Tag Archives: citizenship

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, morality

Covering Thy Garment with Violence: WHY LUTHER RENDERED MARRIAGE UNTO CAESAR

May 22, 2015 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent toconstitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life,do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?
– 1 Cor. 6: 1-6

He saith to them: Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. – Matthew 19:8

In November, 2014 quite an interdenominational debate broke out between between church leaders over a document called The Marriage Pledge, as reported in First Things magazine. As of the date of the November article, 464 Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Mennonite, Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal leaders had agreed on paper that if marriage was redefined by the courts to include homosexual unions, these leaders would discontinue their agency role of signing their respective states’ marriage certificates, and henceforth would only issue ecclesiastical marriage certificates for weddings they perform. If government benefits and state recognition of the marriage was additionally desired, the newlyweds would have a second stop to make down at the county courthouse. Clearly this was aimed at protecting their right-of-conscience before God, and to provide a way to bear witness to their communities. What was a bit less clear is the extent this measure, of itself, would shield these clergy folk or their churches from discrimination charges, given the homofascist bent toward coerced affirmation of homosexuality–regardless of any government-bestowed benefits they may claim to be pursuing from “marriage equality”. Also unclear was where this would leave divorce in the absence of a state certificate, a function the church has never administered (with the brief exception of the pre-medieval Roman Church under two sets of Co-Emperors for approximately two generations before that empire fell).

Prominent evangelical dissenters to this no-agency approach immediately protested that this is merely “grandstanding” and “sounding retreat” on the Church’s engagement in the public square, surrendering the moral influence over marriage definition without a fight. Ryan Anderson, of the Heritage Foundation said that this retreat was “premature”. Other Christian leaders, such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Matt Staver, of the Liberty Counsel called for no retreat, but civil disobedience among the men of God, to the point of being jailed if need-be, to defend against the religious freedom violations that could be expected to accompany the judicially-mandated sodomization of civil marriage .

Standerinfamilycourt would like to suggest that a further motive underlies the dissent of the objectors to separating matrimony at the altar from the increasingly meaningless civil certificate available down at the courthouse. One of the online commenters to the mildly dissenting First Things article dated November 22, 2014 put half a finger on it, as follows:

“And how are the bona fides of those seeking Holy Matrimony to be established?
Is there a proposal to establish a system of courts to give clarity on who can marry and how marriages can be annulled? Is it proposed to offer Holy Matrimony to those who have been divorced? Will there be a difference between those who have contracted a marriage in a religious context and those who had only a civil ceremony and what of those who have a religiously validated divorce?
Will there be some national register to help prevent bigamous marriages? Might clergy facilitating (unknowingly) bigamous marriages be seen as having a liability?” – M. R.

It’s clear that if participating churches undertook such an initiative, there would be an administrative burden entailed, including some sort of secure central data base to detect potential bigamy or polygamy, something that would not be insurmountable to accomplish. As a practical matter, though, it seems the dissenters realize that the larger issue is that churches cannot and will not be able to administer divorce and should not administer annulment. Which brings us to the history of how and why the Church’s role marrying people got handed over to the civil authorities in the first place….

One of the impetuses of the Reformation, if honesty prevails, was a desire to find a way to provide for divorce, something the Roman Catholic Church, no longer wielding civil authority following the fall of Constantinople, returned to strictly prohibiting. Annulments were administered by the Church, but were more difficult to obtain than they are today. Martin Luther and the key figures of the Reformation including Calvin kept some corrupt company in the unsavory personage of one Desiderius Erasmus, a humanist who wrote (ever so much like the serpent in the garden):

“I record my pity for people who are loosely held together by an unhappy marriage and yet would have no hope of abstaining from fornication if they were released from it. I want to secure their salvation by some means, nor have I any wish for this to happen without the consent of the church. I am no innovator.

But it is possible that the spirit of Christ may not have revealed the whole truth to the church all at once. And while the church cannot make Christ’s decrees of no effect, she can none the less interpret them as may best tend to the salvation of men, relaxing here and drawing tighter there, as time and circumstance may require.

Christ wished that all his people might be perfect, no question of divorce arising among them, and the church has endeavoured to secure this full rigour from everyone. I am no supporter of divorce. But how can you be sure that the same church, in her zeal to find a way for the salvation even of weaker brethren, may not think that this is the place for some relaxation? The Gospel is not superseded; it is adapted by those to whom its application is entrusted, so as to secure the salvation of all men. My opinion is that we are misusing the interpretation of the gospel principles, with the result that the force of its teaching in our standards of behavior is fading away. To give an example, Christ so wished his people to abstain from murder that he did not permit men to be angry. We interpret this as meaning angry without cause. Likewise Christ so wished his people to abstain from perjury that he forbade an oath of any kind. This we interpret as meaning that we must not swear without just cause. In the same way he so much wished them to abstain from divorce that he forbade it altogether. What interpretation the church can put upon this, I do not decide. I wish she could interpret it so as to promote many men’s salvation. I do not make any final proposals on this point. I leave the right of decision to the church and content myself with drawing attention to the point.” (My Dear Erasmus, pp.110-111)

With that, Bro. E went slithering off into the night without so much as taking responsibility for his own deceitful rationalizations! As a result of this corrupting influence, several heresies have been evident in the Protestant Church from its founding:

that the standard Christ set was too high for men and women to attain (rejects the power of the Holy Spirit and true regeneration).
that happiness is a much higher good than holiness.
that lowering the moral standard will result in “more” salvation (ignores 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Gal. 5:21 consequences of baptism without regeneration; fails to grasp that there’s actually no moral bottom to that strategy.)
that Jesus did not abrogate all attempts to dissolve marriage for any cause in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 16.
that identification with Christ’s death on the cross made salvation “secure” through “grace” regardless of the trajectory of one’s life afterward.

According to John Witte, Jr., Director of the Law and Religion Program, Emory University writing in the Journal of Law and Religion, Martin Luther saw civil jurisdiction over marriage law as the panacea to several evils that had emerged in Europe after Catholic canon law proved inadequate to regulate marriage in society at large, including prostitution, concubinage, clerics patronizing brothels, desertion, bigamy, incest, and the resulting backlash wherein parents were sending their sons and daughters into crowded monasteries and cloisters (“nunneries”) for escape. When we seek a solution without first seeking God’s face, the chances are good that this “solution” will not be consistent with the biblical commandments left by Jesus and Paul, hence the idea that (as Erasmus put it), “it is possible that the spirit of Christ may not have revealed the whole truth to the church all at once…….of weaker brethren, may not think that this is the place for some relaxation?“

The Church of today should have no problem following Christ in owning marriage only, for members only, and leaving marriage of the unregenerated to the state’s regulation. God’s design created only marriage and made no provision whatsoever for its dissolution. As the Manhattan Declaration (somewhat hypocritically) asserts, marriage belongs to God, not Caesar. As Jesus Christ asserted….”from the beginning, it was not so. What God has joined, let no man separate.” There is, therefore, no scriptural reason for the Church to offer any form of marriage dissolution.

Indeed, Luther handed marriage over to the legislation of the German state, and other Reformation figures did likewise in their own countries, because had they not done so, divorce would never have become available to satisfy this emerging Erasmean philosophy. For the reverse reason, today’s dissenting voices to the Marriage Pledge are in no hurry to recover accountable stewardship of holy matrimony from the increasingly unaccountable hands of Caesar. Most realize that to do so would necessitate Church acceptance that original marriage is indissoluble as Jesus Christ said it was, and that (therefore) remarriage where there is a living estranged spouse, is in all cases adultery, as Jesus made unquestionably clear was the case. (The scriptural authority for this is beyond the scope of this blog, but can be read at this link. )

It would be immoral for the Church to get into the divorce business, and impractical to administer willful sinfulness that attempted marriage dissolution represents. The Church would need to start teaching that if there is no civil marriage for the state to “dissolve”, the tax benefits should be less important than the generational and eternal benefits of rendering the secular state powerless to intrude on a marriage at the behest of only one spouse, and teach members to take seriously the threat to final salvation that unrepented remarriage adultery brings.

Further, the Church need not delve into or pass judgment on the circumstances behind any prior divorce in those who want an ecclesiastical wedding, as the commenter suggested above, if she simply submits faithfully to the judgment of Christ, repeated at least twice by Him: whosoever marries a [person] who has been put away commits [ongoing] adultery. Since the latter does not constitute a valid marriage in God’s eyes, taking back from the state her jurisdiction over only the marriage that God recognizes, is greatly simplified for the Church by obeying Him. For the same reason, the only inquiry that need be made of prior civil marriages is whether or not the prior spouse on either side is deceased (easily verifiable through public civil records at the outset, and a central data base thereafter). Weddings recorded under God’s law would simply no longer take place in the Church unless neither proposed spouse was still married in God’s eyes to anyone else. This would immediately clear the Church of all related hypocrisy charges and restore her witness overnight. The Church, after correcting heretical teaching concerning “biblical grounds” for divorce (i.e. neither adultery, nor dissertion, but solely and exclusively repentance from a biblically unlawful marriage according to Luke 16:18), would then leave it to the Holy Spirit to convict individual members whether they should consider dissolving unbiblical remarriages undertaken ignorantly due to decades of widespread false teaching. Churches should further emphasize ongoing celibacy after exiting the biblically-adulterous union or reconciliation with the true spouse for those who dissolve adulterous remarriages.

There are some churches already experimenting with the reform of finding alternatives to civil marriage who were earlier motivated by the abusive unilateral divorce system which is (or should be considered) wholly incompatible with faithful church doctrine. They advise people on matters such as property holding alternatives and other alternative means of leveraging their marital status without a civil marriage license. These marriages are likely to be treated as common law marriages for state purposes including child welfare. As mentioned earlier, it is unclear whether such an approach would provide any cover from LGBT activists who might potentially sue or bring discrimination charges attacking a thoroughly biblical definition of marriage according to Matt. 19:4-6. The reliance in that regard would be on the Lord’s protection, resulting from prayer and obedience.

[disclaimer: In providing the link reference above, SIFC does not endorse Pastor Matt Trewhella’s assertion: “God intended the State to have jurisdiction over a marriage for two reasons – 1). in the case of divorce, and 2). when crimes are committed i.e., adultery, bigamy. etc.” There is actually no biblical support for the secular state to have any jurisdiction over holy matrimony or to dissolve what He forbids to be dissolved – render unto God what is God’s. ]

The solutions suggested above are for reforming and purifying holy matrimony among the spiritually regenerated within the Church. Just as marriage is a covenant, it relies on the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, where He told us that His law would be written in our hearts. One irony of the Reformation is that few of its leaders truly served Christ and were regenerated in that way. Some endorsed polygamy by letter to the royal family when the occasion arose, and Luther was terribly anti-Semitic, later inspiring Hitler. As can be readily seen from the major writings, they thought that dismissing the moral law as seemed necessary for inclusion of sinners into the church (sound familiar?) would save them. Holding them to an “appearance” of morality without the Holy Spirit actually changing their hearts was imagined to be redemptive. The Catholic canon law was ineffective in bringing morality to the unregenerated largely because the Roman Church had a history since the days of the Emperor Constantine of taking almost the same approach, deeming people to earn salvation once included, and be sanctified by Church rites. Yet historical tracking of the results of Luther’s family law “reforms” show they yielded only a further slide in public morality.

The evils Martin Luther was seeking to address are very real and very likely to recur when the civil law is inherently immoral, both in its structure and in its delivery system. One could argue that the majority of those evils prevail under today’s “no-fault” regime (with the possible exception of shipping our youth off to monastic life to escape the resulting prevalence of societal immorality).

Civil law is therefore needed for the larger unregenerated segment of society who are not under grace, who cannot claim inclusion in the New Covenant whereby God’s law is written on the heart. However, civil law that discriminates between the Petitioner and the Respondent in protecting fundamental rights is as corrosive as anarchy. The Bill of Rights should protect the non-offending Respondent to the full extent that the system gives preference to the Petitioner regardless of the latter’s own hostile acts against the marriage. Enormous taxpayer burden results from the current failure of most state divorce laws to hold the at-fault party financially responsible. Liberal interests lately are eager to point to statistics that imply that the divorce rate is slowing or levelling off, and this is likely to be used to rationalize continued non-reform. However, a careful analysis of the data shows that unilateral divorce is growing most among couples married more than 30 years, and this is unexpectedly threating the retirement security of many due to the unconscionable features of the “no-fault” regime. Unilateral divorce also continues to drag down the marriage rates in many countries in favor of unmarried cohabitation, which has been proven to be very dangerous to the safety of any children involved.

