How Did the Female End Up Worshipping Herself?
 
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Gen. 3:16)
This should really be translated as, "and thy lust for domination shall be directed toward thy husband, but still shall he have mastery over thee."
When the knowledge of good and evil came into the world it destroyed natural law by dividing will against itself. The man is the hierarchical authority over woman.
God first
Christ second
Man third
Woman forth
If a woman is bent on evil, she will not live in natural order. She will always be bent on dominating men, because she senses truly that man is her hierarchical master.
In short, if men are to have any hope, then they must 'strap on a pair' and be a Man!
If women are still bent on rebellion, then they will be crushed under the foot of Men. We will not stand for their witchcrafts and manipulations borne out of their ravening weakness and unbridled lust for domination.
If a woman will not live as a woman, then she will be obliterated by equalibrium. We are men. The rule is ours. And we WILL NOT give it to another!
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THE PATHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE-HEADED FAMILY
 
"Women," wrote Ramsey Clark in l970, in his celebrated book Crime in America, "are not a threat to the public." But he also wrote, in discussing the male juvenile criminals who are a threat to the public, that "three-fourths came from broken homes." That means mostly female-headed homes. That means that while the single mothers of these criminals do not themselves commit crimes and go to prison, the socialization they give their children has an extraordinarily high correlation with the male crime of the next generation. This socialization, in fact, is the "root cause of crime" which Clark wrote his book to explore. He had found the explanation he sought and he didn't know it. It was concealed by the generation-long time-lag between cause and effect and by the sex-switch between generations: like hemophilia, crime is manifested in males but carried and transmitted by females--or rather by single females. Instead of seeing the true connection, Clark gave his readers this:
If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what must be seen is the dehumanizing effect on the individual of slums, racism, ignorance and violence, of corruption and impotence to fulfill rights, of poverty and unemployment and idleness, of generations of malnutrition, of congenital brain damage and prenatal neglect, of sickness and disease, of pollution, of decrepit, dirty, ugly, unsafe, overcrowded housing, of alcoholism and narcotics addiction, of avarice, anxiety, fear, hatred, hopelessness and injustice. These are the fountainheads of crime.
 
Not so. If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what must be seen is its relationship with the female-headed family. Most criminals come from female-headed families. Most gang members come from female-headed families. Most addicts come from female-headed families. Most rapists come from female-headed families. Most educational failures come from female-headed families. Every presidential assassin before Hinckley came from a female-headed family or one in which he had an impossibly bad relationship with his father. Most illegitimate births occur to females who themselves grew up in female-headed families.
 
If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what we must do is reduce the number of female-headed families; what we must do is prevent the divorce courts from expelling half of society's fathers from their homes; what we must do is terminate a welfare system which displaces millions of men from the principal male role, that of family-provider. What we must do is make the father the head of the family.
The female role, says Margaret Mead, is a biological fact; the male role is a social creation. This is the primary reality concerning human society. Motherhood has been the dominant feature of mammalian life since its beginning some two hundred million years ago, most conspicuously since the great reptiles became extinct and the Age of Mammals began sixty-five million years ago. Fatherhood in the sense of major male participation in reproduction is only a few million years old. Fatherhood in the sense of male headship of families is only a few thousand years old.
 
What is happening to our society is that it is discarding patriarchal sexual regulation and reverting to the primeval mammalian pattern of a reproductive unit consisting of the mother and her offspring, the male putting in an appearance to perform his minuscule sexual function and then disappearing or being hauled away to the sausage factory or being reduced to the role of stud who can be discarded when his female tires of him. "Men and women," rejoices feminist-anthropologist Helen Fisher, "are moving toward the kind of roles they had on the grasslands of Africa millions of years ago....Human society is now discovering its ancient roots....The recent trend toward divorce and remarriage is another example of a throwback to earlier times....[T]he so-called new extended family [read: broken family] may actually have evolved millennia ago....At long last, society is moving in a direction that should be highly compatible with our ancient human spirit....The 'traditional' role of women is a recent invention."
Biologically speaking, it is indeed a recent invention, scarcely older than the civilization which it made possible and which emerged coevally with it and created the wealth which reconciled women to accepting it. But women's new economic independence is leading them to yearn for a return to the prehistoric mammalian arrangement. "[W]herever women are economically powerful," says Fisher, "divorce rates are high. You see it in the Kung and you see it in the United States." Let's say, wherever women are economically powerful and there are no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families, divorce rates are high--such being the case among the Kung and the Americans. The Kung have no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families because the Kung never emerged from the Stone Age. The Americans have no social guarantees to ensure male headship of families because there exists an elementary confusion in the heads of policy makers, lawmakers and judges, who imagine that the obvious strength of the biological tie between the mother and the infant (the "biological fact" Margaret Mead refers to) means that it requires their assistance. A biological fact does not require the services of the legal system. What does require these services is the weakest biological link in the family, the role of the father. It was the creation of this role--only a few thousand years ago--which made patriarchal civilization possible. Prior to that, mankind had to muddle through the million years of the Stone Age with the female-headed reproductive arrangements of the ghetto, the barnyard and the rain forest.
More: http://fisheaters.com/garbagegeneration.html
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"They ( men ) are going to realize that the wife's withdrawal of her primary
contribution to the marriage, her sharing of her reproductive life with her husband, removes his reciprocal obligation to support her; and that since the purpose of this support was to benefit his children, the children belong with him, not with her."
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"The wife should be in the "custody" of the father too. Females are emotional basket cases who survive and prosper by having a strong man run their pathetic lives. The father should be the one who rules the home and family.  She should not be allowed to break up the family when she gets bored with her husband, nor create emotional hostility when she is told to mind her pots and kettles.  Current (anti) family law, "domestic violence" law, "no fault" divorce law, etcetera are all squarely aimed at destroying families and hurting children and men. The father should be the one who rules the home and family." Bob
 
"Mommy murder is the leading cause of death for boys under 5 years old. How many dead and beaten children will it take for the people to learn that children belong with their fathers? CPS ( Child Protective Services ) lesbitches and evil agents of Satan in black robes of hell work every day to destroy familes and kill children. The good people of Long Island, NY, need to get really angry and impale every last one of the children killing agents of Satan in black robes of hell who are destroying so many families. We all need to demand that our children be returned to their fathers where children were loved and protected for millennia before feminazis and their evil femernment stole our children during the 20th Century. How many dead beaten and cut up children will it take before we all learn. Children belong with their fathers."  Bob
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The Case for Father Custody
 
