Looking for a Divorce?
Have I got a deal for you!
At first, this sounded like some dystopian fiction story. But, no, a friend of mine found the story online, and posted it below the post where I shared the above picture.
Now, apparently this “marital lockup” isn’t actually in use anymore, and has been converted to a museum. But you’ll see in the story I linked to, the current bishop still gets “requests” from couples wanting to use the room.
Supposedly, the idea is that if you get forced (even if it’s your “choice”) to spend two weeks (or up to six) locked in with your spouse, that gives you the opportunity to “settle your differences.” Or, as the story notes, if spending up to six weeks in a lockup where you can’t harvest food for the winter, the prospect of starvation would essentially force the two to make up just to get out for survival. (Frankly, if my wife and I got locked up that long, it would be doubtful if either one of us would survive the experience.)
I shared that post on my Facebook profile, and made the following comment as a caption:
This meme makes this sound like a good thing, as if it prevented something.
But I want to know how many abusive marriages were continued. How many abused wives (or even husbands) were forced to remain in an abusive relationship. How many women died later as a result of their husband’s anger over that two week lockup?
This isn’t good. This is HORRIFYING.
This is religion, folks. This is what you have to look forward to if the Evangelical folks manage to turn this country into a theocracy.
I know there are people who think that divorce is a bad thing. But I’ll be frank. Most of those people also think that women are a husband’s property, which is why they think divorce is bad — because it rips a man’s property away from him. Of course, the Bible — their source of “values” — doesn’t absolutely reject divorce, and even the Catholic Church allows it under certain circumstances. But these Evangelical fanatics don’t read it that way. A man’s property is HIS. And not even God can rip that away.
Apparently.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It may be every person’s right to decide the course of their life, and continuing to be in a marriage that doesn’t satisfy your picture of the life you want is indeed something you’ve the right to decide for yourself. But then, as one half of a married couple that’s been together for 47 years now, I can tell you with no hesitation nor lack of candor that it damn well isn’t easy to keep doing it sometimes.
One of the things I tell people half jokingly is that “the Universe has a weird sense of humor.” The point is, to use another catch phrase from my ignorant youth, “shit happens,” and at times that doesn’t always make sense nor make anyone happy. It is easy at times to just throw your hands in the air and give up.
But for many people, marriage has a lot of “gotchas.” Money, children, mutual property, a business perhaps. Maybe a big busy family, and a public perception of your marriage that you hate to burst the bubble of. Lots of reasons why it might be damn hard to give up the ghost too easily. In our case, we separated for a year and a half in the early 2000s. But the prospect of reduced retirement, loneliness, and a number of other considerations caused us to reconcile, and it didn’t take six weeks in a lockup to manage it.
In other words, it ain’t easy sometimes. But if you stick with it, eventually you’ll get that 50-year celebration cake. (And if you’re lucky, your kids’ll pay for it!)
But for others, something like abuse can make all the rest seem unimportant. Or it may be not abuse per se, but could be a non-cooperative spouse who just has a completely different idea of how to live your combined lives. It could be a place one spouse doesn’t like, or abusive in-laws, or a job that disrupts your life together, or — as is fairly common — a cheating spouse. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t work anymore, for one party or the other.
And if that happens, our society — pretty much a majority of us — believe that every adult has the right to step back and demand a divorce, and the cause doesn’t matter. One’s happiness and safety do.
Now, at this point, I could simply declare that my job here is done, and I’ve explained myself well enough, and thankyouverymuch for reading, and goodbyecommentandclapplease.
But there’s another aspect of this many won’t see right away.
Remember Roe vs. Wade? How the Dobbs decision overturned the right to abortion? Well, that wasn’t only about abortion. The reason Alito gave for overturning Roe was because Roe was based on the “right to privacy.” Your right, as a woman, and a human being, to make your own private decisions for your own medical care. And Alito did that by attesting that no such “right” exists in the Constitution!
So, ladies, if the government can make decisions for you about your medical care, how much longer will it be before the Republicans decide that the government can deny you a divorce?
Again. Like they used to.
I might add here, that also based on the lack of a right to privacy, how much longer will it be before they make it legal again for a husband to rape his wife? I mean, if medical care isn’t private any more, what makes you think sex still is?
Oh, and while we’re speculating, if you and hubby like oral sex, you do realize that any kind of sex that’s not your standard face to face, missionary style is gonna be outlawed too, don’t you? Heck, if they can decide any kind of private thing for you, what’s next?
Dinner?
Why not? They’re already deciding what books you can have in your local library, aren’t they? Why not outlawing food they hate? Look out, vegetarians!
Once you no longer have the right to make your own private decisions, there just aren’t any lines they can’t cross, because damn near any decision you make about your life is private. That’s doesn’t mean “hidden.” That means it’s yours to make for yourself. Inside your own head — that’s private! At least so far, that is.
Look, I’ve made no bones about it. This election is about democracy. You know that’s true because the very first thing any authoritarian government does is eliminate privacy as a right.
Now, thanks to the Trump Supreme Court, they’ve already done that!
Now all they have to do is make laws to take advantage of it, and I can assure you, the precedent Alito set in the Dobbs decision about there being no “right to privacy” — that’s one precedent they will keep! Stare Decisis set in stone right there.
You can bet your sex life on it.