The demand for homosexual “marriage” would simply not exist if the law held heterosexual marriage commitments binding merely to the extent that it protects business partnerships or commercial contracts. The fact that none of the political activism by the Christian Right over the past 30 years has been directed toward ending such an immoral and unconstitutional travesty is very telling, as contrasted with the massive efforts exerted to oppose abortion and “Wave Two” of marriage redefinition. If the U.S. Supreme Court does unilaterally impose homosexual marriage on all 50 states, a shift of focus to this neglected accountability could provide the silver lining that might restore God’s full definition of marriage a generation from now. If so, demand for deviant forms of marriage that cannot be easily and cheaply escaped would dry up in due time.

The banana in the jar represents a fallacious claim to a pseudo-biblical “exception clause” that is easily and overwhelmingly disproven by the application of disciplined, widely accepted principles of basic hermeneutics, which for some odd reason, tend to be suspended for this particular topic by evangelical Pharisees so hopelessly infatuated with Matthew 19:9. Will the monkey let go of the banana and break free of the jar when worldly persecution sets in– or shamelessly hold on tighter?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

citizenship, Discipleship, Equal Protection, Prayer, Religious freedom

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

December 4, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 3 Comments

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

Proverbs 31

by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 Chronicles 14:11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

November 16, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

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

– Latta v Otter, October 7, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– DeBoer v Snyder, November 6, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.standerinfamilycourt. com

citizenship, Discipleship, family law, Fundamental Rights, Spiritual Warfare

One “Stander’s” Vote

November 4, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt

“Like a roaring lion and a rushing bear
Is a wicked ruler over a poor people.
A leader who is a great oppressor lacks understanding,
But he who hates unjust gain will prolong his days.” – Prov. 28:15

“But the vine was plucked up in fury,
    cast down to the ground;
the east wind dried up its fruit;
    they were stripped off and withered.
As for its strong stem,
    fire consumed it.” – Ezekiel 9:12

“I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze;
Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the Lord.” – Amos 4:11

“If you will return, O [ United States, the nation I, the Most High established], says the Lord, if you will return to Me, and if you will put away your abominable false gods out of My sight and not stray or waver, And if you swear, As the Lord lives, in truth, in judgment and justice, and in righteousness (uprightness in every area and relation), then the nations will bless themselves in Him and in Him will they glory.” – Jeremiah 4: 1-3

“Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much.” (Jesus) – Luke 16:10

Not that there’s any special recognition due me, but in between election days this stander/citizen, like so many others across the country, I fasted and prayed extensively for godly leadership to be restored to our nation through the 2014 mid-term election. I’ve been personally serious about this since at least 2008, when my only practical choice for President of the United States was between a rabidly pro-abortion (and, as it turned out, pro-faux marriage) ultra-liberal and a conservative serial adulterer who had abandoned two prior wives, including a disabled one, because his god is his appetite. Neither candidate seemed likely to serve our nation unselfishly, nor honor God in doing so.

2008 would not be the last time I had to hold my nose from the moral stench while casting my ballot. It is simply the escalating curse our nation has been under at God’s hand since the 1970’s when the twin abominations of abortion on demand, and unilateral divorce were imposed across our land – the worship of Baal and the worship of Asherah (the absolute right to immoral remarriage), respectively. I believe God was especially provoked to bring progressive discipline on our nation when His bride the Church was not only silent about the latter, but chose to widely embrace it.

It was an amazing week, the week of November 4, 2014 across our nation. I once again complained about the lack of acceptable candidates on the ballot, this time for governor of our state. One of the candidates had signed the marriage redefinition bill in 2013, flouting God’s (Matthew 19:4-6) timeless definition of marriage. The other is yet another serial adulterer who also supports abortion-on-demand. The U.S. Senate race was just as bad: a choice between the liberal incumbent with the near-100% voting record against the sanctity of marriage, life and traditional family versus yet another adulterer who had recently made a public statement that he now favored marriage redefinition despite his 2013 state legislature vote against it. The state family policy counsel published a link to an interesting viewpoint on how to handle that situation while staying true to my godly responsibility to cast my ballot for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. Early on election morning, I was personally messaged by its leader, which the Holy Spirit quickened in me as confirmation that this was how God wanted me to vote in resolution of my moral dilemma. I was grateful not to have had to abstain in those two races, or write-in a throwaway name.

Aside from these legislative and executive candidates, several judgeships were on the ballot. How many times in my roughly 40 years of adult citizenship had I gone into the voting booth with not a clue who these individuals are who hold such sway that with a mere stroke of a pen they can override what GOD has permanently joined as one person (Matt. 19:5-6), and change the course of a family for GENERATIONS to come? I spent a year, approximately 10 court sessions, finding out precisely who these black-robed marriage executioners are! Once again our state family policy council has greatly improved my citizenship by reporting on who is endorsing and financially supporting those candidacies. (It also helps to have an increased acquaintance with seasoned attorneys!)

With our constitutional appeal awaiting trial next spring, I realized I could also be voting on retention of two of the judges who may potentially be on the panel who will hear our case. Of all the previous constitutional challenges to the unilateral divorce laws which I researched in other states, 2 or 3 pivotal decisions that could have spared our nation (particularly the budgets of local governments) some 40 years of evil fallout from this unconstitutional unilateral divorce law turned on the opinion of only 1 judge out of 3, while the dissenting judge’s opinion was actually far more creditable. You can bet I burned up Google the night before, trying to find out all I possibly could!

And the outcome? The nation was abundantly blessed that the Lord established a meaningful check on the despotic power of the current Chief Executive. The cause itself of socially conservative godly government was also blessed when diverse candidates by age, race and gender in an overwhelming number of states replaced liberals who were poised to continue and to step up their attacks on the traditional family. Our own state didn’t fare so well in comparison, but largely because the fruit had already been “cast from the vine” (Ezekiel 9:12) long before the ballots were even compiled. Nevertheless, God seems to be hearing the prayers of the saints for the leadership of our nation as a whole.

I’d urge that before we get too smug about drubbing the liberals, we keep seeking the Lord for our further repentance as a nation. I believe He’s watching to see how we steward the graciousness He’s extended to us. Will we return to Him? Most of the national legal ministries do not consider unilateral divorce – which tramples on the very image of God’s covenant with ALL of us, to be a fundamental rights or religious freedom problem, and they fail to grasp (or admit) the very real connection between marriage redefinition 2014 and marriage redefinition 1969. This is despite the various organizational mission statements on which they raise donor funds:

Organization A – “Restoring the culture by advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the family.”

Organization B – ” …free legal assistance to Bible-believing churches and Christians who are experiencing difficulty in practicing their religious faith.”

Organization C – “the spread of the Gospel by transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family..”

And so forth. One admirable exception of “walking the talk” is the Family Research Council who in 2006 materially supported a serious legislative challenge to Michigan’s unilateral divorce law. Cynically, it seems there are far more numerous powerful individuals whose adultery or commercial interests have benefited from state unilateral divorce laws (some of whom are most likely large donors to these ministries) than there are homosexuals who have benefited from the current wave of state marriage redefinition. (Always best to gore someone else’s ox if you are a 501(c)3.)

Did God directly reward righteous political courage around the (heterosexual) sanctity of marriage issue last Tuesday? I’ll let the reader ask Him and judge. The following states have either enacted covenant marriage laws or mounted recent legislative challenge attempts to their longstanding unilateral divorce laws:

Arkansas, Louisiana, Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Georgia

The following states defeated a liberal incumbent to fill a Senate seat with a conservative, family-values replacement, checking the President’s amoral social agenda by the resulting gained majority of seats:

Iowa, Arkansas, South Carolina, West Virginia, Colorado, and South Dakota. (Louisiana’s Senate race was forced into a run-off election for early December, and Kansas held on to its conservative senator.)

Two days later, it got even more exciting as state traditional marriage referenda and traditional marriage definition legislation were upheld by the 6th Federal Circuit in their ruling on the case DeBoer vs. Snyder for 4 states:

Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan.

Our state, on the other hand, failed to benefit from the strong citizen showing in 2013 in the state capitol which miraculously held off marriage redefinition for several months after it seemed sure to pass quickly, stunning the whole nation and chagrining the media. Meanwhile, the unwillingness of that family policy council to publicly oppose and EXPOSE the truly catastrophic pending “family” law bill that would shorten the unilateral divorce waiting period to 6 months from 2 years, would remove any option for fault-based grounds, as well as remove legal sanctions against deliberate spouse-poachers and firms (such as employers) who knowingly allow spouse-poaching to occur, the near-universal silence ultimately allowed this repugnant legislation to pass 90-17 in one legislative chamber without the public’s knowledge or meaningful media publicity. The real enemy of true marriage is Satan, and you don’t beat him with the resources of mere men, you beat him with the unmerited favor of God in response to obeying Him completely and trusting Him with any consequences of putting His kingdom first. Tough to walk out before a very human ministry board, but no less what it takes.

As a result of policy leadership mis-steps, one of the two states with heretofore the lowest divorce rates may gain the unsavory distinction of being the only state resisting the national trend of rethinking no-consequences unilateral divorce in the face of very well-documented societal damage resulting from it. Citizens should keep in mind from past occurrence that a doubling of the divorce rates has in the past led to a proportional ramp-up in government fiscal woes, something our state could not recover from in its current financial condition. As a Divinely-orchestrated result of all the foregoing, we now have a Republican governor who’s on record as not concerning himself with “social issues” other than the unfettered access to abortuaries, and who is poised to retool his state party accordingly. We have a state senator who failed to unseat an ultra-liberal U.S. senator because the Lord saw no reason to swap one LGBT partisan out for another. And He had already delivered the U.S. Senate to the faithful without any help from our state.

I think He truly does care very deeply about this unilateral divorce issue, and He let us all know it.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Equal Protection, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom, Substantive Due Process

Legal Glossary for Disenfranchised “Respondents” Fighting for their Marriage & Family

November 2, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 1 Comment

Prayer for Rescue from Enemies. A Psalm of David.

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me;
Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of buckler and shield

And rise up for my help.

Psalm 35:1-2 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

by Standerinfamilycourt

Blogger’s Note: the discussion that follows reflects only my own research and independent thought, and does not necessarily reflect the advice of my attorneys. (Wherever a legal term with significant meaning and constitutional implication has been used in general discussion, it is bolded and italicized. On the other hand, wherever gratuitous terms from the statute are used that are vaguely defined, and are accepted as true by assertion and inference only – example: “irretrievable breakdown”, they are left in normal font. )

ABSTRACT:

Two elements render unilateral divorce laws unconstitutional in all or most states:

(1) availability of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for dissolution of marriage in contested cases

(2) the exclusion of marital fault as a factor in determining disputed property and child welfare matters

These elements violate several constitutionally-protected fundamental rights owed to non-offending Respondents in a divorce case, and do so without a compelling government interest.

Innocent spouses who have found themselves on the receiving end of an offending spouse’s unilateral divorce petition are treated civilly by the court only so long as they don’t contest the “irreconcilable differences” allegation, and don’t mind splitting the marital estate 50/50 regardless of serious fault or financial abuse . Sometimes Respondents can work out something more favorable than 50/50 with a fair-minded spouse. Often, however, due to the Petitioner’s spite, which is enabled by the resulting unbalanced legal preference afforded when marital fault is excluded by statute from being considered in property settlement, or by unscrupulous influence from the opposing attorney, or by depleted assets due to the offending spouse’s gross financial abuse, and/or biased early rulings by the judge, a compensatory split is not possible and a trial ensues to preserve constitutional protections. (In this Respondent/”stander’s” case, it was all of the above circumstances.)

If you are a religious or moral objector to divorce, or there has been significant financial abuse that the court wrongfully declined to consider, a constitutional appeal may be appropriate. Forty-plus years of such cases challenging the constitutionality of the state laws have failed in appeals because the aggrieved spouse and their attorneys may not have realized what is required for the courts to actually give a Respondent’s constitutional rights sufficient consideration to outweigh the legislative objectives of the enacted laws. Case law defining these terms in a way that could be beneficial to non-offending divorce Respondents, as a class, has only emerged fairly recently, particularly in cases involving marriage rights. (See Part 1 and Part 2 of our Constitutional Case History.)

What follows below are some legal definitions and case citations that may be useful to a Respondent in seeking constitutional relief against the sort of judicial favoritism overwhelmingly shown to Petitioners under the prevailing system. These definitions may help in persuading a judge to go beyond applying a “rational basis” standard of review to the appeal. If this can be accomplished, the civil authority must then bring evidence that the results of the law match the intent of the law, and that there was not a more effective and less constitutionally-invasive alternative of accomplishing the objectives of the law.

