On Monday, the California Secretary of State's office authorized supporters of the "2010 California Marriage Protection Act" initiative to begin collecting signatures to put the initiative on the state ballot. The measure, if approved by California voters, would amend the state constitution and ban married couples for legally divorcing.
It's no coincidence the movement to ban divorce follows last November's Proposition 8 campaign and the electorates choice to constitutionally ban same sex couples from marrying. After all, anti-gay marriage forces cite the breakdown of traditional marriage as a prime reason for refusing to allow gay marriages and there's certainly no greater threat to traditional marriage than divorce.
Assuming the measure gets the required number of signatures, those folks so concerned with the sanctity of traditional marriage will have the opportunity to put their money where there mouth is. So to speak.
What? You doubt that all the folks who claim to be so concerned about upholding traditional marriage values might really vote to ban divorce? Me too. And so does John Marcotte, the initiatives sponsor.
Here's a recent CNN report on Marcotte and the initiative:
As it turns out, evangelical Christians have a higher divorce rate than other Christian faiths and significantly higher than atheists and agnostics and all that posturing about upholding traditional marriage is just a smoke screen.
Any referendum that bans divorce wouldn't pass in a single state and, most certainly not California. So when all the votes are counted and the initiative is overwhelmingly defeated with far, far fewer votes than Proposition 8 received, the exposed hypocrisy will be obvious for all to see.
But to what end? The folks who voted against Prop 8 knew full well that divorce does far more to undermine marriage than would allowing same sex marriages and that the traditional marriage argument is a hypocritical sham. It seems unlikely the conservative Christians who belligerently lecture on what constitutes "marriage" will then see the error of their ways and begin campaigning for equal marriage rights. But there is one group that could be influenced by Marcotte's initiative.
At the end of the day, gay marriage becomes legal when the majority decides it's just stupid to deny two people in love, irrespective of their gender, the right to marry one another. Getting to that majority will involve changing the mind of the more secular voter who, for whatever reason, has opposed gay marriage but whose mind might be changed by plain old common sense and exposing the bullshit anti gay marriage forces resort to in order to sell their intolerance.
Go check out the "2010 California Marriage Protection Act" website. Very clever. I particularly liked the sections called "Jesus still loves you if you get divorced — just not as much as before" and "Divorce is unnatural like polyester, glasses, and Twinkies..."
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