What No-Fault Divorce Can Teach Us About Same-Sex Marriage
What did no-fault divorce contribute and what can it teach us about the same-sex marriage experiment?
It was 1969 when California’s first actor-turned-politician, Ronald Reagan, enacted the world’s first no-fault divorce law, dismissing the essential “till death do us part” part of marriage with the wisp of a pen. California redefined marriage, transforming it legally from a meaningful, binding contract to a mere arrangement. After no-fault, it was easier for a husband or wife to duck out of a thirty-year marriage than end an annual lawn-maintenance contract. And no-fault divorce laws spread like wildfire until every state adopted some form. Divorce replaced death as the primary cause of family brokenness in America - family change by expressive self-will rather than fate.
The Gipper unwittingly tinkered with a fundamental part of marriage, launching a family revolution. This brings us to same-sex marriage. If the essential “as long as we both shall live” quality of marriage becomes optional, why not the “husband and wife” part? Tinkering with the fundamentals of marriage begets more tinkering with fundamentals. But this also allows an opportunity to learn something important.
No-fault divorce subjected an entire generation of children and their parents to a massive, untested social experiment fueled by adult wish fulfillment. We entered this experiment with no idea of how it would turn out. We bolstered ourselves with hopeful assumptions that if adults could easily exchange bad marriages for good, we would have happier, more self-actualized adults who would parent happier, more self-actualized children. Love would see us through. It was all so I’m OK; You’re OK and like disco and leisure suits, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And if this hopeful tinkering were without consequence for people and society, it should raise no real concern. All we would be talking about is mere opinion or preference. But this was not what happened.
Thirty years of experience with millions of divorced adults and children proved our hopes horribly wrong. Studies revealed that large numbers of these adults are less secure, experiencing failing physical and mental health, unable to put their lives back together, entering affairs and cohabiting relationships that are just as troubled -- if not more so -- as the newly disposed of marriage. Domestic violence increased dramatically. Some entered new marriages that broke up faster and as tragically as the previous one. Happiness was elusive.
Children fared even worse. Many saw the innocence of childhood evaporate the day their parents announced the divorce. Others described being “scarred for life.” They told countless stories of being crippled by anxiety, possessed by anger, disoriented by confusion and immobilized by fear of total abandonment. Their behavior, grades and physical and mental health plummeted. They were different children. In fact, they didn’t see themselves as children any longer. Divorce forced them to become adults, even before they became teens. We now know these children carry these problems cumulatively into adulthood.
And it wasn’t just a handful of studies coming to these conclusions. These findings are found in mountains of academic studies. Collectively, it is a simultaneously impressive and damning body of knowledge. The only debate among scholars today is the degree of harm.
And now we enter this new same-sex family experiment in like manner. We have no idea how it will turn out, so we feebly comfort ourselves by repeating the recycled mantra: love will see us through. We try to convince ourselves that two loving moms can replace a good daddy for a little boy or two caring dads can be a great momma to a little girl.
But can we be so sure? If we are honest, we know it is never loving or compassionate to intentionally deny a child her mother or father in order to fulfill adult desire. This is what divorce does to degrees and every same-sex home does absolutely. Not surprisingly, early research indicates troubling signs of gender confusion and same-sex sexual experimentation in same-sex parented children.
Ronald Reagan just wanted to make divorce a little less contentious. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just wants to make marriage law fair. And when thirty more years of family experimentation passes under the bridge of daily life, the lives of millions of adults and children will judge us harshly for not learning the marriage redefinition lesson the first time. People get hurt deeply when you tinker with the essential nature of marriage, regardless of how pure or hopeful the intentions.
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