It is very difficult to get consideration as a disfavored class outside of religious or race/gender/nationality protections, but once this is achieved, it becomes pretty difficult for the state to meet the more discerning and demanding tests that result. Someday, sooner or later, this overlooked issue will topple a state’s unconscionable unilateral divorce laws. High courts normally require “narrow tailoring” of a law to meet its stated objective, but various features of existing “no-fault” laws generally paint a very broad brush stroke, with widespread disparate impact, in order to favor a small ideological minority such as homosexuals or battered spouses at the expense of everyone else, including taxpayers and society at large.

Respondent – the term given to a defendant in a civil divorce case as a result of the unilateral divorce laws. Respondents seem to need a special name to denote for the legal community the singling out versus ordinary defendants because they have fewer constitutional protections than any other class of civil or criminal defendant. This is in order to give intentional legal preference to the Petitioner in the event the litigation is contested.

Standard of Review – a defined process courts must follow to determine whether there is sufficient justification to impair the 14th Amendment constitutional protections of an individual adversely impacted by a law that favors one group over another

Strict Scrutiny – the most favorable standard of review to Respondents as a class, or as individuals who have been denied their fundamental rights (religious expression, parental sovereignty, family privacy, defense against a civil charge, defense of property). For a law to pass the test as constitutional under this level of review, the civil authority must prove that the law serves a “compelling” purpose, and that the means chosen to accomplish that purpose is the “least restrictive” alternative available. This more exacting standard of review must be applied where a Respondent demonstrates that a clearly-defined fundamental right has been impaired or denied, or that their free exercise of religion has been substantially burdened. (See also “RFRA” below).

Heightened Scrutiny – standard of review that is analogous to Strict Scrutiny.

Korematsu v United States (1944) U.S. Supreme Court (heinously, the compelling interest test was deemed to be met which allowed the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII)

Burwell v Hobby Lobby (2014) U.S. Supreme Court Korte v Sebelius (2013) U.S. 7th Circuit

“Suspect Class” & “Quasi-Suspect Class”– an aggrieved class of citizens who are deemed by the court to be entitled to the protection of a heightened standard of judicial review due to one or more of several factors:

To prevail here, it needs to be shown that Respondents can be identified as a minority class that shares much of the following experience….

(1) longstanding pattern of animus or systemic discrimination, (2) politically weak and legislatively / societally disfavored, (3) some disfavored immutable characteristic or other characteristic not within their control: race, gender, nationality, deeply-held conviction about the indissoluability of marriage, etc. (4) the characteristic bears no relation to their ability to perform or contribute to society.

Where a quasi-suspect classification is established, intermediate scrutiny applies. Here the burden shifts to the state to prove that the law serves an “important” governmental objective that could not be met without the means chosen, and that there’s a close fit between the outcome of the law and its claimed objective. We all know by now that unilateral divorce laws cannot stand up against that kind of scrutiny due to the range of well-documented perverse outcomes, and due to the varying ways these laws have been enacted in different states, especially in that not all states apply marital fault to child custody and property division yet still enforce no-fault grounds.

Kerrigan v Public Health Commission, CT Supreme Court, (2008), pages 5-40 of embedded link, which in turn cites several Federal cases.

Varnum v Brian, IA Supreme Court (2009)

Intermediate Scrutiny – standard of review that is moderately protective of the constitutional rights of Respondents where the burden of proof is also with the civil authority which must prove the law serves an “important” interest which could not be achieved in the absence of that particular law, and the law actually has a close enough fit with its objective such that it actually achieves that interest or result. Presumably, a Respondent can bring refuting evidence around the last two points, since years of evidence have stacked up in every state that unilateral divorce works against the stated purposes in the statute, and have produced the exact opposite of the objectives espoused in the legislative history, along with disastrous unintended consequences. For this standard of review to apply, however, there has to be evidence that the contesting Respondent is a member of a “Suspect Class” or “Quasi-Suspect Class”.

Craig v Boren (1976) U.S. Supreme Court

(SIFC commentary: if Respondents were to be treated as a quasi-suspect class, or if any of the above levels of review were applied, it would be difficult for the civil authority to obtain a finding that unilaterally-asserted and unsubstantiated “irreconcilable differences” grounds accusations constitutionally withstand 14th Amendment equal protection and substantive due process tests. However, all rulings to-date on constitutional challenges to divorce laws have applied “rational basis“ as the level of review, mostly due to insufficiently developed case law and unjust failure to recognize contesting Respondents as a “Quasi-Suspect Class” or as having protected fundamental rights, as individuals or as a class.)

Rational Basis – the level of review most beneficial to the civil authority seeking to defend a law and enforce it against an injured party who brings a constitutional challenge. To gain priority over a Respondent’s equal protection and due process rights, a civil authority must establish only that the law serves a “legitimate” purpose, and the means is reasonably / rationally connected with furthering that purpose. The burden in this situation is on the Respondent to prove otherwise. Unjustifiably, this has been the review standard applied at the state level to all past constitutional challenges of unilateral divorce laws, occasionally in 2-1 split appeals panel decisions concerning the level of scrutiny that should be applied.

United States v Carolene Products Company (1938) U.S. Supreme Ct

Legitimate Purpose – There have been a bevy of recent homosexual marriage redefinition cases that struck down voter-approved constitutional amendments defining marriage by finding that such laws had no rational relationship to meeting a legitimate state interest. Yet, according to legal scholars, Kathleen M. Sullivan and Gerald Gunther, under this standard of review, the “legitimate interest” does not have to be the government’s actual interest. Rather, if the court can merely hypothesize a “legitimate” interest served by the challenged action, it will withstand the rational basis review. These volatile extremes in potential judicial outcomes show that the concept of “legitimate purpose” appears to have degenerated from its original aim of protecting separation of powers, to an area ripe for judicial anarchy, as ideological politics increasingly infect the bench. However, it is clear from a preponderance of recent rulings that state legitimate purposes still cannot deprive a class of citizens of their fundamental rights. In other words, state legislatures can’t override fundamental rights, and they are not subject to the will of the majority without a compelling state interest at stake, provided the states’ high courts are doing their job without class bias .

Bostic v Schaefer, 4th U.S. Circuit (2014) Kitchen v Herbert, 10th U.S. Circuit (2014)

Important Purpose – this level of review requires that the law or policy being challenged furthers an important government interest in a way that is substantially related to that interest. As contrasted with “legitimate” purpose, the burden shifts to the state, and there must be shown a reasonable fit between the law and its objective. Presumably, this still cannot deprive a politically disfavored group of their fundamental rights. As contrasted with “compelling” interest, there’s no requirement for least restrictive means.

Compelling Interest – historically defined as something necessary or crucial, as opposed to something merely preferred by the prevailing state ideology. Examples include national security, preserving the lives of multiple individuals, and not violating explicit constitutional protections. However, the recent religious free exercise case, Korte v Sebelius (7th US Circuit) added a lot of flavor, which was fortunate because the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to go there in the companion case, Burwell v Hobby Lobby. According to Korte, the 7th Circuit stated, “the compelling interest test generally requires a high degree of necessity. The government must identify an actual problem in need of solving, and the curtailment [of the fundamental right] must be actually necessary to the solution. In the free exercise context, only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance the legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion… some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order. Finally, a law connot be regarded as protecting an interest of the highest order when it leaves appreciable damage to that supposedly vital interest.”

Brown v Entertainment Merchants Assoc. (2011) U.S. Supreme Ct Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v City of Hialeah (1993) U.S. Supreme Ct

What has unilateral divorce done to the actual instances of perjury in family court? What have been the documented child welfare results? What impact has unilateral divorce had on the poverty rates in single parent households? What has it done to the demand for deviant forms of marriage requiring further redefinition? What has it done to the actual demand for heterosexual marriage? What has it actually done to all of those lofty elements in the preambles that incongruously “grace” most all state marriage destruction statutes (i.e. public health and morality, parental cooperation, etc.) ? Could a more powerful case be made after 45 years of documented experience that the compelling government interest actually lies in the opposite direction of unilateral divorce, and that stripping literally millions of citizens of their fundamental rights to carry out this failed social experiment was totally unwarranted?

Fundamental Rights – Those rights enumerated in the US Constitution are recognized as “fundamental” by the US Supreme Court. According to the Supreme Court, enumerated rights that are incorporated are so fundamental that any law restricting such a right must both serve a compelling state purpose and be narrowly-tailored to that compelling purpose. The test usually articulated for determining fundamentality under the Due Process Clause is that the putative right must be “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” or “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”.

For Respondents opposed to unprovoked government intrusion into the sovereignty of their covenant marriage and family, including irreparable harm to subsequent generations, several fundamental rights are ignored by state law in order to guarantee the nonconsensual availability to the Petitioner of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for unilateral marriage dissolution without economic consequence, and because of the statutory exclusion of marital fault in determining child welfare and property division, which include:

The fundamental rights of liberty and freedom of association, of non-offending spouses with their children, as well as the right of association with beloved members of the extended marital family, often after decades of perfectly healthy marriage.

In some cases, restraining orders are obtained against non-offending Respondents where no warranting circumstances exist, for example.

(SIFC was slandered and accused in court by opposing counsel, then excoriated by the trial judge as a “stalker” for attending a post-petition family reunion with her husband’s permission and his accompaniment, as testified to by two other accompanying witnesses!)

The fundamental right to freedom of religious expression and conscience in opposing the divorce action, in particular, declining on biblical authority to agree that a marriage joined by God is ever “irretrievably broken” since such an assertion is contrary to His Word, also in the right to make financial decisions in the face of a prodigal spouse’s misconduct based on a biblical model of family role accountability instead of one imposed by the courts as their case law prerequisite to preserving property rights. Finally, religious exercise in unilateral divorce is abridged in a Respondent parent’s right to make decisions about the direction of their children’s education and other best interests, as opposed to what the court deems so. Expressing biblical truth from the witness stand can result in personal credibility being slandered by the judge without any substantiation , for example, even when massive perjury has permeated the courtroom from the Petitioners side.

Burwell v Hobby Lobby (2014) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld religiously-motivated choices and behaviors, as well as declining to engage in certain behaviors, as constitutionally-protected religious expression and right of conscience under the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment .

The fundamental right to bring an equal and effective defense against a civil charge – the statute of our state still pays a little bit of “lip service” to what four or five elements constitute a finding of “irreconcilable differences”. The statute implies that both parties have an equal right to bring evidence to support or refute those elements. SIFC’s Christian attorney made a valiant and compelling effort to do so, and at the same time appeared markedly reserved in seeking to do so. However, the judge has the sole latitude to determine who may be allowed to do so. Unfortunately, since allowing such evidence is deemed “prejudicial” to granting the divorce, Respondents are increasingly overruled in bringing such evidence, even denied the right to refute perjurous testimony by the Petitioner. A unilateral divorce petition is a lawsuit guaranteed in all 50 states to remove liberty, status, privacy, property and parental rights from the Respondent, with or without just cause. The statutory semantics of terming a civil charge as “grounds” instead of an “allegation” to curtail the right of defense, and denying a jury trial is unique to family court and affords Respondents fewer protections than any other type of criminal or civil defendant.

The right to marriage (and by recent corollary, the right to remain civilly married after moving to another state) have consistently been ruled fundamental rights. Absent proof of serious harm done by the Respondent to the Petitioner or to the marriage, state government violates this fundamental right guaranteed to non-offending Respondents by the 14th Amendment when state courts allow Petitioners to unilaterally dissolve a marriage against the will and moral convictions of their non-offending spouse. Inasmuch as Jesus said, “he who divorces his wife forces her to commit adultery”…and “he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery”, many religious objectors who are stripped of their marital status for no cause by a court are effectively stripped of their fundamental right to remarry except to their covenant spouse.

Loving v Virginia (1967) U.S. Supreme Ct

Obergefell v Kasich (2014) US District Ct, Ohio

Barrier v Vasterling (2014) Jackson County Circuit Court, MO

The fundamental right to marital privacy and protection from unwarranted intrusion by government into the home – state legislation of a generation ago impeding the distribution of contraceptives and information by parties outside the marriage was deemed an intrusion into marital privacy, yet state legislation forcing the unilateral on-demand breakup of the family for no spousal cause and with no economic consequences, beginning just 4 years later, somehow escaped the same scrutiny as reflected in this lofty and very true sentiment which was brushed aside by liberal state courts in the fostering of unilateral divorce, and apparently only got dusted off in 2003-2014 for the benefit of further redefining marriage into its current genderless form:

“We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights – older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is coming together for better or worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.”