Dr. Daniel Amneus' thought provoking article The Case for Father Custody has grown into a book length volume Case_for_Father_Custody.pdf (2.2 mb).
Here are a few excerpts from the book:
  • Today "civilized countries" suffer from a below-replacement level birthrate. Men in them don't view babies as a threat to their survival; their fear is that they can't have families--that women, with the help of the divorce courts, are imposing a matriarchal society upon them.
  • The men who get married believing that marriage will give them families are going to rub their sleepy eyes and realize that marriage has become a fraudulent contract which gives men no security of having families and children....They are going to realize that the wife's withdrawal of her primary contribution to the marriage, her sharing of her reproductive life with her husband, removes his reciprocal obligation to support her; and that since the purpose of this support was to benefit his children, the children belong with him, not with her.
  • The solution is perfectly obvious: father custody of the children in the case of divorce, as was automatic and mandatory in the mid-nineteenth century. This will permit men to have families and children to have fathers. It will restore male motivation. It will make women understand the value to themselves of the double standard and of their sexual loyalty, the things which formerly gave them their bargaining power in the patriarchal system.
  • Patriarchy tries to make women sexually responsible; sexual responsibility is what they are in rebellion against; rejection of sexual responsibility is what feminism is all about. They will get what they want unless their rejection of sexual responsibility is understood to forfeit their claim to custody.
    "It's never going to happen"--the restoration of meaningful fatherhood and the two-parent family--until men realize that the anti-male bias of divorce court judges is so total that the only solution is to take all discretion out of their hands and to return to the 19th century practice of automatic and mandatory father custody.
  • An economically independent woman is privileged to get out of a bad marriage--or a boring one. This is why economically independent women have the highest divorce rate and why sensible men ought to avoid marriage with them--unless custody is given to fathers.
  • It is a woman's voluntary renunciation of sexual independence which makes a family possible. This is the reason why a husband is willing to subsidize a wife. When she insists on her right to sexual independence and implements this "right" by adultery or divorce, she loses her right to subsidization and custody of her husband's children.
  • If the sexual regulation of women were not what makes civilization possible by permitting men to be fathers and children to have fathers, it would be an absurdity. But the sexual regulation of women is what makes civilization possible by permitting the creation of families and by permitting males to participate in reproduction, by making sex something more than one-night stands, more than recreation--by channeling male energy into being providers, by creating fatherhood. Accordingly, the sexual de-regulation of women, now taking place under the aegis of the sexual revolution attacks patriarchy at its core by its withdrawal of female sexual loyalty to the family and to marriage.
  • Maggie Gallagher cites George Rekers, professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, as follows on father absence:
    Both developmental and clinical studies have clearly established the general rule that the father's positive presence in the home is, in the vast majority of cases, normally essential for the existence of family strength and child adjustment. Research [says Gallagher] shows that children without fathers have lower academic performance, more cognitive and intellectual deficits, increased adjustment problems, and higher risks for psychosexual development problems. And children from homes in which one or both parents are missing or frequently absent have higher rates of delinquent behavior, suicide, and homicide, along with poor academic performance.
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The Case for Father Custody
 
It is fatherhood that makes childhood possible.
by Daniel Amneus
 
A judge will try a divorce case in the morning and place the children in the mother's custody. He will try a criminal case in the afternoon and send a man to prison for robbing a liquor store. The chances are three out of four that the criminal he sends to prison grew up in a female headed household just like the one he himself created that morning when he tried the divorce case. [1]  He can't see any connection between the two cases. The time lag prevents him: the kids he placed in the mother's custody were toddlers and the criminal he sent to prison was in his teens or twenties. Toddlers don't rob liquor stores.
 
Besides most fatherless boys don't grow up to rob liquor stores and most fatherless girls don't grow up to breed illegitimate children. Therefore what? Therefore the legal policy of giving custody to mothers is OK? Therefore we can ignore the increased probability that fatherlessness will create delinquency? This is the "safe drunk driver argument." Most drunk drivers don't get in accidents. They get home safely and sleep it off. Therefore drunk driving is OK.
 
It's not OK. And exiling fathers from families is not OK. The fact that will not go away is stated by sociologist David Popenoe in his recent book Life Without Father:
 
The negative consequences of fatherlessness are all around us. They affect children, women and men. Evidence indicating damage to children has accumulated in near tidal-wave proportions. Fatherless children experience significantly more physical, emotional and behavioral problems than do children growing up in intact families.
 
Why do judges routinely award custody of children to mothers when they try a divorce case? Two reasons. The first is that motherhood is more solidly based in biology. Motherhood is a biological fact, as Margaret Mead says, fatherhood merely a social invention. Mammals and motherhood originated two hundred million years ago, when the dinosaurs were young. fatherhood in the sense of major male participation in reproduction is, from the point of view of evolution, a recent development. Fatherhood in the sense of male headship of the stable patriarchal families which make civilization possible is only about five thousand years old, as feminist Dr. Gerda Lerner has shown in her book The Creation of Patriarchy. Prior to the Patriarchal Revolution human reproduction followed the ghetto pattern, where the mother was the primary parent, and the father was a mere boyfriend who could be discarded when the mother got tired of him.
 
The second reason why judges favor mother custody is their recognition that women and children are dependent creatures. This was formerly understood to mean they needed husbands and fathers. But husbands require authority if they are to function as providers and protectors. ( "He shall rule over thee," God says to Eve, Genesis 3:16. ) Without the sexual loyalty of wives there can be no family. Patriarchal civilization depends on female chastity. Without it men cannot have families and children cannot have fathers. 
 
This is the hitch, the reason we have a feminist revolution: Females dislike sexual regulation. Feminists say : A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," "A woman has a sacred right to control her own sexuality." "End human sacrifice! Don't get married!" Women's primary object, according to feminist Anne Donchin, is to create a society in which "women can shape their reproductive experiences to further ends of their own choosing." 
 
This is the feminist program. It's succeeding. Marriage is becoming meaningless. "Family law," says Brenda Hoggett, former British law commissioner responsible for family law,
 
no longer makes any attempt to buttress the stability of marriage or any other union. It has adopted principles for the protection of children and dependent spouses which could be made equally applicable to the unmarried. In such circumstances, the piecemeal erosion of the distinction between marriage and non-married cohabitation may be expected to continue. Logically we have already reached a point at which, rather than discussing which remedies should now be extended to the unmarried, we should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose.
 
The emphasized sentence means marriage no longer grants the husband any rights whatever - only the obligation of giving up his children and accepting slavery - laboring for the benefit of another person, his ex-wife. ( Or equally his ex-girlfriend, since marriage makes no difference. ) "The courts have abandoned," says Ms. Hoggett,
 
the concept of breach of matrimonial obligations - and their powers of adjustment of property interests in the long term are now so extensive that ordering one spouse from his own home no longer seems so drastic. far from ordering spouses to stay together, courts are increasingly able and willing to help them separate.
 
This is the female kinship system, matriarchy, the condition of the ghettos - made tolerable for the female by the male's acceptance of slavery.
 
A Georgia judge named Robert Noland shows how the legal system thinks: "I ain't never seen a calf following a bull. They always follow the cow. So i always give custody to the mammas." The reason Judge Noland never saw a calf following a bull is that cattle don't live in two-parent households. If we want to live like cattle, Judge Noland has the right idea. But human beings differ from cattle and the difference is created by fathers.
 
A green turtle - a reptile - begins its existence as an egg and never learns it has a mother or a father. It's mother's participation in its existence consists of conceiving and gestating it and burying the resulting egg in the sand. After remaining there and maturing awhile, it emerges from the sand and wattles down to the water to find a meal - or to become a meal for some other creature. It is self contained and lives on its own inherited resources or it dies.
 
Mammals came into existence during the Age of reptiles. Mammalian mothers cherish their young, feed them from their own body, protect them, educate them. If you have a cat with kittens you can witness how mammalian motherhood works - how meaningful motherhood is, and how irrelevant merely biological fatherhood is once the father has performed his minuscule sexual function. Motherhood enables the kitten to have an infancy. This is the relationship which Judge Noland understands and seeks to preserve by awarding custody to mothers.
 
The kitten has no childhood. After a rather short period of helpless infancy, the kitten is almost suddenly a mature adult capable of fending for itself like the baby turtle after it emerges from its egg.
 
It was John Fiske, the nineteenth century American historian and philosopher, who pointed out what made human beings special - and more successful than other mammals: the prolongation not only of infancy, but the creation of a whole additional era of life, childhood, something unknown in any other species - so that human children can enjoy an enormously long period during which they are protected, cherished, educable, playful, exploratory, sensitive and aware, a period during which they can reach out and learn about and come to love the world they live in.
 
It is fatherhood which makes childhood possible. It is father absence which creates ghettos and gangs and messed-up kids - boys trying to find their identity through violence, girls trying to find their identity through sexual promiscuity, which will lead to the violence of the next generation. They need real fathers, "sociological fathers," not mere studs interested in sharing a one-night stand with Mom.
 
