Republicans Can't Stop Divorcing Long Enough To Make No Fault Divorce Illegal Again

Awkward!

By now, you have probably heard the big news about Lauren Boebert's impending divorce. If not, well, you just did! She hasn't gone into detail, saying only that they had truly "irreconcilable differences." Maybe that's code for "he flashed some teenagers at a bowling alley again" or some such.

Under normal circumstances, we might not even cover this. Because this is the year 2023 and people can do what they want. (AND WE ARE CLASSY.) I can't imagine anyone wanting to stay married to either Boebert. But, the fact that she's getting a divorce and Marjorie Taylor Greene got a divorce and Steven Crowder just got a divorce is more than just petty gossip when Republicans are out here trying to end no-fault divorce for everyone else. (This is not to say I don't love petty gossip, I just prefer it when it's about the cast of "Vanderpump Rules" and not my elected representatives.)

For years, ending no-fault divorce has been a priority among the various Men's Rights factions. Both the traditional MRAs and the MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way) have long been galvanized by what they believe is the "unfairness" of divorce laws for men. While this has largely been focused on child custody, alimony and child support, they are specifically opposed to no-fault divorce because they don't think a woman should be able to decide to leave them and then take half of "their" assets. For the Christian anti-feminists and redpillers, they are angry at the idea that a woman should be allowed to leave her husband, period. The incels are upset about the "uneven distribution" of women and one man being able to marry multiple women.

They're all fucking nuts. But for a really long time, it was mostly just them.

However, over the last year or so, the idea of banning no-fault divorce — and, to some extent, divorce in general — has gone from being the kind of thing that was only ever seriously discussed in largely anonymous manosphere forums to the slightly more mainstream right-wing pundits — like, ironically, Steven Crowder — all the way to those creating the Republican Party platforms in Texas and Louisiana.

"We urge the Legislature to rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws," reads the Republican platform in Texas, "to support covenant marriage, and to pass legislation extending the period of time in which a divorce may occur to six months after the date of filing for divorce."

“Louisiana marriage laws have destroyed the institute of marriage over the past thirty to fifty years,” reads an initial draft of the proposed resolution in Louisiana. “The destruction of marriage has resulted in widespread child poverty in Louisiana.”

Ohio Senator JD Vance last year suggested that people should actually stay in marriages that are "maybe even violent," because allowing people to "shift spouses like they change their underwear” had damaged a generation of children. Children who should have been raised by abusive parents, I guess.

The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh has not only called for the abolition of no-fault divorce for years, but also for arranged marriages (another idea that, frighteningly enough, is becoming increasingly popular on the Right ).

"Radical Liberals want to destroy the American nuclear family so that people can depend on the government," Lauren Boebert herself tweeted in 2021. "There is nothing more important than the family unit & every policy put forth in this country should keep this in mind."

The party of small government, ladies and gentlemen!

This idea comes from people who hate women, and the reason they want it so badly is because they want very badly to be able to control women. And yet, strangely enough, Boebert and Greene and Steven Crowder's wife all don't want to be controlled or forced to be married to someone they don't want to stay married to anymore than we do. Even more strangely, Republicans all seem quite fine with twice-divorced Donald Trump and twice-divorced Newt Gingrich, as well as the once-divorced Ronald Reagan who actually started the whole no-fault divorce trend back when he was governor of California (actually, much of the Right has started to turn on Reagan, but that is a story for another day).

How do they decide which divorces are okay and which ones are "different"? It is a mystery.

It's not a coincidence that this is coming after the dissolution of Roe . It's because of that, because of Clarence Thomas's little hints that bans on birth control, same sex marriage, and same sex ... sex might also be in their future, that the Right is feeling a little empowered to ask for even more ridiculous and oppressive shit these days. Part of the attraction to making abortion illegal in the first place has always been the idea that it would make it more difficult for women to be independent, to hold jobs and to leave bad relationships. Getting rid of no-fault divorce is, in many ways, the obvious next step here.

I suppose that, on the bright side, should they ever get this passed in any state, they'd just be as miserable with it as everyone else would.

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