Griswold v Connecticut (1965) U.S. Supreme Ct

Is it not true, that the nonconsensual / unilateral availability of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for dissolving a civil marriage creates a violation of the marital privacy right of the non-offending, non-consenting spouse? Is it not true that it does so without a compelling state interest in a way that is not narrowly tailored? After all, neither the 14th nor the 9th Amendments grant fundamental rights to marriages, they grant them to individual citizens. Furthermore, access to unilateral divorce without mutual consent appears to undercut the fundamental right of one spouse to seek appropriate therapeutic care for the other spouse where severe emotional illness may actually be the root cause of the perceived “irreconcilable differences”. The U.S. 7th Circuit found in Drollinger v Milligan that the right to care for family members is also a fundamental right.

The fundamental right of parental authority and determination of children’s education and welfare

Pierce v Society of Sisters (1925) U.S. Supreme Ct

“It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder….It is in recognition of this that these decisions have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.”

Reno v Flores (1993) U.S. Supreme Ct

“In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the “liberty” specifically protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights….to direct the education and upbringing of one’s children.”

Troxel v. Granville (2000) U.S. Supreme Ct

[Justice Thomas, concurring opinion;] “The opinions of the plurality, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter recognize such a fundamental parental right, but curiously none of them articulates the appropriate standard of review. I would apply strict scrutiny to the infringements of fundamental rights.”

Stanley v Illinois (1972) U.S. Supreme Ct

“The private interest here, that of a man in the children he has sired and raised, undeniably warrants deference and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection. It is plain that the interest of a parent in the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children “come[s] to this Court with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements.” Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 95 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and to raise one’s children have been deemed “essential,” Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923), “basic civil rights of man,” Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942), and “[r]ights far more precious . . . than property rights,”

Drollinger v Milligan (1977) US 7th Circuit

“The interest in the custody and care of a child by his family which has been granted paramount importance within our constitutional framework, is rooted in the right of privacy and involves the freedom to make certain kinds of important decisions involving a broad range of marital, sexual and familial relationships.”

The fundamental right to protection of property from government confiscation / redistribution without due compensation

W. Virginia State Board of Educ. v Barnette (1943) U.S. Supreme Ct

In the Supreme Court’s discussion of fundamental rights in Barnette, they state: ” The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be put to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

State divorce legislation that imposes divorce unilaterally at the request of an offending spouse, then excludes all consideration of marital fault in distributing property, violates the fundamental right to retain and defend one’s property, especially retirement assets of the non-offending spouse who is morally opposed to the divorce. Since several states still grant unilateral divorce without finding it necessary to exclude marital fault for this purpose, even the rational basis for doing so appears highly questionable.

Additionally, the practice creates a sharp contradiction in the law. The 1888 Supreme Court case, Maynard v Hill was a particularly bad decision that singled out the marriage contract as beyond the protections of Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution from ex post facto state legislative acts that would impair the contract. Then, some 80 years later, this heinous legislation took the conflicting position that marital fault should not be considered as a factor in dividing marital property because marriage was deemed to be “an economic partnership”. Partnerships are in fact economic contracts, that are normally subject to a host of protections from financial malfeasance if the partners are not spouses that the marriage contract does not enjoy.

RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) – a law sometimes passed in a state following the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision that restricted the application of the 1st Amendment Free Exercise clause on a individual’s rights if a law is one of “general application”. Language (and effectiveness) varies by state, but generally such laws require strict scrutiny once the Respondent has shown that their free exercise of religion has been burdened by application of the law to them, and it usually provides that this constitutional protection applies to laws of general application. There is also a Federal RFRA, but this cannot be applied to divorce cases where the state has not enacted a similar law. Many states have only recently enacted these laws after the original dozen or so states who did so in the 1990’s. Application of RFRA to a case provides only narrow relief that is limited to the specific individual seeking it, not any class.

SIFC commentary: RFRA’s can give important relief to Respondents who are religious objectors to divorce, especially where the trial court judgment was punitive and taken in reprisal for contesting the grounds or pressing a large (albeit lawful) dissipation claim that spans several years of concealed financial abuse, perhaps in pursuit of an affair. [Ideologically, allowing compensatory dissipation claims to be honored weakens the portion of the law that bars any consequences for marital misconduct]. It is not uncommon for some judges to make a political example of otherwise-innocent contesting Respondents through disallowance of or barring due process around dissipation claims. In SIFC’s case this was done by requiring her to agree with the court that the marriage was “irretrievably broken”, which was against her long held biblical convictions.

Animus – State laws which have been shown to target a disfavored class and deprive them of equal protection in order to give legal preference to an opposing class have been subjected to heightened scrutiny under the 14th Amendment. There is no question that unilateral divorce laws were enacted with the express intent of removing the protections historically afforded to defendants in divorce and downplaying both the role of willful acts against the marriage by the offending Petitioner, and the objective interests of their minor or emancipated children. Today, in courtrooms across the country, those who seek to preserve the integrity of their families are labeled “stalkers”, “religious fundamentalists”, “mal-adjusted” and worse! Recent legislative bills in Illinois seeking to remove even more protections from Respondents are replete with similarly-disparaging references for anyone who stands in moral opposition to unfettered sexual autonomy. This could be unrecognized “class legislation” similar to that repudiated by Justice Kennedy in Romer v Evans:

“A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense. “The guaranty of ‘equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws.’

As stated in Bishop v Smith: evidence of animus requires “some structural aberration in the law at issue, like the imposition of wide-ranging and novel deprivations upon the disfavored group or deviation from the historical territory of the sovereign simply to eliminate privileges that the disfavored group might otherwise enjoy.”

Romer v Evans (1996) U.S. Supreme Ct

Bishop v Smith (2014) U.S. 10th Circuit

Procedural Due Process – constitutional principle related to the 14th Amendment that aims to protect individuals from the coercive power of government by ensuring that adjudication processes under valid laws are fair and impartial, that both parties are accorded the right to sufficient notice, an impartial arbiter, the right to give testimony and bring relevant evidence, enforcing equal compliance with discovery process, etc. Family law courts frequently violate procedural due process in a contested unilateral divorce case by giving permissive treatment in many of these areas to the Petitioner while holding the Respondent to an exacting standard.

Substantive Due Process – constitutional principle related to the 14th Amendment that aims to protect individuals against majoritarian policy enactments that exceed the limits of government authority by infringing on fundamental rights without a compelling state interest and narrow tailoring (close fit with state objective and least restrictive means) to achieve that interest. Invoking substantive due process is intended to prevent singling out a disfavored group and removing their rights to life, liberty, property, marriage, marital privacy, parental authority or religious expression in order to shift the power to an opposing group or its economic beneficiaries. In the case of unilateral divorce and family law courts, those economic beneficiaries also tend to be the very gatekeepers of justice in a severe conflict of interest!

It is vitally important to recognize that typical contested unilateral divorce proceedings will often violate both types of constitutionally-protected due process in the same case, but the tendency in the legal community is to focus on procedural due process and say the judge erred, rather than that his acts were intentional, pre-emptive or punitive.

Disparate impact – unintentional impact on a protected, disadvantaged group from enforcement of state laws. Studies available by 2010 of the economic impact of unilateral divorce on low-income minority families, especially those headed by single mothers, caused the New York State Chapter of the National Organization for Women to actively oppose enactment of that state’s unilateral divorce laws, though broadly supported by other feminist groups in the state. Additionally, inner city pastors are among the few clergy who will officially and publicly speak out against unilateral divorce for this same reason. Though not a protected class, the next group to be hit by disparate impact is Respondents over age 50 in “gray divorce”, nearing retirement after 30-40 years of marriage who are suddenly stripped of that retirement when the court awards QDRO’s diverting retirement assets to the offending spouse whose financial planning was not as responsible as their own, and whose offending spouses brought the unilateral petition. Some of these cases harbor untreated emotional illnesses which family courts will not give the responsible spouse any latitude to testify about or seek help for their beloved life partner in violation of the fundamental right recognized in previous high court cases to care for one’s family members. In cases of severe concealed financial abuse, no-fault confiscation of retirement assets can happen even when the income of the offending Petitioner far exceeds that the of the non-offending Respondent.

SUMMARY

Despite the strong parallels between Respondents and recent high court precedents protecting other politically-disfavored classes in marriage rights, and despite the presumptive validity of the fundamental rights of individual Respondents, SIFC is struggling to convince her constitutional attorneys to pursue a serious and sufficiently-vigorous 14th Amendment challenge, while there is individual relief available to her under religious freedom protections. There could be fear that the state appeals courts will deem maintaining parity with other states’ unilateral divorce laws a important state interest, fearing that citizens may then be forced to defend actions undertaken by a malicious spouse in a more permissive state.

There could be fear of an unknown retroactive liability impact for the state if either nonconsensual “irreconcilable differences” as unilateral grounds for dissolution were ruled to be an equal protection violation, or if exclusion of marital fault in property and custody determination were ruled a substantive due process violation. Would tens of thousands of forcibly-divorced former Respondents who contested the state-imposed unilateral dissolution of their marriages and were badly treated by the courts then be able to sue the state for restoration of property and parental rights, plus damages?

Though such an outcome would balance and restore fundamental rights that failed to be protected for “Respondents” under Rational Basis Review a generation ago, which were wrongfully stripped away from a politically weak and disfavored class , there are some liberals and conservatives who politically would still see this outcome as “judicial activism”. However, this is quite different from the sort of judicial activism that creates new special rights for a politically powerful and well-funded minority group.

In SIFC’s estimation, two elements make unilateral divorce laws unconstitutional in all or most states:

(1) availability of “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for dissolution of marriage in contested cases

(2) the exclusion of marital fault as a factor in determining disputed property and child welfare matters

Standerinfamilycourt.com believes these laws give rise to the unconstitutional failure to balance between the fundamental rights of the Petitioner and the fundamental rights of the Respondent (along with the fundamental rights of other adversely-impacted family members). All state encroachment on the integrity and sovereignty of the family without a compelling state interest actually transfers societal control from private citizens and families to the government in an unwarranted way, even if it comes at the request of one of the spouses. Public interest groups devoted to constitutional protections and to the defense of the traditional family should begin taking this issue very seriously, even if belatedly and for the first time.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

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

October 26, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 4 Comments

by Standerinfamilycourt

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

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

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

Matthew 22:17-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Per the 2-judge majority:

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

The Dissent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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

BUCKING “NO-FAULT” DIVORCE: CONSTITUTIONAL CASE HISTORY IN THE U.S. 1970-Present – Part 1

October 26, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

By Standerinfamilycourt.com

PART 1 – 1970 to 1999

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

My divorce attorney and I caught the commuter train together to travel downtown and present our appeals case to constitutional attorneys whose specialty is religious freedom cases. I had been googling and downloading various divorce appeals cases for weeks where challenge had been brought to the constitutionality of the unilateral divorce regime in other states, while looking for the history of such cases in Illinois, religious (1^st Amendment), and secular (14^th Amendment). I wanted to know what I was getting into with a constitutional appeal, and whether I could hope to find the resources to sustain one. I wanted to know how such a blatantly harsh law could survive challenge, when it stripped constitutional protections from the spouse who wanted to heal their marriage, and handed everything on a platter to the spouse who had already behaved destructively toward the marriage, had then brought the petition, and stood to gain financially from it at the other spouse’s expense and that of the rest of the family. What sort of rationale was the constitutional portion of my appeal going to face?

I knew from the way I was being bullied by the trial court that, at a very minimum, my First Amendment rights to freedom of conscience and biblical conduct had been seriously violated. I had been chided by the judge and by opposing counsel for attempting to disprove the statutory grounds with legitimate evidence. I had quoted Luke 16:18 from the witness stand concerning the utter illegitimacy of the concept of “irreconcilable differences” and “irretrievable breakdown” between a brother and sister in Christ. When I was reminded by the judge that the absolute right to dissolve one’s marriage for no cause was the law of the land, I sealed my economic fate in that courtroom by affirming the power and authority of God’s law, stating “God’s law is higher than man’s law” and stating that God’s law forbids irreconcilable differences. I also knew that although I was the non-offending spouse who believed biblically that I was married for life in God’s eyes and I never asked to live separately or any other way except with the husband I still dearly loved, the court was seeking to award my husband a sizeable portion of my retirement savings just because my balance was larger than his – and marital misconduct (his expensive years of adultery) could not be taken into consideration by the court, according to the Illinois statute which appeared to be blatantly violating the Fourteenth Amendment, …yet,

The Illinois constitution reads as follows, in the Bill of Rights:

SECTION 1: INHERENT AND INALIENABLE RIGHTS… to secure these rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and the protection of property, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

SECTION 2: DUE PROCESS AND EQUAL PROTECTION – No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor be denied the equal protection of the laws.

This is verbatim the U.S. Constitution, and each state constitution for the cases I read had analogous provisions. If this was so, why hadn’t a case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the state courts were not upholding their own constitutions in these unilateral divorce appeals?