Sociological fatherhood is real fatherhood, as Margaret Mead says, "a social invention." In the ghettos the biological fathers are seldom sociological fathers. They aren't good for much because Mom's sexual disloyalty denies them the role of sociological fatherhood. Lawmakers and politicians don't understand what Margaret mead tells them, that fatherhood is a social invention, that it must be created and maintained by society. They suppose, as Judge Robert Noland supposes, that humans can live like cattle, without fathers.
 
Until lawmakers and judges see that they must support the father's role because it is the weak link in the family we will have more matriarchy - along with its familiar accompaniments: crime, educational failure, illegitimacy, teen suicide, gangs and the rest.
 
Notes:
1. 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home Fulton Co. Georgia Jail Populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections, 1992. Statistics from other states show similar results.   
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Ending the slavery called "child support"

The ideas behind the radical feminist social experiment called "absentee child support" began at the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Women, they said, should be able to leave their husbands, take his children, and still be supported by him. Feminazis have always opposed marriage, believing that "marriage oppresses women." Yet they always believe that women have a "right" to have men support them in the manner they want to be accustomed. In the last half of the 19th century, after Seneca Falls, the divorce rates in the US began increasing as more feminazis left their husbands. Organized feminists began lobbying for judges and legislatures to require that the ex-husband be required to "pay" for the support of the children that the female stole from his home.

Two major social changes profoundly affecting children happened in the 19th century. Prior to the middle of the 19th century children were assumed to belong to their fathers. A mother who left her husband had to leave her children. Far fewer women were willing to abandon their children and marriages generally stayed together. Click here for the case for father custody published by Fathering Magazine. In addition children were a labor asset until the 19th century. As late as 1900, 90% of Americans still lived and worked on family farms. Most of the rest worked in family owned shops or small businesses. All members of the family old enough to walk were expected to do a share of the work on farm, shop, or business. In cities where there were many immigrants who had no farm or shop a substantial number of children ended up working in factories. Social concern began outlawing child labor, creating a dependent class of young people that has extended longer and longer through the 20th century. The dependent class of young, unable by law to work and earn their own living, now created more of a burden on welfare agencies, especially with more and more feminazis leaving their husbands to avoid the "oppression" of marriage.

Feminazis seized on the radical notion of "absentee child support" as the answer to their demand for forcing men to continually support them after they left. Organized lobbying efforts by radical feminist groups in the late 19th and early 20th century promoted the dual radical ideas of female custody and required payment of "support." It had taken them a century of ratcheted changes in social thinking to lay the groundwork, but by the 1960s virtually all of the United States had laws and judicial fiat requiring 1. Custody of minor children goes to the mother after divorces, and 2. The father must pay the mother under the guise of "support' of the children. Click here for a longer history of the radical change to a "child support" based slave state. Feminazis aggressively used the lie that fathers abandon families to convince legislatures to enact their radical new laws. The truth is quite the opposite. It was and is almost always the female who abandons her marriage vows. Mothers abandon families and wanted to use the children as an excuse to demand continued her support. Some states also had strong alimony laws, but questions were being asked about how that conflicted with feminist demands for "equality." The "child support" gave them the excuse to play the victim, claiming to be a suffering "single mother" struggling to feed her children while the brute man had run off.

The radical experimental changes called "child support" in the first half of the 20th century were greatly exacerbated in the last half of the 20th century by the establishment of "no-fault" divorce laws that were widely enacted. By the end of the 20th century more than half of US marriages ended in divorce, and about 90% of divorces are filed by women. Surveys show that the reasons so many females abandon their marriage vows have more to do with boredom than anything else. "To find myself" is a common excuse given by females for destroying a family according to studies. In public they frequently lie and blame the nearest available men for their sins. In some US States, females no longer bother to get married in the first place. In California now more than half of children are born to unmarried women. The state vigorously pursues the man who these unmarried bitches claim is the father of their bastards. It has become a powerful legalized extortion, a way for a young and uneducated female to support herself. She can whelp a couple of bastards and live comfortable on "child support" programs for decades. Hard working men who are usually unwilling fathers, only the female has "a woman's right to choose," are bound into indentured servitude, a form of slavery, for 20 years to pay her for bearing a bastard.

None of this is a good solution to anything. All of it is a badly failed radical feminazi social experiment which is destroying millions of families and hurting millions and millions of children. All of it is bad law, bad family law, and slavery. It does not get better by combining the worst features together.

So what is a better solution, some people have asked. And, Bob has frequently proposed better solutions.

First, we have to stop the fiction of "child support." It's not about supporting children. It's the radical feminazi program of forcing men to pay and support women who have destroyed their families. It's the Seneca Falls program, allowing women to leave their husbands, destroy their marriage, and still be supported.

A man does have an obligation to support his children, and his obligation is equal to that of the mother. Both parents have concurrent co-equal 100% responsibility to support his or her child. Does that mean that one parent should ever have to pay the other? NO, it does not. To support a child you put an extra plate on your table at dinner. You put a mattress and blanket in a corner for the child to sleep at night. You provide some clothing and other necessities for the child.

Paying some bimbo who stole your child IS NOT supporting your child. For millions of years females have brought their children to the fathers for his support and protection. It is a parenting system that has worked well and our race has succeeded and become dominate. The radical feminazi experiment is both badly unfair and willfully hurts all the children involved. It uses children as pawns in a game of extortion. It uses and abuses children to allow females who have broken their marriage vows and destroyed their families to be paid for doing so.

In addition, the female also has concurrent 100% responsibility to support her child. If she was not able to support her child she had no business creating one, and she ought to be held responsible for her actions. She had sole and exclusive legal choice to create the child, "a woman's right to choose." She should be held morally and legally responsible for the results of her decisions. After a century and a half of feminists, all women, demanding "equality" it's high time to demand that they take equal responsibility for their decisions, and be held accountable, as any man would be. If SHE decides to make a child, SHE bears 100% responsibility for her decision. The father also has co-equal responsibly to support his child, but in no way does his responsibility relieve her of her responsibility. SHE is 100% responsible to support her child. If she can not, or will not, support her child let her bring the child to his father and beg for his support as females have been doing for millions of years. That system worked. The radical social experiment in slavery of men to pay women for breaking up families does not and can not work. It's high time it be recognized as the monumental social failure that it is and completely abandoned.

The radical experiment called "absentee child support" can not be fixed by adjusting the formula for pay to a more equitable formula. You can't make wrong into right by doing wrong more effectively. A mountain of research shows that children taken from their father's care by divorcing or single mothers badly hurts children. Every decent person who cares about children needs to become aware and demand that this radical social experiment be ended before another generation of children is hurt.

Steps to support families help children and improve life.
1. Strongly encourage the continuation of marriage by awarding residential custody preference to the parent who wants to keep the family together, as defined by the parent who didn't file for a divorce.
2. Strongly encourage the continuation of marriage by eliminating payments for breaking up marriages under "child support," "alimony," or any other legal euphemism. 3. Provide strong social stigmatization to single mothers who bear bastards. Stop making bastards a manner of earning a living for uneducated women.
4. Outlaw the creation of bastards by artificial fertility clinics. (See Bob's essay on Frankenstein Kids)
5. Recognize that "support" for a child means a plate at dinner, not being forced to "pay" someone else to support the child.
6. Recognize the 100% co-equal responsibility of the mother to support her children.
7. End all "absentee child support" laws. No parent should be forced to "pay" the other parent because both are fully responsible.
8. Scale back the dependency of children by allowing youth to work when they are able and desire to do so.
9. Encourage females to take their children to the father for his support as females have done for millions of years.
10. End the debtor's prisons and release the hundreds of thousands of men now in prison for failure to "pay" the female who destroyed his family.
11. End laws on "custody" awards and stop court custody decisions after divorce. Every child has a fundamental human right to both natural parents. Any "custody" decision violates the rights of the child -- who is not getting divorced from either parent. 12. Eliminate persecution of fathers for "kidnapping" their children. You can not "kidnap" your own child.
13. Dismantle the state bureaucracy that feeds on the backs of fathers struggling to survive in the social slavery called "child support."
14. Tar and feather any judge or elected official who hurts children and families by willfully supporting the insanity of "absentee child support."

