Republicans Plot To Trap Women In Abusive Marriages By Outlawing No-Fault Divorce

GOP Continues Moving From Libertarian To Authoritarian

Mary Ellen Klas, reporting for Bloomberg yesterday, wrote that some think Florida is in play for November and that if Biden wins there, Trump has no path to victory. “After two years of Governor Ron DeSantis pushing his extremist agenda, including one of the toughest abortion bans in the country, and policies curtailing the teaching of Black history and gender identity, there’s a case to be made that Florida voters have had enough of the Republican Party’s obsession with culture wars. That may pay off for Democrats at the ballot box. A recent Fox News poll found, for example, that DeSantis and Republicans are widely out of sync with voters’ views on abortion. According to the poll, 69% of those surveyed said they support an amendment to the state’s constitution that would establish the right to an abortion up until fetal viability, or to protect the patient’s health. It’s a resounding rejection of the six-week ban rammed into law by DeSantis and the Republican-dominated legislature last year.”

Meanwhile, a similar dynamic is coursing through the political veins of the country. Yesterday, for example, you had Biden announce he is going to pardon veterans convicted under military law banning gay sex between 1951 and 2013. In contrast was another report of the GOP trying to legislate against peoples’ personal freedom. Right-wing nuts in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas want to end no-fault divorce, which allows a person to end a marriage without having to prove a spouse did something wrong. The religious right is offended— which is fine for them; no one is forcing them to use no-fault divorce… but they’re trying to force their backwards and primitive vision onto the whole society.

“Defenders of the laws, which states started passing a half-century ago,” wrote Eric Berger, “see legislation and arguments to repeal them as the latest effort to restrict women’s rights— following the overturning of Roe v Wade and passage of abortion bans around the country— and say that without such protections, the country would return to an earlier era when women were often trapped in abusive marriages.”

“No-fault divorce is critical to the ability, particularly the ability of women, to be able to exercise autonomy in their own relationships, in their own lives,” said Denise Lieberman, an adjunct professor at the Washington University School of Law in St Louis, who has a specialty in policies concerning gender, sexuality and sexual violence.

Before 1969, when then California Republican governor Ronald Reagan, who had been divorced, approved the country’s first no-fault divorce law, women, who are more likely to experience violence from an intimate partner, were often forced to stay in marriages. If they could not prove that their husband had been abusive or persuade him to grant a divorce, they would not be able to take any assets from the marriage or remarry, according to a study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

States around America gradually followed suit and passed similar laws allowing unilateral divorce until 2010, when New York became the last state to approve the practice.

Between 1976 and 1985, states that passed the laws saw their domestic violence rates against men and women fall by about 30%; the number of women murdered by an intimate partner declined by 10%; and female suicide rates declined by 8 to 16%.

Without such laws, “it’s hard to prove anything in court relating to a family because you don’t have any witnesses”, said Kimberly Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. “It’s very difficult to get evidence to show abuse of children. How do you do it? Do you put your kids on the stand?”

Conservative commentators such as Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder and lawmakers such as the Republican senator JD Vance of Ohio have argued that the laws are unfair to men and hurt society because they lead to more divorces.

The divorce rate in the United States increased significantly from 1960, when it was 9.2 per 1,000 married women, to 22.6 in 1980. But by 2022, the rate had fallen to 14.5.

On the increase in divorces, Vance said in 2021: “One of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace” is the idea that “these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.”

…[W]ithout such laws, victims of domestic violence would then have to navigate a court system that can be time-consuming, “very adversarial and very costly” because the plaintiff often must then pay for child care and transportation, said Marium Durrani, vice-president of policy for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“Any sort of additional barrier that we add to the ease of legal proceeding is, frankly, a nightmare and an enormous burden for survivors,” said Durrani. “I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but it can increase death [if] a survivor of domestic violence has to prove that they are being abused in a divorce proceeding.”

Still, Lieberman does not think Republicans will succeed in their efforts to make it more difficult for people to get divorced.

“I do believe that that train has left the station. I mean, we have had no-fault divorce now for 50 years,” Lieberman said. But “I didn’t think the supreme court would overturn Roe v Wade, which we had for 50 years, so I suppose we will see.”