The principle of Federalism weighs pretty heavily here. Since the U.S. Constitution left all marriage law to the states and took no authority for the Federal government, it is a blessing that state constitutions emulate the U.S. Constitution in these key provisions. Nobody can attempt to bring an appeal on a marriage case before any Federal court until it has (very expensively) worked its way through the state appeals courts. Shockingly, in case after case, state after state, those state supreme courts ruled that they were required to construe duly-passed legislation in a way that presumed constitutionality, and the burden was on the individual bringing the appeal to prove the state’s aims weren’t legitimate on any level(while at the same time allowing no evidence of the unwise or corrosive impact of the law as a whole).

Dissenting minority opinions to those state supreme court decisions asserted arguments including

(1) objection that Petitioners are given control of the proceedings while sometimes lacking “clean hands” (implying an equal protection problem with regards to the legitimacy of the grounds for divorce) – FLORIDA (1973)

(2) objection that some statutory wording of the grounds for divorce impacting three states, excluding Illinois, violates the Establishment clause by entangling the state in impermissible religious inquiry – TEXAS (2001)

(3) objection that Respondents’ right of conscience must not be violated in the granting of “no-fault” divorce unless the statute can stand when tested under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – TEXAS (2001)

What I have just described is the concept of “Rational Basis” being applied by the majority in a typical three-judge panel in all the constitutional appeals cases to-date. Absent some basis on which to prove intentional legislative discrimination or disparate impact against a politically disenfranchised “suspect class” which deprives them of their fundamental rights, state appellate and supreme courts are going to impute “due process” to any regime that can be shown to be reasonably connected to some “legitimate” government aim, even if innocent parties are substantially harmed by offending parties, and even if society is harmed rather than benefited, as many cases have gone into court with empirical evidence that has been consistently dismissed. I could find no relevant state case that has ever been accepted for hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court in all the years since 1970 up to the present, that is, until all of the homosexual cases came along, armed with equal protection victories in the lower courts and with government entities appealing.

In 1986, a religious freedom case brought by non-attorney citizen Judith Brumbaugh of Florida, was docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court, but was declined without hearing “for want of a Federal question”. There normally has to be a disagreement about constitutionality among several states and their corresponding regional Federal circuits before the U.S. Supreme Court will take on a marriage case. In 2013-2014, however, judicial activists planted in the court system, principally by President Obama but also by earlier administrations, have greased the skids and changed the precedents for marriage cases because of the lawsuits against governments brought by homosexual activists seeking marriage rights and recognition. This development could present a potential turning point in the eventual defeat of unilateral divorce for several reasons.

What follows is a synopsis of some key state cases ruled on appeal since shortly after first unilateral divorce laws were enacted 45 years ago. A handful of these cases are religious freedom / discrimination cases, but most are based on either Article 1 Section 10, asserting impairment of the marriage contract, or the 14^th Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection clauses or both. I believe they are interesting to study, and they show that there has been persistent spirited resistance over the years to the unconstitutional nature of unilateral divorce both by citizens, and even by a handful of dissenting judges.

Walton v Walton, California (1970-1972) 28 Cal. App.3d 108

In the first state to enact unilateral divorce, and in the first year following enactment, the husband brought a unilateral petition where strict allegation of “irreconcilable differences”, not further defined in the statute, was accepted as irrefutable evidence of breakdown in a marriage of more than 20 years duration. In circumstances most likely beyond the Respondent wife’s control or consent, the couple had been said to have lived apart without a legal separation for over two years.

(SIFC commentary: According to a plurality of behavioral science studies, two years is the average life for infatuation typically associated with an uninterrupted and unimpeded adulterous relationship, a time period over which an innocent conscientious moral objector to divorce has no control and little influence.)

In a situation much like mine, the embattled wife felt compelled to assent to the existence of “irreconcilable differences” in court documents, in an attempt to protect her property rights under the law. Unlike me, however, she lacked the biblical imperative of answering first to God to resist doing so, and the appeals court held that fact against her in its determination. Additionally, she was at the time of her appeal seeking separate maintenance under the same statute as an alternative to dissolution of the marriage, most likely for financial dependency reasons. This fact unconscionably worked against the deemed validity of some of her appeal points. Lastly, and keeping in mind that this was a groundbreaking new law at the time, the appeals court stated that she (or her attorneys) failed to invoke some “discretionary” powers of the trial court to hear evidence of the marital misconduct that was nevertheless barred by the statute, and therefore, according to the court, she waived consideration of the due process aspect of the marital misconduct clause.

The appellate court rejected all of the wife’s secular constitutional assertions: (1) impairment of the marriage contract by ex post facto change in grounds definition, (2) statutory vagueness of “irreconcilable differences” as a grounds for divorce, (3) exclusion of marital misconduct constitutes a violation of due process over property rights, (4) the double-standard that connects the Respondent’s compelled assent to the existence of “irreconcilable differences” to the procedural protection of her property rights constitutes a violation of constitutional equal protection guarantees, (5) “irreconcilable differences” grounds deprives spouses of their vested interest in their marital status without due process.

As in all subsequent cases, the Article 1, Sec. 10 argument that the marriage contract should be protected in the same way as a commercial partnership contract from impairment by legislative changes was defeated by the U.S. Supreme Court case Maynard v. Hill, which was almost 200 years old at the time of this appeal. However, if that is a fixed and unchangeable precedent, then one of the chief rationales for the exclusion of marital misconduct as a factor in determining property division, on the theory that the marriage is an equal “economic partnership”, should also be constitutionally invalid on the same consistent basis.

I highlight an egregious statement made by the court because there was no heightened scrutiny protection afforded to this wife as one of the first members of a politically disfavored class from whom fundamental rights were being stripped, while the appeals court majority claimed she did not suffer this fundamental rights deprivation without due process of law:

“The state’s inherent sovereign power includes the so called “police power” right to interfere with vested property rights whenever reasonably necessary to the protection of the health, safety, morals, and general well being of the people. The constitutional question, on principle, therefore, would seem to be, not whether a vested right is impaired by a marital law change, but whether such a change reasonably could be believed to be sufficiently necessary to the public welfare as to justify the impairment.”

Standerinfamilycourt believes that use of the term “interfere” in this opinion severely trivialized the impact to this wife and to their shared family, and deflected attention from the fact that a fundamental right was being violated in a way that merited heightened scrutiny. The court should have required the state to prove the necessity of the law as the least impairing and restrictive means of protecting the health, safety, “morals” (a heinously subjective term) and wellbeing of the people. However, the court did not have the empirical evidence we have today that the law has accomplished exactly the opposite of what this court described as a “compelling” state interest ( a legal term, the use of which would have in later years required the state to carry the burden of proving, nevertheless). Case law that would set a precedent for applying the correct level of judicial review to properly address the stripping of fundamental rights from a disenfranchised class on a basis other than race, gender, nationality, etc. would not start developing for another 5 years after this ruling.

There was no dissenting opinion in this proceeding.

2. Ryan v Ryan, Florida (1973) 277 So.2d 269 State Supreme Ct

Another very early case in a state that replaced all previous grounds definition with “irreconcilable differences” which was left to the discretionary judgment of the court and not further defined in the statute. The effect was that the petitioning spouse needed only to make the allegation and prove residency, and their non-offending spouse was effectively precluded from defending against it. There was chatter in the opinion to the effect that the finding of “irreconcilable differences” did require some evidence of “irretrievable breakdown”, but at the same time admitted that the evidence could be uncorroborated, and that the decision relied entirely on the court’s discretion.

Unlike the previously mentioned Florida Brumbaugh case from the 1980’s that follows, this case was entirely secular, raising all of the same issues as the Walton case did in California the prior year, and substantially the same points made in the appellate ruling.

The copy I pulled down without a legal subscription lists only the arguments and the findings without citing any facts from the case. One point is raised, however, that probably also impacted the Walton case but was only alluded to and not explicitly addressed in that case. I find the point interesting because it provides quite a contrast with our case, given how society its economic structure has changed in the intervening 40 years. In both the Walton and Ryan cases, the wife was economically dependent on the husband who was unilaterally divorcing her. They had both been homemakers in a day when women had far fewer opportunities to carry on a self-sustaining economic life. While there were provisions in the “no-fault” law for dividing retirement assets to a financially dependent spouse, and providing for economic maintenance, both wives were appealing constitutionally because they were being deprived of vested property rights in their husbands’ future accumulation when they had committed no offense against the marriage, hence being deprived of constitutional due process. (I can’t say that I disagree with Mrs. Ryan in her situation as a non-offending spouse, because I believe it is inherently unconstitutional to grant a contested divorce without proof of harm to the marriage, but the appeals courts disagreed). The ruling cited the following assertion previously made by the same court:

“During the life of the husband, the right [to inherited property or appreciation in the full marital estate] is a mere expectancy or possibility. In that condition of things, the lawmaking power may deal with it as may be deemed proper. It is not a natural right. It is wholly given by law, and the power that gave it may increase, diminish or otherwise alter it or otherwise take it away.” They went on to say the same principle applies to every other type of named or potential heir to a person’s estate.

(SIFC commentary: Contrast that bygone era with the more contemporary situation where a self-supporting, financially independent offending spouse can use a divorce petition and an unconscionable law to leverage a sizable portion of the non-offending spouse’s assets because a U.S. Supreme Court decision that preceded enactment of the unilateral divorce law by 200 years declined to uphold the marriage contract in the same fashion as other contracts, yet the law itself equates the two for property divisions purposes only.)

The court further stated that “due process” was met upon a provision of notice and an opportunity to be heard. This limited the discussion to procedural due process, ignoring substantive due process rights, and did not take into account the judicial stifling of the “opportunity to be heard” imposed by typical court operating rules that give the favored Petitioner far more latitude to present evidence than the disfavored Respondent.

Highlights of Dissenting Opinion (SIFC could not do this justice by paraphrasing, so here’s the conclusion, verbatim):

R ROBERTS, Justice (dissenting).

A large body of case law extending over a long period of years, written by many eminent and distinguished jurists has repeatedly reiterated that the “clean hands” doctrine does most assuredly apply to divorce suits.

To hold otherwise would impute to the lawmakers a total lack of interest in the faithful spouse who over a long period of years has suffered abuses and indignities, but who is forced to accept a divorce not because of his or her own wrongdoing, but because the offending spouse has mutilated the marriage. The innocent party’s objection to the divorce may well be for good reason, and it seems to me after having been a member of the Bar for 44 years, and a member of this Court for 23 years, to be an odd legal pronouncement to say that an offending spouse could profit by his own misconduct and obtain the sought for divorce because of his or her own wrongdoing and abuses.

Under the majority view a wrongdoing husband can come home every Saturday night for five years, drunk and penniless because of skirt-chasing, gambling, or some other misdeeds; then, he may beat, bruise and abuse his wife because he is unhappy with himself, and then he will be permitted to go down and get a divorce on printed forms purchased at a department store and tell the trial judge that the marriage is “irretrievably broken”. Or, the offending wife, after jumping from bed to bed with her new found paramours, chronically drunk, and when at home nagging, brawling and quarreling, all against the wishes of a faithful husband who remains at home nurturing the children, is permitted to divorce her husband who does not desire a divorce, but rather, has one forced upon him, not because of anything he has done, but because the offending wife tells the trial court that her marriage is “irretrievably broken”.

In my opinion, the offending spouse should not have standing to obtain a divorce if the innocent one invokes the doctrine that,

“He who comes into equity must come with clean hands.”

It is the duty of this Court to seek a construction of a statute which would support its constitutionality. By merely retaining the “clean hands” doctrine, I could agree that the “no-fault” divorce statute is constitutional, but absent this,

I must respectfully dissent.

(SIFC commentary: Justice Roberts was here precisely echoing the words transcribed 4 years earlier of Fred T. Hanson, the head of the NCCUSL Commission that authored UMDA, in his dissent with the majority on that uniform state law advisory commission. He is essentially saying that granting a unilateral petition to an offending spouse against the consent of a non-offending spouse denies equal protection under the law. Had these gentlemen been heeded, our nation would be in a very different place today.)

3. MVR v TMR, New York (1982) 115 Misc 2d 674

This was a fault-based case alleging mental cruelty and abandonment brought by the wife of a homosexual. New York would not adopt unilateral divorce until 2010, and at the time of the case, had not adopted the exclusion of marital misconduct as a factor in property division. The judge still interpreted the existing statute as prohibiting the consideration of marital misconduct after comparing with the practices of the other states that had adopted variations of UMDA. He stated that did so for the purpose of giving special protection to the homosexual Respondent.