Bob
 
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The State Matriarchy
Enforced Destruction of Society and Marriage by Feminist Ideology
 
More on Fathers' Rights: The State Matriarchy

May 24, 2005


by Paul C. Robbins, Ph.D.
Under the current system of family law, fathers typically lose their children in return for financing the destruction of their own families. When the system fails to work as promised, fathers are blamed and put in jail. But the system is at fault, not fathers. The system makes it far too easy for mom to expel dad, keep the children, and force him to pay for her decisions using the police power of the state.

The theory behind the system holds that the traditional family and marriage can be destroyed with acceptable consequences, as long as mom gets the kids and dad (or the taxpayers) can be forced to pay.

Feminist sociologist Stephanie Coontz presents a version of this theory in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial. According to Coontz, over the past decade "the number of families headed by single mothers rose five times faster than the number of married-couple families"and "the number of couples living together unmarried increased by more than 70 percent" but several negative trends decreased during this same time. She attributes this decrease in part to more dads paying their child support, then argues that "it doesn't help today's diverse families to be told their children are doomed unless they can shoehorn themselves into a traditional marriage."

Maybe not, but would Ms. Coontz make the same arguments if "diverse families" were routinely created by fathers expelling mothers from the family home and then forcing these mothers to pay child support under threat of jail? I doubt it.

And despite the rosy tone of her piece, she concludes that "there is much left to work on" and that "divorced and unwed parents" (read "single mothers") need advice on effective parenting, job training, more education, and high-quality daycare.

In other words, more government programs. This is the hallmark of the system that I call "state matriarchy": the creation of single-mother families followed by calls for more government programs to help those families. We are assured the problem is not single-mother families; the problem is a government that doesn't do enough to help these families.

So why shouldn't government spend massive amounts of money on welfare, daycare, and training programs for single-mother families? And why shouldn't the government expend even more money to round up fathers and put them in jail?

Because to do so requires the government to spend massive amounts on welfare, daycare, and training programs for single-mother families, then expend even more money to round up fathers and put them in jail.

Until recently, few political powers had either the means or the will to do so. Especially since there was a much simpler and less costly alternative: fathers. And especially since there was a very simple way to give children fathers: marriage.

Marriage was an agreement based on an exchange: roughly, his ability to provide for her ability to have children. Marriage was the central agreement in a system of agreements that made families possible. Without this system of agreements, reproduction took place at will, with children likely left in the care of the mother, creating a de facto matriarchy. No man knew who his children were and thus had no reason to undertake their care, making family formation impossible. Marriage was the solution to the problem of de facto matriarchy, the solution adopted independently by every major civilization.

The current system of family law is creating what might be called "state-mandated" or "state-imposed" matriarchy (or simply "state matriarchy" for short). Historically, matriarchies fail, but in a theory a matriarchy can be made to work with sufficient use of government force and money.

In a state matriarchy, the children belong to the mother but the state is responsible for supporting those children, either indirectly, by forcing absent fathers to support those children (child support), or directly, by using tax monies (welfare and other government programs). The ideological foundation for the state matriarchy is modern feminism, which opposes both traditional marriage and to fathers' rights but favors expanded welfare and child support enforcement programs.

In the state matriarchy, marriage is not an agreement based on a mutually beneficial exchange. It is merely a "no-fault" contract that serves as the legal pretext for a divorce in which mom usually gets the kids and dad gets a support order. Marriage and fatherhood thus become unilateral obligations for the man, who can expect little in return.

The state matriarchy presumes a custodial mother financially supports her children–she's innocent until proven guilty. The state matriarchy presumes the absent dad does not financially support his children–he's guilty until proven innocent.

And if for some reason the father cannot be forced to support the children, the state does so using tax revenues, aligning taxpayers against fathers–after all, if he doesn't support the children, the taxpayers must. A divorced or unmarried father thus becomes public enemy number one.

The state matriarchy gives women rights and powers that can be exercised arbitrarily and without accountability: the unilateral right to decide if children are born (abortion), the power to divorce their husbands at will (no-fault divorce), the right to retain the children when they divorce (sole mother custody), the power to force fathers and men to pay for reproductive decisions made unilaterally by women (child support), and the right to lie about the paternity of their children (paternity fraud)..

It also gives women a number of ancillary rights: the right to preferred treatment in academia (Title IX), the right to preferred treatment in employment (affirmative action and sexual harassment laws), the right to remove their husbands at will (restraining orders), the right to have their husbands arrested at will (domestic violence laws), and the right to refuse marital relations within a marriage (marital rape laws).

Men have no legal say over abortion, can file for no-fault divorce but will likely lose their children and property, are less likely to graduate from college, find it difficult to get restraining orders against wives, will likely be arrested themselves if they file a domestic violence complaint, and can be jailed for failing to support another man's children under default judgments and "presumption of paternity" statutes.

The state matriarchy makes marriage and motherhood an easy game for women to win, but makes marriage and fatherhood a game very difficult for men to win. And when men do lose that game, to offer them no way out. Tragically, some men do find a way out: suicide. Sometimes suicide preceded by homicide.

The feminists provided much of the anti-male and anti-marriage ideological impetus for the state matriarchy, but they could not have created it without the help of judges and elected officials. How did they get judges and elected officials to help? By portraying women as poor helpless victims abused and brutalized by ruthless men, like the hapless heroines of old-time melodramas. The politicians and judges fell over themselves running to their rescue.

The dominant cultural narratives of the state matriarchy are two: the noble, virtuous single mom and the "deadbeat dad." In these cultural narratives, single moms are bravely struggling to raise their children, saintly victims of circumstance and scumbag dads who abandoned them. (In fact, most single mothers today are single by choice.) Her counterpart is the "deadbeat dad" who walked out on his family and now refuses to support them. (In fact, most divorced dads are legally expelled from their families against their wills.)

If these narrative don't work, a third one is hauled out: domestic violence. According to this narrative, husbands routinely batter their wives as a way to impose patriarchal dominance.

These narratives are told over and over again by politicians and social commentators and even pro-marriage groups. Any facts that don't fit within these two narratives are denied or ignored. These two polarizing narratives define the social context in which social policy is defined. Fathers can expect few rights within the social policies defined by these two narratives.

Any human rights fathers might have--such as the right to their own children, to their own property, or to their own liberty–get in the way of the state matriarchy's authority to determine the "best interests" of the children and force fathers to pay for its determinations. And certainly, the state matriarchy does not grant men the same reproductive rights as women, for that would really muck up the system.

So what's wrong with state-mandated matriarchy?

The system is unfair to children, depriving them of their rights to a father. Fatherless children suffer numerous disadvantages compared to children with fathers. Even Stephanie Coontz recognizes that being fatherless is a risk factor for teens.

It is inimical to human rights, depriving men of their rights to their children, their own property, and often their liberty. It discourages men from marrying and becoming fathers.

Its power is virtually unchecked. Women are rewarded for using its power. Men can avoid marriage, fatherhood, and sexual relations with women, but few will do so. The state matriarchy counts on women being able to find men to have sex with it. Women usually do.

It cannot deliver on what it promises. In theory, it promises women the social and sexual freedom of being single while retaining both their children and the economic benefits of marriage. After all, if mom has the children, she can demand support from dad in the name of the children.

But that is a promise made by the state to women on behalf of men. The state does not ask men what they promised women; it simply jails men if they fail to deliver on the promises it made to women on their behalf.

Some would reply that single moms don't have it all that great. Look at all the child support that isn't paid, how many divorced moms struggle. Why, being a single mom is practically synonymous with being a victim. But that is simply another argument against the system–it makes victims of single moms because it cannot deliver on what it has promised.