Whether they ever really were or not, historically, the GOP touted itself as the party of individual rights and made a successful play for llibertarian types who valued minimal government interference in personal lives. However, recent actions by the party— and not just Trump— illustrate a significant shift towards authoritarianism, especially in areas concerning personal freedoms and rights.

This idiotic push to outlaw no-fault divorce starkly contrasts with their traditional, pre-MAGA libertarian rhetoric. By advocating for laws that would trap women in abusive marriages, the party is betraying its supposed commitment to personal liberty. This move is not just about controlling marriage laws but is emblematic of a broader agenda to impose a rigid, conservative moral framework on society. Their highly unpopular stance on personal issues like abortion, IVF, contraception, LGBTQ+ rights and now divorce, highlights a pattern of authoritarianism that seeks to undermine individual autonomy and enforce conformity to a particular set of patriarchal, theocratic and misogynistic values.

Wisconsin congressional candidate Eric Wilson may be disappointed, but he’s not surprised. “Donald Trump,” he told me yesterday, “has already taken this country back 50 years by appointing the court that overturned the Dobbs decision. It's no surprise Trump's cronies in the GOP want to take marriage back to the 1800's. These bills are meant to prevent women from escaping abusive husbands that treat them like property. That is exactly what these bills do; treat women like property. Next on the docket will be Obergerfell and Lawrence. The GOP and its members like Trump and my opponent, the coward and insurrectionist Derrick Van Orden, won't be happy until the only folks with rights are the white, straight males. Most of us take ‘All men were created equal’ as ‘all people regardless of gender or orientation,’ but the GOP really I guess want to take us back to 1775.”

This legislative push— sure to pass in some of the backward states they control— like Louisiana and Oklahoma— is part of a larger cultural war they’re waging, aiming to roll back progress made in gender equality and personal freedoms. The same states pushing for the repeal of no-fault divorce have also enacted the most aggressively restrictive abortion laws and other measures that curtail personal freedoms. This is not merely about individual policies but about creating a society where conservative, religious, values dominate and dictate the personal lives of all citizens, irrespective of their own beliefs or needs.

Do you think these authoritarian measures will alienate libertarian supporters who once found a home in the GOP? The party's increasing tendency to legislate morality and restrict personal freedoms stands in direct opposition to libertarian principles of minimal government intervention. As the MAGA-GOP continues to prioritize its authoritarian cultural agenda, I think it risks losing a significant portion of its base that values individual rights and freedoms.

The frontline for battles like this aren’t going to be in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House, but on the state legislative level. And if there’s one state legislator who’s been keeping hope alive, it’s Wisconsin state Senator Chris Larson. “Extremists in the Republican Party have again let their plans slip out publicly,” he told us today. “They were never going to be content with achieving their decade-long dream of rolling back the right to have an abortion. Now, they're gearing up to strip away more individual rights most people have already started to take for granted. They won't stop until right-wing politicians and judges are again gatekeepers on who you marry, what relationships you can end, and who is worthy of obtaining a divorce.” 

Marisol Rubio, the progressive San Ramon city councilmember running for an open state Senate seat in the Bay Area told us this morning that “Church and State must remain separate at all times in order to ensure that government legislates in the best interest of ALL Americans. Repealing no-fault divorce and, therein, making it more difficult for someone to divorce their spouse is dangerous and it violates our personal freedom. No one should be forced to stay in an unhappy marriage, much less a dangerous one. Divorce rates are down because millennials compared to previous generations are foregoing marriage and having children. Hence, people are happier when they have autonomy and free will. There should be limited to no government intervention as it pertains to someone’s personal freedom. I believe progressives, independents, and other third party groups are walking away from the political duopoly and seeking a more independent voice. They are tired of politics as usual due to distrust of government. Politicians have all too readily sold their vote to the highest donor, often forgetting the interests of their constituents. Corporate-free candidates, such as myself, are hard to come by, but they exist and we need voter support to win. Voters want independent decision-makers who will prioritize their needs and we must all be engaged to ensure this happens.”