There was no discussion of financial misconduct in the case, and it’s unclear why the wife Petitioner wanted marital misconduct considered in the settlement. Presumably the reason why the abandoning / offending Respondent, who did not appear to be committed to the marriage, was not the Petitioner was that there was no “irreconcilable differences” ground available to him at the time.

The ruling pontificated upon the difficulty of apportioning mutual marital fault (as if family law is the only setting where this unbearable burden is foisted on the beleaguered judiciary), and asserted the following discussion of the “economic partnership” marriage constitutes:

“As in commercial partnership law, from which this model is drawn, fault is irrelevant in the distribution of partnership assets upon dissolution of the partnership. “ The discussion goes on to claim that the “partners” are merely getting back what they contributed.

(SIFC commentary: fair enough in this limited instance where the divorce itself is not without due secular cause and not unilaterally imposed. However, this Certified Public Accountant would be remiss not to point out that nothing precludes additional civil action for financial malfeasance by commercial partners that would not be available to spouses. Therein the popular UMDA-inspired false analogy breaks down. Further, as our case demonstrates, unenforced and defeated dissipation curbs allow some “partners” to “get back” far more than they contributed to the marriage estate. )

4. Brumbaugh v Brumbaugh, Florida (1983-1987) FL5^th District C.A. & U.S. Supreme Court

I was not able to download a free copy of this case, so I base my description on author Judith Brumbaugh’s compelling book, Judge, Please Don’t Strike That Gavel On My Marriage! From the beginning, Florida had one of the harshest laws in the nation because like California, it adopted the advisory Uniform Marriage and Dissolution Act (UMDA) without significant modification. Ten years after enactment, marriages were being flushed away with vending machine-like “efficiency”, and courts were thuggishly punishing anyone who dared stand in front of the steamroller. Then along came one of those annoying religious objectors, hauling her bible into court and thumping it as if it were a higher law than the Florida Statute.

Mr. Brumbaugh had brought his unilateral petition as a result of his own adultery, having once professed to being an evangelical Christian for the entire period of their 20 year marriage. Like Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Ryan, Mrs. Brumbaugh had been a homemaker for the duration of her marriage, including home-schooling her children, and was financially dependent on her husband. Her resistance to assenting to the “irreconcilable differences” grounds caused the judge not only to punish her financially, but also to ensure that she could not pay legal fees, and even to tamper with her court transcript, as she discovered during her appeals process. For the majority of her legal journey she was forced to educate and represent herself. Though she was the non-offending spouse, she was stripped of all property rights and custody of her children. Many parents’ rights advocates say this is what commonly happens as a result of contesting a divorce on moral grounds, so parents feel compelled to violate their moral convictions in order not to lose parental rights. Since SIFC is not conversant in Parents Rights issues, we refer the reader to advocate Stephen Baskerville.

Mrs. Brumbaugh asserted that she was being punished by the court for exercising her First Amendment right to free exercise of religious conscience in contesting her case, since she believed, as I do, that the bible strictly prohibits and God does not recognize divorce between covenant spouses, and that subsequent remarriage while a covenant spouse is still living constitutes adultery, as Jesus clearly stated. There was not a dissipation of assets claim involved, but parental rights and religious rights to the continuation of the children’s upbringing were very much at issue.

Had she succeeded in being heard on appeal, she may potentially have prevailed on a First Amendment free exercise-based challenge because the landmark 1990 decision, Oregon v Smith had not yet set the precedent that diluted religious protections against broadly applicable state laws like the marriage dissolution law which violated her deeply held convictions. Since that time, effective religious conscience protections have come to depend heavily on state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts which were developed at the Federal level and in several states in response to the attempted curtailment of original constitutional protections. Like standerinfamilycourt, Mrs. Brumbaugh was financially punished by a hostile judge for contesting her husband’s petition on moral and biblical grounds based on the dictates of her conscience, and according to her biblical responsibility before God for her family’s spiritual wellbeing.

This lady’s strong persistence through several years of wrangling with state courts, her desire to become educated out of a motivation to help others, and her string of losses in the state courts eventually led to her case being docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court, but ultimately it was dismissed without hearing. At the end of her 4 year legal journey, Mrs. Brumbaugh was still self-represented due to lack of funds for legal counsel.

(SIFC commentary: At that time, the various legal ministries devoted to defending religious liberties were just getting started, and though they all have mission statements that promote the defense of the traditional family, most still do not construe that mission to include defending against forced divorce cases that violate religious conscience, and several told us they do not readily accept that religious discrimination is a core issue in such cases. The reasons seem to have mostly to do with fundraising and not wanting to politically offend certain constituencies. However, as these same ministries have in 2014 been representing various states’ efforts to preserve the one man, one woman legal definition of marriage, they have been met with judicial chastisement over the apparent hypocrisy of this stance in failing to recognize the most dangerous form of marriage redefinition that actually enabled unilateral divorce. SIFC prays that these ministries will penitently hear this as the voice of the Holy Spirit, even though the words are coming from the lips and pens of liberal judges determined to deconstruct traditional marriage. SIFC believes that any victory against demonic spiritual enemies requires absolute integrity and total obedience to all of God’s word, fearing God above all men, and this could very well be a “core issue” in the lack of God’s blessing on their cases in the constitutional arena of homosexual and plural marriage redefinition.) 1M1W4L !

5. Semmler v Semmler, Illinois (1985) 107 Ill.2d 130

In another case following shortly after enactment of a provision of the unilateral divorce law, specifically, the two year separation provision which in Illinois triggers unilateral dissolution if proven. The wife asserted unconstitutionality due to retroactive application (essentially the ex post facto, Article 1 Sec. 10 argument). The trial court agreed with her and denied the divorce.

The husband appealed and the trial court decision was overturned based on earlier precedents the trial court failed to apply, including Maynard v Hill from the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is unfortunate that an issue around the constitutionality of marital misconduct being excluded as a consideration in the division of property or determining child custody wasn’t raised in this case. The appellate court did not have an opportunity to observe the double-standard in singling out the marriage contract as not being subject to constitutional protection while the Illinois statute nevertheless demands to treat the marital estate as a contractual “economic partnership”. An opportunity was missed to reverse the perverse economic incentive created by the statute (to walk out on one’s family with no economic consequences) that no doubt tugged at the conscience of that Kane County trial judge who was overruled in this appeal.

(SIFC commentary: This appears to be the only substantive challenge brought to the constitutionality of Illinois’ unilateral divorce law. Another 1978 case Kujawinski v. Kujawinski 376 N.E.2d 1382 was brought on several counts of technical issues where the trial court ruled the law unconstitutional, and was also fully overturned.)

6. Johari v Johari, Minnesota (1997) Court of Appeals, CO-97-69

The husband brought a pro-se appeal of his wife’s no-fault judgment on equal protection grounds, and asserted that where there are minor children of the marriage, “irretrievable breakdown” as a standard for dissolution of the marriage does not meet the purpose of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, an issue not taken up in the trial court, thus dismissed. In his role as Appellant, Mr. Johari failed to give required notice to the State Attorney General of his constitutional challenge which substantially damaged his case. Mr. Johari did not raise a religious objection to the statute.

The appeals court ruled that Mr. Johari failed to make a legal argument on appeal, and cited no legal authority in support of his argument. The court further ruled that newspaper and magazine articles he brought in support of his position were not adequate to establish error by the trial court. Finally, the court ruled that the relief Mr. Johari sought in ordering the Minnesota Legislature to reverse the unilateral divorce statute to require a findng of cause, and set aside the divorce judgment pending this action was outside the court’s authority. The trial court decision was affirmed.

(SIFC commentary: It is unfortunate that Mr. Johari was not able to be represented by trained counsel. He certainly had the right idea.

Part 2 will cover cases brought since 2000, including some very interesting religious freedom cases.

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Fundamental Rights, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Enemies of Religious Freedom=> God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty

October 21, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

Standerinfamilycourt.com Blog Commentary: This post is to remind that there are influential people out there who fervently wish the latter portion of the 1st Amendment didn’t exist at all. People who think that the founding fathers’ purpose in the Establishment clause was to protect government from religion (amazing how even some law professors didn’t pay attention in history class), while most of us are perfectly clear from the context of WHY this nation was founded that it was the other way around. These forces rejoiced when a Supreme Court decision about peyote mushrooms 25 years ago significantly watered down the Free Exercise clause. Were these forces infuriated when Congress tried to restore it with 1993 legislation which was intended to appropriately balance the interests, and to apply the law to all 50 states? Did they rejoice when the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down the portion of that law that applied to the states? Did they settle into a glowering resentment as a few states subsequently adopted verbatim Federal language in state legislation? Hard to say. By some accounts even the ACLU was onboard with RFRA in the early days (must have been the peyote mushrooms at issue) , and the Congressional record reflects broad bipartisan support of that legislation, but most states didn’t rush to adopt RFRA’s in that era.

Then came the very wise 2014 Burwell v Hobby Lobby decision – which dealt with forced provision of contraception to employees. Despite the loud howling that society was going to unravel if employers weren’t uniformly compelled to be the source of all birth control, this crowd knew that considerably more was at stake for the homosexual agenda, the abortion agenda, and as they may soon find out….the unilateral divorce agenda. Religious freedom protection, when done in a way that merely restores and reaffirms the balanced constitutional intent in the original language of the 1st Amendment, is absolutely lethal to virtually every aspect of the liberal social agenda. What we’ve witnessed since 1990 is a football game between activist judges and the people of the United States marked by a series of back and forth interceptions.

This week some sickening news broke in the wake of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down Idaho’s constitutional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. An ordained ministry couple who run a wedding chapel in Coeur D’Alene is under threat of being jailed because they refuse to officiate a homosexual wedding that mocks God. A few years ago, a Christian father in Massachusetts was jailed when he exercised his parental rights and held his 5-year old out of mandatory public school pornographic homosexual indocrination classes (to which he was not even entitled to advance parental notice). In New Mexico, a Christian photographer was fined for referring a homosexual couple on because she could not ethically shoot another faux wedding that was morally repugnant to her. She was told by her state high court that violating her deeply held convictions was the price for the privilege of doing business in the state. The original Free Exercise clause should have been adequate protection for each of these innocent citizens against those who would criminalize biblical ethics, but since it was not, these states were permitted to enforce criminal sanctions against them because those states either lacked a RFRA, or the version enacted varied from the Federal version in a way that made it ineffective.

In reading the piece below, the critical thinker won’t be fooled by the extreme negative examples offered up by Prof. Hamilton. Why? Because wherever there is an attempt to apply RFRA inappropriately, to wit:

[ “…the forced marriage of adolescents into polygamous marriages, the violence of white supremacist or radical jihadist prison gangs…The perpetrators of 9/11 were religious zealots. So were the parents who let their children die. Roman Catholic bishops covered up for child abusers and endangered one child after another to protect the religious institution from scandal.” ] such facts will reliably trigger a situation where the governing authority will have no problem meeting their burden of demonstrating a compelling interest. In such situations, “Gavel” wins (as does God), but Prof. Hamilton didn’t finish those stories for her audience, and it’s unclear that religious freedom defenses were actually asserted in any of these situations. The liberal camp is desperately trying to get the religious freedom ball back by means of a “fake”. Prof. Hamilton and her cohort would have us believe the balance of interests reflected in state and Federal RFRA laws is “extreme”.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23

All this said, standerinfamilycourt.com heartily salutes Prof. Hamilton for her excellent job of cataloging the up to the minute status of the various states’ RFRA legislation, an invaluable service. I’d propose that defenders of religious freedom might use Prof. Hamilton’s useful link to keep one eye on their state legislative agenda in the months ahead.

God vs. the Gavel

The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty

By:

Marci A. Hamilton

October 1, 2014

BookTalk

by Marci A. Hamilton, the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.

*This post originally appeared on Hamilton and Griffin on Rights.

How do you talk about the unspeakable? A decade ago, it was taboo to criticize religion or religious believers in print. They were a benign presence in America right next to apple pie. I wrote God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law then to defeat this taboo, because it was masking a reality most Americans would want to know.

There I stacked up transgressions of religious actors, including the sexual abuse and medical neglect (to death) of children, the forced marriage of adolescents into polygamous marriages, the violence of white supremacist or radical jihadist prison gangs, and even the questionable dealings of religious developers who forced incompatible uses like homeless shelters into residential neighborhoods. It was all for religion, with results that were not so benign.

The destruction of the taboo was necessary in a just society. The perpetrators of 9/11 were religious zealots. So were the parents who let their children die. Roman Catholic bishops covered up for child abusers and endangered one child after another to protect the religious institution from scandal. Then the same pattern appeared across virtually all religious denominations. These were atrocities.