Victim moms, jailed dads, fatherless kids. That is what the state matriarchy delivers.

So what can we do?

While I support a number of changes, including presumptive joint custody, if I were to make one change, it would be the following: return to the practice of treating marriage as an agreement between two parties. That means that the two parties should have the right to define the agreement in advance. It is my view that neither party would enter an agreement that assures they will be treated unfairly in the event of a divorce.

A pre-defined marriage contract would be broad in many aspects, but definite about what happens if one or both parties wants to dissolve the contract. The role of the government would be limited to enforcing the contract as written if either party seeks to end the contract. Either party could request a trial by jury, limiting the power of judges to decide the matter based on unwritten social policies or the judge's opinion of the "best interests" of the children.

Under current no-fault divorce laws, a divorce court does not enforce the original marriage contract. It enforces the only right provided by the contract: the right of one or both parties to break the marriage contract. Divorce judges do not care who kept or did not keep the terms of the marriage contract because the contract had no terms; the only term it defined was the right to divorce. Judges simply decide who gets the spoils of the marriage using their own criteria, in effect defining the terms of the contract ex post facto, after the fact. Both parties should be able to know and define the terms of the marriage contract in advance.

Yes, private marriage contracts take the romance out of falling in love and getting married, but they're better than placing one's life, children, and livelihood in the hands of a biased family court judge. And they would begin to dismantle the state matriarchy, wherein the rule of law is replaced by the rule of a woman's will, backed by the police power of the state.

I have no problem with society expecting fathers to meet their responsibilities to their children. But society in turn must protect fathers' rights to the care and custody of their children. That is a fair an equitable arrangement, not unaccountable judicial power backed up by unaccountable state power in the service of divisive social theories.

A society that fails to protect a father's rights loses the moral authority to demand he comply with his responsibilities.
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5 Reasons Why Christians Should Not Obtain a State Marriage License

by Pastor Matt Trewhella

Every year thousands of Christians amble down to their local county courthouse and obtain a marriage license from the State in order to marry their future spouse. They do this unquestioningly. They do it because their pastor has told them to go get one, and besides, "everybody else gets one." This pamphlet attempts to answer the question - why should we not get one?

1. The definition of a "license" demands that we not obtain one to marry. Black’s Law Dictionary defines "license" as, "The permission by competent authority to do an act which without such permission, would be illegal."  We need to ask ourselves- why should it be illegal to marry without the State’s permission? More importantly, why should we need the State’s permission to participate in something which God instituted (Gen. 2:18-24)? We should not need the State’s permission to marry nor should we grovel before state officials to seek it. What if you apply and the State says "no"? You must understand that the authority to license implies the power to prohibit. A license by definition "confers a right" to do something. The State cannot grant the right to marry. It is a God-given right.

 

2. When you marry with a marriage license, you grant the State jurisdiction over your marriage. When you marry with a marriage license, your marriage is a creature of the State. It is a corporation of the State! Therefore, they have jurisdiction over your marriage including the fruit of your marriage. What is the fruit of your marriage? Your children and every piece of property you own. There is plenty of case law in American jurisprudence which declares this to be true.

In 1993, parents were upset here in Wisconsin because a test was being administered to their children in the government schools which was very invasive of the family’s privacy. When parents complained, they were shocked by the school bureaucrats who informed them that their children were required to take the test by law and that they would have to take the test because they (the government school) had jurisdiction over their children. When parents asked the bureaucrats what gave them jurisdiction, the bureaucrats answered, "your marriage license and their birth certificates." Judicially, and in increasing fashion, practically, your state marriage license has far-reaching implications.

3. When you marry with a marriage license, you place yourself under a body of law which is immoral. By obtaining a marriage license, you place yourself under the jurisdiction of Family Court which is governed by unbiblical and immoral laws. Under these laws, you can divorce for any reason. Often, the courts side with the spouse who is in rebellion to God, and castigates the spouse who remains faithful by ordering him or her not to speak about the Bible or other matters of faith when present with the children.

As a minister, I cannot in good conscience perform a marriage which would place people under this immoral body of laws. I also cannot marry someone with a marriage license because to do so I have to act as an agent of the State!  I would have to sign the marriage license, and I would have to mail it into the State. Given the State’s demand to usurp the place of God and family regarding marriage, and given it’s unbiblical, immoral laws to govern marriage, it would be an act of treason for me to do so.

4. The marriage license invades and removes God-given parental authority. When you read the Bible, you see that God intended for children to have their father’s blessing regarding whom they married. Daughters were to be given in marriage by their fathers (Dt. 22:16; Ex. 22:17; I Cor. 7:38). We have a vestige of this in our culture today in that the father takes his daughter to the front of the altar and the minister asks, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?"

Historically, there was no requirement to obtain a marriage license in colonial America. When you read the laws of the colonies and then the states, you see only two requirements for marriage. First, you had to obtain your parents permission to marry, and second, you had to post public notice of the marriage 5-15 days before the ceremony.

Notice you had to obtain your parents permission. Back then you saw godly government displayed in that the State recognized the parents authority by demanding that the parents permission be obtained. Today, the all-encompassing ungodly State demands that their permission be obtained to marry.

By issuing marriage licenses, the State is saying, "You don’t need your parents permission, you need our permission." If parents are opposed to their child’s marrying a certain person and refuse to give their permission, the child can do an end run around the parents authority by obtaining the State’s permission, and marry anyway. This is an invasion and removal of God-given parental authority by the State.

5. When you marry with a marriage license, you are like a polygamist. From the State’s point of view, when you marry with a marriage license, you are not just marrying your spouse, but you are also marrying the State.

The most blatant declaration of this fact that I have ever found is a brochure entitled "With This Ring I Thee Wed." It is found in county courthouses across Ohio where people go to obtain their marriage licenses. It is published by the Ohio State Bar Association. The opening paragraph under the subtitle "Marriage Vows" states, "Actually, when you repeat your marriage vows you enter into a legal contract. There are three parties to that contract. 1.You; 2. Your husband or wife, as the case may be; and 3. the State of Ohio."

See, the State and the lawyers know that when you marry with a marriage license, you are not just marrying your spouse, you are marrying the State! You are like a polygamist! You are not just making a vow to your spouse, but you are making a vow to the State and your spouse.  You are also giving undue jurisdiction to the State.

When Does the State Have Jurisdiction Over a Marriage?

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. Unfortunately, the State now allows divorce for any reason, and it does not prosecute for adultery.

In either case, divorce or crime, a marriage license is not necessary for the courts to determine whether a marriage existed or not. What is needed are witnesses. This is why you have a best man and a maid of honor.  They should sign the marriage certificate in your family Bible, and the wedding day guest book should be kept.

Marriage was instituted by God, therefore it is a God-given right. According to Scripture, it is to be governed by the family, and the State only has jurisdiction in the cases of divorce or crime.

History of Marriage Licenses in America

 

George Washington was married without a marriage license.  So, how did we come to this place in America where marriage licenses are issued?

Historically, all the states in America had laws outlawing the marriage of blacks and whites. In the mid-1800’s, certain states began allowing interracial marriages or miscegenation as long as those marrying received a license from the state. In other words they had to receive permission to do an act which without such permission would have been illegal.

Blacks Law Dictionary points to this historical fact when it defines "marriage license" as, "A license or permission granted by public authority to persons who intend to intermarry." "Intermarry" is defined in Black’s Law Dictionary as, "Miscegenation; mixed or interracial marriages."

Give the State an inch and they will take a 100 miles (or as one elderly woman once said to me "10,000 miles.") Not long after these licenses were issued, some states began requiring all people who marry to obtain a marriage license. In 1923, the Federal Government established the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act (they later established the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act). By 1929, every state in the Union had adopted marriage license laws.

