, Noah Webster said, “…the moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis for all our civil constitutions and laws…All the miseries and evils that men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from the despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the bible.”

It is frequently argued today that we can’t go back to what we first had as a nation (as if the Lord God were indifferent), because our nation’s residents are no longer homogenous enough for it to work, therefore, we have no practical choice but to govern according to the prevailing cultural morality. (Much of this, it can be quite accurately observed, is said with the motive of coddling and appeasing the homosexualists.) “standerinfamilycourt” hereby prophesies that if we continue on as a nation with this ridiculous fallacy, the Muslim caliphate ultimately will not share that opinion with us, and will not hesitate to impose Shariah law on a morally-unruly citizenry. There is plenty of historical precedent for this in the bible and recorded world history. God owes the United States of America nothing, but He allowed first the Assyrians and then the Persians to overtake the nation of Israel. After seven decades of subjection, He required an intense purge of unlawful “marriages” and restored societal morality before He would restore sovereignty to His favored nation whose religious leadership was complicit in the systemic evil.

The following is only a theory on SIFC’s part, but it has been well-tested by the first nearly 200 years of our nation, when Baptists, Anabaptists and Methodists (who were socially disdained back in England) got along just fine with the Anglicans and Presbyterians. Later on, the Jews and Catholics got along just fine with the Protestant leaders and citizens under the civil marriage laws that prevailed until 1970. God’s moral favor gave cover for civil governments to impose that morality on the Mormons and Muslims, a circumstance that today shows signs of beginning to break down. Civil law does not need to prohibit man’s consensual divorce in order to appease God and wisely govern the people, but it must never force family dissolution and fragmentation on innocent family members while morally and financially rewarding the guilty family members. Society begins to break down at the point when obeying God’s biblical family law (whose very core is Gen. 2:21-24 and Matthew 19:4-6,8) becomes either very difficult or impossible under the corrupted civil laws of men.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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