Before these criminal acts reminded us of the power of religion to be both transcendent and horrible, Congress had ratcheted up the rights of religious believers by passing the misbegotten Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993 and 2000. Hardly anyone understood what it meant either time and no one was thinking of jihadists, clergy child predators, or children dying from medical neglect, in part because mainstream religious lobbyists intentionally presented a wholesome face to Congress, arguing that religious believers faced discrimination across the country that needed to be corrected by the statute.

What could possibly be wrong with “restoring” religious freedom? A lot, when it is not an actual restoration but rather a new concoction that handed believers rights to avoid the law that they never had before.

Then RFRA metastasized as religious lobbyists demanded the enactment of state RFRAs, with the argument that if it was good for the federal government, it was good for the states. Nineteen states have followed suit, and lobbyists are still pushing in the rest.

I wrote God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty, to unmask RFRA for what it is and to explain to the American public what it desperately needs to know: the opaque, legalistic mumbo jumbo of RFRA and the culture it has generated carve out a pathway to child abuse and neglect, discrimination, and tyranny. The Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case and decision were shocking to many Americans, but not to me. It is only one example of what happens when we give religious actors extreme rights.

My goal with The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty is to educate as many as possible about the perils of extreme religious liberty, the need to fight for the protection of the vulnerable, and the wisdom of repealing the RFRAs. Even religious liberty needs to be leavened with common sense.

SIFC Further Note: Marci Hamilton was lead counsel for the city of Boerne, Texas, in the religious freedom case Boerne v. Flores before the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, the Supreme court ruled that the Federal RFRA passed by Congress could not be applied to the states. This prompted several states to legislatively adopt their own versions of RFRA, many of them verbatim versions of the Federal law.

Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Marriage Restoration, Religious freedom

Our Story (7 Times Around the Jericho Wall) – Part 2

October 19, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding,excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:17-24

“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:3

Part 2: FROM DECREE TO PREPARATION FOR APPEAL

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

In my earlier post I described what it’s like to be an unwilling “Respondent”, a conscientious objector, as some 80% of us are, in state government’s 45-year war on the traditional family.

My husband was seeking to be awarded over $200,000 of my retirement assets after spending some $500,000 or more on a 9-year adulterous overseas relationship, using his corporate position, foreign bank accounts, expense accounts and credit cards that I did not gain visibility of until property division discovery began, in the aftermath of our bifurcated grounds trial. (Bifurcation is where the judge rules that there will be a separate trial for grounds and for issues with the division of property. The trials can occur many months apart in a financially complex case such as ours. )

A very dirty secret of the government divorce regime is that the combination of case law and enacted law applies a double-standard to the marriage contract in a very unique way compared with any other legal contract. For purposes of dividing property, the body of binding case law, and the legislative history behind the statute, holds that marital misconduct cannot be applied because the marriage must be treated as an equal “economic partnership”. However, this is a spurious false analogy because most non-marital financial partnerships have far greater protections from partner malfeasance. Unlike the marriage contact, they are legally binding without due cause, and cannot be interfered with by subsequent legislation that would impair them (per Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution) – and they cannot be broken without mutual consent and just compensation. By contrast, case law going all the way back to the late 1800’s and the U.S. Supreme Court holds that Article 1 Section 10 (and corresponding state constitution counterparts) uniquely cannot be applied to protect the marriage contract from ex post facto laws that would impair it. At the time that the husband of my youth and I repeated our marriage vows, “irreconcilable differences” was not a ground for divorce, either in our original state or the state to which we would move 26 years later. The Illinois law that would impair our marriage contract wasn’t enacted until 3 years after our wedding day, and wasn’t enacted in the state in which we actually said those vows until after our 35th wedding anniversary had passed.

How utterly shameful that as a result of applying this double standard, the essential covenant building block of our society that shapes the citizen character necessary to sustain our constitutional democracy into the next generation is afforded far less legal protection than the contractual “economic partnership” it is illegitimately compared to by the “no-fault” machinery!

Two hallmarks of corrosive, morally-repugnant legislation that undermines the wellbeing of society as a whole by creating special entitlements for a politically favored group: (1) pernicious use of a popular false analogy, and (2) contortions in the implementation details that result in having it both ways when it comes to a given set of facts and circumstances. Case law around dissipation claims presents a classic example when joined with the political effort to prevent marital misconduct from having a material case outcome.

Not every state has found it necessary to bar marital misconduct from consideration in the division of marital property, which by law includes retirement assets. About a dozen states expressly allow marital misconduct to be considered for this purpose. This alone calls into serious question the necessity of this heinous exclusion which heavily favors the offending spouse who brings the petition, and whether it is the least restrictive means of accomplishing a desirable, or even necessary, government aim. This is an enormously important question because, while recent statistics show that cohabitation has caused the marriage rate to decline-hence the divorce rate appears to have levelled off for couples under the age of 50, the widely-reported claim that the overall divorce rate is declining is false. By contrast, the divorce rate has been very rapidly increasing for couples past the age of 50. This government policy seems to do very serious harm to non-offending spouses who are nearing retirement age, particularly if they contest the divorce action on a moral, family-based objection and they have been the more responsible party financially (reflecting the high correlation between financial stewardship and staying out of adultery).

The legal community in our state wrings its hands over the prevalence of dissipation claims and has passed several recent measures to curb them, even though the inherent flaw in the philosophy of the law itself makes them the only available avenue to economic justice for many innocent Respondents on whom divorce was unwillingly imposed. Our judge displayed a particular contempt toward our well-founded and carefully documented dissipation claim, which consumed some 8 trial days to fully present, due to the extent of the financial abuse. As we shall see with the further details of our case, certain aspects of the “no-fault” law are only enforceable against a contesting, non-offending spouse by the liberal application of double-standards and by having a certain set of facts interpreted “both ways”, depending on the phase of the bifurcated trial (grounds versus property).

In order to avoid a grounds trial once a petition for dissolution of marriage is filed, a non-offending “Respondent” must affirm or at least not dispute any of the (effective) civil charges that have been levelled against them and against the marriage. They must, in effect, “plead guilty” in their filed response to the petition, affirming each of the following allegations which constitute the legal basis for a finding of “irreconcilable differences” (in many other states, Respondents are not actually afforded this opportunity) :

– that husband and wife have lived separately and apart continuously for at least 2 years (unless a cohabiting “reconciliation attempt” has occupied a portion of that time)

– that dissolving the marriage is in the family’s best interest

– that all attempts to reconcile have failed

– that further attempts to reconcile would be impracticable

– that the marriage has undergone an “irretrievable breakdown”

No bible-believing follower of Christ could ever conscionably sign off on the majority of these allegations without dishonoring God who is an active Party in the marriage covenant, unless theirs was a non-covenant remarriage of the kind that Jesus would call adultery per Luke 16:18 and Matthew 5:32. Moreover, once forced to civil trial, my Christian attorney and I attempted to bring significant evidence to individually refute each of these points because they simply were not true.

My husband, on the other hand, defended against what limited evidence of ours the judge would allow with outright perjury, both in his deposition and on the witness stand. Due to court rules of evidence, it was far from a level playing field to begin with, Plaintiff vs. Defendant, “Petitioner” vs. “Respondent”. My husband was openly permitted by the judge to reach far back into our decades-long marriage and drag out his version of isolated incidents some 20 years prior to buttress his allegations, but I and my attorney were restricted to bringing evidence of events that occurred only in the two years prior to the petition filing. Procedural Due Process and Equal Protection violation #1.

The judge deemed my husband “the more credible witness” for purposes of ruling on the truthfulness of the grounds, although there was never a shred of evidence brought in the case to support the judge’s bias against my personal credibility. After all, we couldn’t both be telling the truth. On the other hand, the judge had every opportunity to observe that my husband’s testimony conflicted not only with mine but with the testimony of both of our adult children in sworn depositions which the judge specifically asked to read before he ruled. At times my husband’s testimony on the witness stand conflicted with testimony in his sworn deposition. Perjury is very hard to keep track of, but someone who is telling the truth has no such conflicts – all of this escaped the judge’s notice (or regard). Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s adultery, there’s inevitably perjury, yet it was I, the “Respondent” who was presumed not a credible witness. In his official ruling of “irreconcilable differences”, the judge is on record as stating he believed I was “punishing” my husband’s good behavior in coming home (from his overseas job) for virtually every holiday, and for sleeping with me every time during the two years of “separation”; I was punishing my husband with my decision to contest the grounds for divorce, and because I sought to bring evidence to refute the civil allegations against me and against our decades-long marriage. Love for my husband and reverence for the clear instructions of God could not, in the judge’s biased eyes, have plausibly motivated my behavior. Substantive Due Process violation #1, based on my exercise of moral conscience and religious expression.

In two of the recent marriage redefinition cases, Robichaux v Caldwell (Louisiana), and Bishop v Smith (Oklahoma), Federal judges discuss the role of animus against a “suspect” class of people in denying them their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. According to these Federal precedents, animus can be shown to exist if “some structural aberration in the law is at issue, like the imposition of wide-ranging and novel deprivations upon the disfavored group or deviation from the historical territory of the sovereign simply to eliminate privileges that the disfavored group might otherwise enjoy.” Is it possible that the ruling cohort of the legal community, in enforcing a blanket legislative preference for Petitioners, has developed just such an animus against contesting Respondents as a class such that boorish courtroom treatment of Respondents is a clear and consistent symptom? What would it take to prove this? Certainly the trend in recent legislation in our state has become progressively harsher to the rights of Respondents, who lack sufficient numbers, organization or economic clout to defend themselves as a class from unjust legislation, and from oppressive court rules designed to systematically suppress evidence that might be unfavorable to the Petitioner.

Since my attorney and I made the Christ-honoring choice not to start financial discovery during the grounds phase of the trial, we were not aware of the massive financial abuse at the time the judge made his finding of “irreconcilable differences”. Learning through family members that the circumstances which triggered my husband to suddenly file his petition after 7 years of status quo were of a superficial nature (his girlfriend was barred from his work country earlier that year for violating immigration laws under my husband’s management accountability), we wanted to emphasize counseling and reconciliation, which in reality is what remains to be in the true best interest of our children and grandchildren. However, the system is grossly biased against any genuine reconciliation attempts, and actually throws up perverse incentives against reconciliation.

Under our state’s statute and relevant case law, dissipation is defined as the misuse of marital funds and assets for a purpose not supportive of the marriage after the marriage has begun an “irretrievable breakdown” (crossing a specific threshold). My husband had used his senior position in the consulting firm where he worked to install his girlfriend as an employee and she also became the approver of his travel expense reports. There was significant global travel involved with his work. It was therefore necessary to include my husband’s company expense reports in the discovery requests, and to hire forensic accountants to adequately document our complex case, given the time constraints in my own fulltime employment. My husband’s attorney brought several expensive but successful motions aimed at barring both the work and the expert testimony of the accountants, also at limiting the time frame allowed for the dissipation claim, and barring the claim itself.

Even after many adverse rulings, our evidence still represented air-tight documentation that my husband and his girlfriend had established a pattern of taking lavish pleasure trips at least monthly that were not reimbursed as business travel. Despite substantial precedent in case law that should have precluded the judge from limiting the time frame of our claim, or rejecting the graphic category summaries of our evidence, or dismissing our expert witness accountants in the face of a very complex and employment-entangled international case, the judge ruled against us on all of these, changing his mind twice in ruling on the length of the dissipation period over which he would allow discovery and entertain evidence. He also disregarded our evidence that my husband continued to spend abusively in contempt of court after a protective stay was issued in October, 2013. He additionally allowed my husband’s substantial, willful noncompliance with discovery deadlines on multiple occasions and refused motions for continuance in relief of this. Procedural Due Process and Equal Protection violations #2, 3, 4 and 5.

Then outrageously, and despite the admitted continuous presence of my rival, my husband’s attorney filed a motion in the closing days of the property trial asserting that marriage reconciliation “could have occurred at any point up to the date the petition was filed“, asking that the judge deem the petition filing date as the date of “irretrievable breakdown of the marriage” and further asking that the many years of dissipation occurring prior to late 2012 be dismissed. Despite the aforementioned case law that should have precluded this, the judge was only too happy to comply, saying it was justified because I contested the grounds and because, the judge said, I still do not believe as a matter of conscience or on a biblical basis that our marriage is irretrievable (true enough, not that the law cares what my opinion or the opinion of our adult children is).