What Should We Do?

Christian couples should not be marrying with State marriage licenses, nor should ministers be marrying people with State marriage licenses. Some have said to me, "If someone is married without a marriage license, then they aren’t really married." Given the fact that states may soon legalize same-sex marriages, we need to ask ourselves, "If a man and a man marry with a State marriage license, and a man and woman marry without a State marriage license - who’s really married? Is it the two men with a marriage license, or the man and woman without a marriage license? In reality, this contention that people are not really married unless they obtain a marriage license simply reveals how Statist we are in our thinking. We need to think biblically.  (As for homosexuals marrying, outlaw sodomy as God's law demands, and there will be no threat of sodomites marrying.)

You should not have to obtain a license from the State to marry someone anymore than you should have to obtain a license from the State to be a parent, which some in academic and legislative circles are currently pushing to be made law.

When I marry a couple, I always buy them a Family Bible which contains birth and death records, and a marriage certificate. We record the marriage in the Family Bible. What’s recorded in a Family Bible will stand up as legal evidence in any court of law in America. Early Americans were married without a marriage license. They simply recorded their marriages in their Family Bibles. So should we.

(Pastor Trewhella has been marrying couples without marriage licenses for ten years. Many other pastors also refuse to marry couples with State marriage licenses.)

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/safranek1.html

 