The judge had thereby found a way to punish me financially for my convictions, believing those convictions had unduly “punished” my husband. Clearly, he was making a political example of me. What should have been a provable $500,000 to $600,000 claim was thereby reduced to only $35,000. The result was that he ordered a 50/50 split of our assets instead of the 60/40 split that would have preserved my retirement assets intact, and he arbitrarily ordered both our main residence and nearby vacation home sold, disregarding our reasonable recommendations to award the higher value property to my husband for (his) sale, and award the lower-value property to me for an ongoing residence that I could afford to maintain into my approaching retirement. Substantive Due Process violation #2, based on my exercise of moral conscience and religious expression.

That judicial move, however, transformed our technical appeal into a constitutional appeal, one that caught the empathy of an experienced religious freedom law firm who agreed to take our appeals case.

At least one of the recent marriage redefinition case rulings, Bostic v Shaefer (Virginia) goes into an interesting discussion of the precedents defining a fundamental right. Citing a 1943 Supreme Court case, West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, fundamental rights are those which are “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [they were] sacrificed.” I believe there are numerous fundamental rights stripped from Respondents by the enforcement of the unilateral divorce system, all of which rights had been deeply rooted in the nation’s tradition and history until the enactment of state-by-state unilateral divorce laws commenced 45 years ago. One does not have to read very far into a piece by Fathers’ Rights advocate Stephen Baskerville to see how basic liberty is routinely stripped without cause from some Respondents. My own liberty to live in a home I currently own and could well afford with my future finances has been punitively stripped from me by this judge. My fundamental right to reasonably defend my retirement was arbitrarily stripped from me simply for the crime of showing up in court to defend the sanctity of my marriage, as is my basic constitutional right. If homosexuals as a class sharing a chosen, non-immutable shared emotional characteristic may claim a fundamental right to get married to the person of their choice (as has been recently ruled in numerous states across the land and allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to stand due to lack of review), then contesting Respondents as a morally-defined and politically disfavored class have a fundamental right to stay married to the person of their choice, absent some just cause proven against them. This is before even touching my 1st Amendment right to freedom of conscience and religious exercise toward my God-given marriage.

Once handed down, appellate rulings in divorce cases are readily retrievable online these days from a simple Google or Bing search without a legal subscription service. Because by 2013, several innocent family members now worked for my husband’s firm, which was likely to be explicitly named in the eventual published case, we filed a motion to proceed with our appeal under a fictitious name, “Jane and John Doe” and “XYZ Company.” I love my husband and want to do everything I can to leave the door open for his return to fellowship with the Lord and to reconciliation with our family. I feel a moral responsibility to pursue this important appeal for the good of society if that’s the Lord’s assignment for me, but I also don’t want to deliberately make myself the direct instrument of retribution.
I believe my role is to stay out of the way of correcting natural consequences God brings to my husband as a result of his own actions, but not to step into that role myself if it can be avoided.
The court made its bias plain that I should have spared my husband of any consequences altogether by readily consenting to what God’s word forbids. To accomplish this, I should have modeled the principle of disposable covenants for the edification of my watching children and their spouses, grandchildren and their future spouses.

Whether we win or lose on appeal, public details of my husband’s breach of fiduciary responsibility to his firm is likely to harm his firm’s existing and potential client relationships, given the nature of that business. Incredibly, my husband’s attorney filed a response actively opposing our motion, even though it was in my husband’s very obvious best interest for the judge to grant the anonymity.

Proverbs 12: 4 – A capable wife is her husband’s crown, but a wife who causes shame is rottenness in his bones.

Proverbs 31: 12 – The heart of her husband trusts in her. She brings him good and not harm all the days of her life.

I should say here that my attorney did not feel it was prudent to base our filed anonymity motion on these true family concerns, so he instead filed the motion based on potential damage to my own safety and well-being should there be additional political opponents to our constitutional appeal. As a consequence, the trial judge erroneously treated our motion as though we had requested that the case be wholly impounded, and therefore denied our motion based on “the public’s right to know”, which we now have to appeal.

We have also filed several stay motions that the trial court judge denied, which are now going to the appeals court. My husband and I have each spent about $100,000 so far in legal fees, about 80% of which were incurred in the property / dissipation phase of our two trials where the main issue was my pension and his failure to provide for his own retirement due to dissipation of marital assets. Tens of thousands of dollars alone were spent on respectively combatting and defending my right as a Respondent to the sort of due process that everyone else takes for granted under the system of justice outside of Family Law Court.

In the meantime, I have taken up a bit of legal research myself in order to be a better-informed consumer of constitutional law services than I was of family law services. I have sought to record my learnings over this long journey in the hopes of being helpful to others in the future. I drew inspiration here from reading Judith Brumbaugh’s excellent book, “Judge, Please Don’t Strike that Gavel on My Marriage.” Judith is an amazing saint who has gone before, back in the 1980’s when she brought what was probably one of the nation’s first religious freedom constitutional challenges to Florida’s unilateral divorce law, which is actually harsher than Illinois’ (unless HB1452 passes in the Illinois Senate this fall). Judith was cut off early from funds to pay attorney fees, and incredibly she taught herself at the local library to represent herself after she became the victim of a judge who also was determined to make a political example of anyone who would dare contest a “no-fault” divorce based on a biblical stand for her covenant marriage.

(SIFC Update: to the praise and glory of God, the prayers of the saints in Illinois were heard and the 2013-2014 Illinois legislative session ended without passing HB1452 despite its earlier lopsided margin of victory in the state house of representatives.) This mercy defeats accelerated family destruction and increased poverty that would have otherwise devastated thousands of additional families across the state.

There are some legal environment factors today that I believe are changing by the month concerning marriage rights, equal protection and due process, and are very different now than in those earlier days of unsuccessful constitutional challenge of “no-fault” divorce, which I will cover (attorney advice permitting) in my next post.

Malachi 3:5 –

“I will come to put you on trial [state family law courts ,who trample My Covenant]. I will be quick to testify against … adulterers, lying witnesses, and those who cheat workers out of their wages and oppress widows and orphans. I will also testify against those who deprive foreigners of their rights. None of them fear me,” says Yahweh Tsebaoth [ the God of Angel Armies].”

I close this post by wryly pointing out that the above promise from God started to be fulfilled in 2014 when Judge Steven Reinhardt of the 9th Federal Circuit called out state unilateral divorce laws in his ruling in Latta v Otter striking down the constitutional vote of the people of the states of Idaho and Nevada to define marriage as one man and one woman. Standerinfamilycourt is in the process of reviewing all of the 2014 marriage redefinition cases, a time-consuming undertaking!

Jesus warned that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”. God will not be mocked!

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

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part3

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

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

standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, family law, Religious freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom: Two Ways We Should NOT Respond to the “Redefinition” of Marriage

October 18, 2014 standerinfamilycourt Leave a comment

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: This tireless public interest and religious freedom law ministry is revered by this Christian blogger. Nevertheless, like several of their peer ministries, ADF has the same political blind spot which was recently described by impartial observers such as Eric Metaxas and Rev. Al Mohler: for patronage reasons, they won’t publicly acknowledge the 900-lb. gorilla in the room – namely, the impact of “no-fault” divorce, on our mutual traditional marriage cause. As more marriage redefinition rulings are handed down across the country, that’s begun to cost religious freedom legal ministries like ADF! Federal 9th Circuit Judge Steven Reinhardt, in fact, called these attorneys out on it just this past week in his ruling on Idaho / Nevada case Latta v. Otter (page 36), as ADF was attempting to represent the State of Idaho’s effort to defend their constitutional definition of marriage which, except for the endorsement of unilateral divorce, mirrored God’s definition.

Matthew 19:4-6 – And [Jesus] answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore GOD has joined together, let no man separate.” ]

October 17, 2014 Blog By Alliance Defending Freedom

Same-sex marriage is now legal in Arizona. A ruling today by U.S. District Judge John Sedwick will keep state officials from enforcing a law passed in 1996 and a 2008 constitutional amendment approved by voters that protected marriage as between one man and one woman. Arizona now joins nearly half of the states in the country which have had same-sex marriage imposed upon them by the judiciary and not through the will of the people.

While this news is troubling, there are at least two ways we should NOT respond, because both wrong responses reject three important truths about marriage.

1. Woe is Us!

Don’t mistake me. This is a terrible decision – throwing out 2,000 years of history recognizing marriage as between a man and a woman, disregarding the purpose and role of marriage in society, and prioritizing the sexual desires of adults over giving children the opportunity to grow up with both mom and a dad. “Redefining” marriage will hurt society…..

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: first of all, it should never be necessary to put quote marks around the word Redefining in the same sense as one would put quote marks around Marriage when applied to the faux versions attributed to homosexuals or polygamists. Marriage redefinition (along with “prioritizing the sexual desires of adults over giving children the opportunity to grow up with both mom and dad“) has been with us for a long time: a national heterosexual tradition of some 45 years’ standing!]

….But hand-wringing, an all-is-lost attitude, pointing fingers, blame shifting, getting angry and verbally attacking those who oppose us – these responses do nothing to build up marriage.

2. Just Throw in the Towel.

Now, more than ever, the pressure is on to give up and accept the new sexual morality. Christian organizations, churches, business people, all of us face a choice – to give up or keep standing for what we know is right, even when it’s unpopular.

There are at least three reasons that both of these responses are wrong:

1. Marriage is marriage. True marriage is between a man and a woman because the two genders coming together sexually in a lifelong commitment separates it from every other relationship.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: sadly, there hasn’t been enough legal separation between lifelong commitment coupling and “serial monogamy” coupling in our culture, due to the first wave of marriage redefinition. Treating the two forms of marriage as equivalently moral is precisely what’s opening up the door to treating other forms of sexual immorality as equal to true marriage. ]

…..Only male-female relationships can produce children, and having parents committed to each other is best for children. A woman can be a great mom, but she can never be a dad, and a great dad can never be a mom.

Dr. Russell Moore wrote recently: “We have no authority to revise what Jesus has handed down to us ….

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: Indeed! What Jesus handed down to us was LIFELONG. Too bad there was not an ADF around in the 1970’s to argue this point when UMDA – the “Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act” was undermining religious freedom and deconstructing God’s definition of marriage, on a state-by-state basis.]

…..Our vision of marriage is not the equivalent of a church constitution and by-laws, adaptable by a majority vote. Marriage is not simply a cultural or legal practice, but is instead an icon of the union between Christ and his church, embedded in the creation (Eph. 5:22-31). Without a Christian vision of marriage, we have no Christian vision of the gospel.”

2. Marriage is creative, diverse, and beautiful. Marriage is a lifelong union between husband and wife. Humanity has always been, and will always be, composed of men and women. That can’t change, and that’s why the timeless institution of marriage can’t be changed by a court. Marriage celebrates humanity’s diversity, not only because of the complementary of the sexes in marriage, but because throughout history and across cultures, different races and ethnicities have always married.

Yes, the divorce rate is high. Now, more than ever, we must commit to strengthening our own marriages, affirming the value of marriage publicly, and championing the beauty of marriage in our culture.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: My hope is that ADF and peer legal ministries will step up to assist non-offending spouses (who “walk the talk”) to fight religious discrimination in family law court — at least at the appellate level – -and sign up to combat the unconstitutional stripping of property and parental rights from anyone who dares resist the divorce mill regime in various states….while honoring marriage as “creative, diverse and beautiful.” ]

3. This is not just about marriage.

Redefining marriage policy is about more than just creating same-sex marriage – it is about deconstructing the role and nature of marriage in our society.

It’s about marginalizing the Christian sexual ethic and enforcing a new sexual morality. Those who disagree with this new morality are first marginalized, then punished. We’re already seeing this happen with the city of Houston issuing subpoenas for pastors’ communications, the ousting of Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich, and attacks on Christian business people, like Rob and Cynthia Gifford of Liberty Ridge Farm, Jim and Mary O’Reilly of Wildflower Inn, Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop, Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers, Blaine Adamson of Hands on Originals, Elaine and Jon Huguenin of Elane Photography, and Melissa and Aaron Klein, owners of a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa.

For these people, and the many more who will risk everything for their right to live by their faith, we will continue to stand for marriage. And because we understand what marriage is, we will continue to promote the truth, value, and beauty of marriage in our culture.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: But, ADF, you must realize that the same marginalization has been happening for decades to those who attempted to stand up against court-sanctioned adultery (as opposed to homosexuality). Will you consider standing for those who dare to risk everything to honor their indissoluble wedding vows even when an intrusive government official issues a death certificate on a 30 or 40-yr. marriage and forcibly cleaves an extended multi-generation family for no proven cause? Will you stand for covenant spouses who are systematically being stripped of their 1st and 14th Amendment rights to freedom of conscience, equal protection, and parental / property rights for contesting an unjust government intrusion into the life of their family and future generations? ]

Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom, Scotsdale, AZ

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

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

1. Woe is Us!

2. Just Throw in the Towel.

Let's Repeal No-Fault Divorce!