Free Forty Million Americans: Privatize Marriage
Or When Premises Collide

  
Civilization is built upon the family. It is the primary relationship within which all values are transmitted to future generations. From the family grows the clan and the tribe, and ultimately the city and the state. Although this idea of the beginning of the state may not be recognized in the 21st century, the concept of marriage and family is at the heart of a political and social debate throughout America and beyond.
Debate about marriage is necessary because its costs and consequences impact all of us. It is at once the most personal and the most public of acts. In the debate about marriage, those who stand for "traditional" marriage and those who want to adjust that term to modern times all work within a worldview that places the state at the heart of the debate. Into that debate we must inject the view that persons, and voluntary groups of persons should not have their behavior mandated by the state.
The failure to allow voluntary organizations to help manage marriage is perhaps understandable, but it is the core source of many of the problems we confront today.
Marriage is an ancient institution; like all human institutions it works best when the parties involved know that their various investments will be respected and the intention of the marriage contract enforced. This is the essence of "purposeful behavior" as viewed by economists such as Murray Rothbard.
We do not willingly invest in relationships or businesses if we do not have a reasonable expectation that our investment will be safe and realize the type and kind of profit we expect. Through most of human history marriage has been the institution that was used to ensure the safety of the children and the perpetuation of subsequent generations; an expensive endeavor. The idea of natural rights was not at issue, marriage was originally formed before any known system of philosophy and before any understanding of the causality described through economics. Indeed, it was marriage that gave rise to economics not vice versa.
The current chaos surrounding marriage cannot be resolved by more state action. Instead, if the state uncouples itself from marriage and allows persons to be "purposeful" actors in marriage, many of the problems with marriage will be resolved.
Marriage is an institution in which humans invest enormous capital; it is therefore important that those investments be protected. Indeed, marriage may be for some an investment that will last for more than 50 years. Consequently, like long terms bonds on public works projects, stable expectations are critical. The term capital here cannot be narrowly conscripted as cash or its equivalents. Instead, capital is the entire process in which persons invest themselves.
Marriage involves three critical personal, social and legal aspects all of which are "capital" investments for those entering marriage. First, marriage always includes a series of agreements and compromises between the two or more persons involved in a marriage projecting into the distant future (contract). Second, marriage naturally gives rise to the birth of children who must be nurtured by the parents (children). Third, marriage may involve the most intimate joining of two persons who have become one (commitment or covenant creating a status). All three of these elements, contract, children and covenant, have long been considered part of marriage in America. Historically, the law was arranged to promote and protect these three aspects of marriage.
A variety of laws promote and protect these aspects of marriage. Children born within a year of the death of a husband are legitimate heirs (children). No person even has the ability to disprove this fact except the mother. Children born within marriage are the children of the parties. An outsider does not have the power to prove otherwise (covenant). Spouses cannot testify against each other even if one of them wants to do so (covenant). Adults must give consent to be married (contract). A party to the marriage can terminate it in the state in which they reside (covenant as status). Some or all of these three aspects of marriage are generally intended in and created in every marriage.
Because the present state model takes no account of covenant, externalizes the value of children and asserts its own view of the contract, marriages fail at exceedingly high rates.
To understand why this is taking place we must examine how this happened.
For centuries the Catholic Church was the arbiter of the dissolution of marriage in Europe. Marriage was a life time commitment. At that time, all three elements of marriage were specifically recognized legally and therefore dissolution of marriage was limited to those instances when a real covenant was not seen to have occurred at the moment of consent, i.e. an annulment was given. When England broke with the Catholic Church, the long established and considered rules created by the Catholic Church were largely followed. These rules were essential in such an age. Without stable rules surrounding marriage, the most valuable things a parent could leave a child or spouse, real property, would be destabilized. And, since the descent of such property was largely based upon relationship to an heir, marriage was important. Henry VIII could have sired a child in many ways. However, only in marriage could he sire a legitimate heir with real property and inheritance rights.
By the time America freed itself from English rule, America did not control the dissolution of marriage through a particular church. Practices of marriage dissolution, such as those followed by the Puritan Church, were giving way to civil solutions. In America marriage dissolution was early on considered a matter of legislative power, i.e. a "bill of divorce" was granted.
This public route was deemed necessary in early America because marriage was considered a public good and therefore its dissolution needed to be for the common good. This idea, collectivist in nature, denied to individuals their contract right and ignored the covenant many had made. However, its purpose was clear – to protect other citizens from having to care for children or a spouse unable to care for themselves. As typically occurs, the creation of this "public good" led to the sense that all incidents of marriage were completely under state control – ignoring economics and natural rights. The rights of any persons joined in marriage were deemed to be state issues.
The consequences of this state model are perfectly predictable. When racial discrimination was a central part of politics, states prohibited persons of different races from marrying. When the eugenics movement swept across America, criminals and those deemed unfit were prevented from marrying or were sterilized to prevent their "breeding."
Marriage’s legacy in America has therefore been one of complete state control of marriage and its incidents. Although Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published just as the Revolution was beginning in 1776; the Austrian understanding of human action works made no impact on this issue and still is absent today. Instead of human action and choice, the heavy hand of legislation is the only tool used to shape marriage.
The importance of human choice has never been revisited in such a way as to reveal the conflict of premises between individual choices and state mandated ones. The fallacy that the state knows the good of two persons as a "public good," and the popularity of utility theory, tools for wealth transfer, were gaining acceptance.
By the middle of the 1800's America had placed divorce in the hands of the courts and approximately 100 years later in the 1960's, beginning in California "no-fault" divorce swept through America. Both state court determinations – based upon "fault" and "no-fault" – ignore the principles upon which American government was founded; the right of the individual to determine for themselves what forms and contracts best served their needs.
Interestingly, although divorce has gone through these different stages, marriage – the allowance of it and what it means to people and who could perform it – have been quite stable. Most people knew what was expected; most honored the commitment because of the social and personal costs of failing to do so. Common law marriage has been known since time immemorial. In order to eliminate the need to "prove" that a marriage had occurred, states increasingly disallow "common law marriage" and require a license to be married. This is one of those innovations made for the benefit of proof – nothing is considered a better piece of evidence than a signed license registered by the state. Such licenses are remarkably easy and inexpensive to obtain. Furthermore, the actual marriage can be witnessed by a variety of persons including priests and ministers. The "marriage" laws of most states encompass a few short statutes setting forth age and relationship limitations. These limitations go to the ability of the individual to make informed choices before an agreed age and to cultural values common to nearly all human cultures.
Today marriage – the legal creation of the state of being married – through a license is one of the easiest legal events of great significance.
The ease with which marriage is contracted fails to make participants aware of the weight and significance of the contract they are signing.
Dealing with problems upon the dissolution of marriage or disputes that may arise even within marriage can be incredibly complex. The more a marriage actually encompasses contract, children and covenant, the more difficult a dissolution is to manage. Because the raising of children is complex, a vast array of laws and supervision is required when dissolution of such marriages occur. Covenant and contract are also complex. "No-fault" dealt with those complex realities by imposing a one size legal norm – contract and covenant are of no legal importance. It was the imposition of a Soviet Standard much like the USSR handled the production of clothing in the 50s; one size, one color, and it hardly fits anyone. But some profit from this apparatus – state divorce courts have grown to prodigious levels, an array of social workers, therapists and other "experts" are enriched by the divorce bonanza ushered through state divorce gates. These courts and these experts hold virtually every family in their jurisdiction in complete control – their judgments can be disturbed only upon a showing of an abuse of discretion. The inscription on those courthouses should read like the inscription on the gates Dante places at the entrance to Hell, "abandon all hope, ye that enter there."
In dissolution proceedings no-fault generally takes account only of the financial aspects of contracts. Labor, sacrifice, and the complete giving necessary for marriage are deemed a gift to the marriage and cannot be compensated. Yet, when, as is necessary, a woman relinquishes a job in order to have children and care for them, the foregone financial opportunity of the wife is not compensated for by the husband who agreed to have children. The countless acts of self-sacrifice necessary to a good marriage are deemed of no importance by the law.
When one party files for divorce that party cancels the covenant and any long term agreements. The life the couple has lived is deemed essentially "even" no matter how much fault is involved. Promises made and promises broken are of no merit.
No-fault was instituted in the 1960's on the promise of making a painful process easier. The argument in favor of those laws was straightforward: people are getting divorced; requiring people to prove fault or to fight each other over the incidents of marriage was messy (besides some people were making up "fault" in order to get divorced); simple, clear rules will make it easy for those who want to get divorced to get divorced; therefore we should have no-fault divorce. This message resonated throughout legal America and led to a simplification of divorce laws. However, this simplification failed to take into account many facts about marriage and how divorce and marriage affect society.
While jettisoning the notion of fault, legislators ignored the underlying premises on which marriage law rested. Instead of contract, children and covenant, marriage was seen as a choice to be unchosen at any time – no questioned asked. In so doing, no-fault ensured that the purposive activity necessary for healthy marriages was valued as nothing. Both natural law and Austrian economics can predict the outcome of such laws.
Anytime individuals engaged in ongoing relationships can retain their profits and sever their liabilities, the motivation to do so is great. Human nature being what it is; no-fault divorce provided a justification for the least ethical to take and even secret assets and depart. Moreover, its very structure encouraged even those who were ethical to be less so by rewarding fault and bad faith.
No-fault divorce has worked as promised for those who bring little into a marriage, commit little in the marriage itself and have no children. In such marriages – marriage as simple barter – the divide the goods in half and send the adults on their way mentality serves the ends sought by the proponents of no-fault divorce. Indeed, parties to such marriages often consent to the dissolution in a short hearing, sharing the minimal filing fees. This simplicity has allowed many to treat marriage as a frivolous Las Vegas event that can be dissolved when seen in the sobering light of main street USA; but in so doing it has allowed us to confuse completely different types of marriages. Vegas marriages hold little capital and so couples were never at risk of loss during the marriage.
Yet, good stable marriages and the raising of children require huge risk. Marriages that involve children, contract and covenant are nevertheless treated legally in the same manner as the Las Vegas marriage. Because the law treats marriage as no-fault, but because people recognize that marriage involves covenant, contract and may involve children, rational people are discouraged from marrying. Other rational people who enter marriage do not have children and do not take risks – thereby ensuring that the marriage will never be capable of becoming what it can become. Moreover, those who do not want covenant, contract or children are actually encouraged to marry – no-fault says you have a free way out. Given these three rational responses, divorce rates have predictably risen.
When states adopted no-fault dissolution laws, they failed to account for the ability of the law to shape attitudes and actions. Nobody was prepared for the tsunami of broken families swept into domestic courts or the assets gobbled up by courts, attorneys and other forms of loss. The legislatures came up with an idea and applied it to America's families without even considering that those families deserved at least as much consideration as a rare species of lizard. No one thought of mandating an Family Environment Impact Report. Nobody thought of even preserving a few families in Human Life parks or Zoos where traditional marriages could be observed.
Theory was applied directly to the lives of millions and the theory, unexamined for the potential impact, ignored the reality of a marriage as a vehicle for holding the capital investment of two individuals making a shared investment unique to that couple. In fact, no contract built on a collectivist model can work for any specific couple.
Virtually nobody predicted that countless marriages involving children would dissolve. Nobody predicted that numerous long time marriages that appeared happy to everyone and to one of the spouses would end in dissolution. Nobody predicted that nearly 50% of all marriages would fail. No-fault created a devastating legal reality – marriage was no longer attached to contract, commitment or children. Instead, marriage was about autonomous fulfillment that could be judged by either spouse at any time in the marriage.
As marriage continues to be shaped, society itself will be reshaped to deal with the new situations created by these new realities. What the "no-fault" proponents failed to recognize, the new marriage proponents fail to recognize all the more – marriage is easy, the consequences of marriage including its dissolution are not. Marriage as mandated by the State today destroys the capital of trust, embeds deceit and mangles lives.
Throughout America, hundreds of thousands of cases are managed by divorce "judges" and social workers who must monitor custody, visitation and support of minor children. Putting that kind of power into the hands of individuals who are all too human invited abuse and such abuse has become endemic. The number of divorce and custody cases has reached dizzying heights. Even the direct costs of this tsunami are staggering.
In Michigan, a majority of all the active civil cases in state courts involve marriage dissolution. Some statistics show that the direct cost of divorce is $350 per family/year. But the present and future indirect costs dwarf this figure: costs borne by parties for lawyers, lost worker productivity, increased crime activity, increased mental illness and a host of unknown consequences. The public – even those who choose not to marry, and those who choose to marry with commitment and children – bear these costs.
Antagonism and distrust across gender lines and within families is also rising. One of the costs of no-fault divorce is the very fabric of family trust and continuity.
It need not be so. Nothing prevents the state from loosening its control over marriage and a movement for reform in the direction of individual rights and intermediate institutions is both needed and developing.
One of the most important and beneficial ways marriage reform can occur is to allow individuals to choose their own private marriage contract – along with the means, outside of the State, to mediate and enforce that contract.
One such movement could take place within Catholic and Jewish churches. Both of these institutions have established courts and procedures to deal with marriage issues. The TrueMarriage project is currently encouraging Catholics and others to establish clear agreements and procedures to adjudicate marriage issues.
Because the variety of commitments often involve concepts specific to certain faith communities, the state must allow alternative dispute mechanisms in those communities. This is a natural role for churches, which have always been a source of stability in the lives of individuals. These organizations would judge the marriage that the party entered. Thus, those who want a Baptist marriage could agree to be bound by the standards of a chosen Baptist denomination. Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, and other religious groups could do the same. Moreover, a variety of private institutions could develop forms and standards to satisfy the needs of other people. And, those who like the state system could continue to choose nothing at all, though I suspect those so choosing would be few. Such freedom would ensure that the state is not imposing its Vegas concept of "marriage" on those who marry. Instead, the parties to the marriage, like all who enter significant contractual relationships, could create a contextualized process resolving disputes that arise in the relationship.
Perhaps the most difficult issue in the development of such institutions is cost. Each organization would have to develop a pricing mechanism for those entering marriage in order to "insure" for marital disputes. The actual costs of dissolution and costs of monitoring a divorce or separation with children would be difficult to fully calculate. But it could be done. Each organization would need to determine for itself how the cost of covenant breaking would be imposed and upon whom it would be imposed in the dissolution proceeding. To some degree, it would become clear over time which form of marriage was less expensive. However, one significant public problem remains in the marriage debate – children?
Currently, every family in America pays the cost associated with children of divorce. Not only do married and single citizens pay for the court system, they pay for the long term social costs of the dissolution. It is impossible to calculate the cost of divorce on children – to monetize it. How does one measure the effects of divorce on children over their lifetimes and the lifetime of their children? An accurate calculation could take generations.
Yet, this calculation was previously done. Previous generations – for generations and generations – thought that the costs of divorce were generally too great for society to bear. Thus, those who entered into marriage could not remove themselves from it, or could only do so in circumstances that were rare. This was the calculation done on the real costs of marriage, the costs discounted by the move to no-fault divorce. Certainly, faith communities and those willing to commit to main street marriage should not have their purposive activity ignored.
Even though the specter of "no-fault" hangs over all marriages, most Americans still believe in and want enduring marriages. Knowing that a marriage may be more difficult to destroy, and knowing that one's actions – virtuous actions oriented to achieving a lasting commitment and vicious action oriented toward breaking a commitment – have real consequences will only lead to more enduring marriage. Rewarding good conduct will encourage more of it as honorable behavior encourages trust and the investment of further relationship capital into the future.
When our investment in marriage is easily destroyed, it is natural that we reconsider whether or not marriage is purposive today. As issued by the State it is not; it is an agreement whose dissolution transfers wealth into the hands of those who have grown like barnacles on the whole system. We created these encrusted constituencies because we failed to use the principles of natural rights and the insights gained from an informed understanding of how markets impact human choice.
Strong marriages, even more than well run prosperous businesses, provide the capital for a more stable and prosperous future for all of us. Through our choices, given the freedom to choose, we can ensure that the stable family life that so many want is within their reach.
No excuse exists for allowing a state structure of divorce – worthy of the former Soviet bloc – to limit what is arguably the most purposive human activity.
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Marriage Strike
 
This is an anti-feminist blog for eternal bachelors, us sensible guys who have decided that marriage is a losing proposition here in the Matriarchal West, whereby saying "I do" means giving a woman the ability to strip you of your assets, children, home and future earnings.
Feminism has ruined the West, totally knackered in relationships between men and women, and made a lot of people - primarily women, ironically enough - thoroughly miserable. So make the best of things! Join the Marriage Strike, tell modern Western Women to get lost and live for yourself.
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The Presumption Against Marriage
No writer that I know, and I am absolutely no exception, has the right to speak as an authority for all men.  No matter what I say about honor and pride, some guy somewhere is going to spend his last dime on a dominatrix or propose to a coke whore.  There’s no getting around it.  It’s a fact.  We can quibble and pretend dominated males are exceptions, but there are legions of guys out there who will put up with any abuse that a woman sends their way.  That being said, I would like to address this column to those not pining for the submissive’s chair or anxiously awaiting a girl on a white horse who’ll allow them to pay off her car note and college loan without saying thank you.  
The fundamental question is, “Should a man nowadays get married at all?” 
My take on the issue is that the appropriateness of marriage has to be determined on a case by case basis but that presumption, in this day and age, should always be against marriage.  To put it more simply, the tie cannot go to the runner.  Men, when in doubt, walk away.  If you have serious reservations about a woman and you marry her, a number of things may happen.  One of them is good.  Your negative intuition could turn out to be wrong and you’ll end up having a wonderful, blissful life with your bride.  Unfortunately, lots of bad things could happen as well:
1. Your intuition was right and she divorces you.  She thereby acquires half, if not
all, of your assets and possessions.  The state is thoroughly biased against men and seems to have no threshold for its love of male suffering.  This is a very real and tragic possibility.
2. Your intuition is right and she’s unreliable.  You experience strange men calling the house and hanging up should you be the one to reach the phone first.
3. Your intuition is right as your experiment with paying for her college education ends in her befriending evil radical feminists who call the house and scream “rapist” at you as a greeting.  They then follow up this pleasantry with asking if their “play kitty” is home.
4. Your intuition is right and she spends money like a gay party boy on Fire Island leading you slowly but gaily into Chapter 7.
5. Your wonderful children get aborted as she decides they’d take up too much time during the day.
6. You spend all your free time with her at the mall or, far worse, with her family and friends.
Well, you see my point.  It’s bad scenario a-go-go.  So, in the spirit of the boss from the film “Casino”: “Why take a chance?”
That’s easy for me to dismissively say, but then there’s tons of dopes like this writer who are smart enough to know better but then get married anyway.  When I got engaged at Christmas time, Eric Ericson emailed me and said something to the effect of, “Have you lost your mind?”
As it turned out, I had not.  I sanely and soberly weighed the pros versus the cons and determined that this particular woman was unlike all the others I had met and that she gave me the best chance of fulfilling my dream of fathering a couple of little critters and having a faithful, intelligent person as a partner.  Yet, even with such a rational determinations made in advance, the situation changed and in April I found myself in the midst of an ugly soap opera on which I turned out to be only a temporary, non-recurring character.  I was written out of the series before summer hit.  For the future, I’ve decided, that unless its near-perfect, there is no way I’ll get engaged again.
My decision is not respected by many of the women I know who attempt to use what I call “shame-based” therapy as a means of coercing guys like me into finding a wife.  I am at the point where I can vigorously beat back their attempts to manipulate me, but I thought I’d share my responses with the reader in the hopes that my words can be of benefit in case they encounter similar harassment. 
First, I say that the situation had changed with men and women.  It used to be that when a man got married, he got a deal.  A woman would remain faithful to him or, at the very least, cook and clean for him.  You’d get something in exchange for what you brought to the table.  Today, men get very little in comparison with the past.  I have met no end of women who ask in advance if I cook because they themselves do not.  When I tell them that I cook every day, they are quite impressed (although I leave out my belief that pre-made salads, brats, and pizza are the height of fine dining). 
Promiscuity is another issue.  The promiscuity of the modern female makes marriage a very dubious proposition indeed.  Who the heck wants to marry a girl that’s had more sleeping partners than a bed at the Motel 6?  Not me, that’s for sure.  I’d rather die a cold and lonely death than marry a skank; Paul Craig Roberts produced a magnificent column on this phenomenon a few years ago.  I’ve never understood the argument that “all their experiences make them good in bed,” either.  If they’re attractive, how good do they have to be?  If you ask me, no amount of tricks she’s learned can make up for huge “Tyrone” that her ex-boyfriend had tattooed upon her back (and he was smart enough not to marry her).  
Another huge factor to me is the obesity epidemic.  While I acknowledge that it’s not really an epidemic by most definitions, weight increases seem to heavily affect married women.  I’m 34 years old now, and I’ve met countless females who ballooned to MGM proportions after getting hitched.  To me, this is deplorable.  I knew one who showed me a picture of her when she was 22.  She was better looking than most movie stars.  Her body was hard and trim and her face was pure allure, but by age 28 she had gained 65 pounds and wore pants that William Perry could have fit into.  I’d look at her husband sorrowfully when she talked of having children.  The act of conception with her would have required the courage of St. George.  No mere oral dose of Viagra would do.  It would require hypodermic injections to get old Bumpty into Humpity form. 
My last argument is also my most recently derived one.  If it’s at work where I’m getting harassed about my lack of romance (read: susceptibility), and it usually is, I tell them: “I have plenty of masters here.  Why do I need one at home?”  No more accurate words could be spoken.  I’m ordered to do things all day long at work.  When I get home, I want to relax.  I’m not going to waste time doing unnecessary chores or shopping for things I do not need.  The homage we domestically have to pay to our wives is outrageous.  Why are they my boss?