Note: Most of the data presented in this post is from family profiles produced by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). For brevity when referencing a family profile from the NCFMR I will use the NCFMR short name of the profile (eg FP-16-19), with a link to the profile.
Recently first divorce rates have gone down (FP-16-19), and first marriage rates have gone up (FP-16-18):
Also, while the US overall (not just first) divorce rate remained flat between 1990 and 2010, according to FP-16-21 the overall divorce rate since the US peak in 1980 (22.8) has gone down by 25%, to 16.9.
These figures are encouraging on the surface, but they leave out something catastrophic that is going on beneath the surface. Our new model of marriage simply doesn’t work for the majority of the nation, and as a result large parts of our population are increasingly avoiding it. This avoidance can take the form of delaying marriage, avoiding remarriage, or avoiding marrying altogether. The aggregate result of this avoidance means that the percentage of the adult population that is married is dramatically decreasing:
From the chart above you can see that the results are different for men verses women, as well as by race. A more detailed picture by race can bee seen by comparing the rate of first divorce (FP-16-19) and the rate of first marriage (FP-16-18) by race:
As you can see above, the women who divorce the most are also in the least demand for marriage, and this pattern is consistent across all racial and ethnic groups measured. The logic of this is intuitive, but seeing it so clearly mapped out is striking.
We can see a less clear example of this when we look at first divorce rates (FP-16-19) and first marriage rates (FP-16-18) by education:
As we would expect, the least likely group of women to divorce (college graduates) is the most in demand for marriage. However, the women with the highest divorce rates (some college) are the second most in demand for marriage. Clearly men haven’t recognized the real risk of marrying a woman with some college, and are instead assuming the risk is slightly higher than marrying a college grad. But aside from “some college” women being out of place in the marriage chart (they should be to the far right), there is another anomaly; women without a high school diploma or GED have the second lowest divorce rates, but are the least in demand for marriage. However, this represents an odd corner case, and much of what we are measuring in this category represents first generation Hispanics.
While there are some exceptions, overall the more likely a woman is to divorce the less likely she is to marry. This much is clear from the data. This leaves us with the question of what is the mechanism that is creating this pattern. It is always possible that I have the wrong end of the causal arrow, but I think the most logical answer is that men have over time become less interested in marriage where the risk of divorce is high. But even here, there is the question of the specific mechanism in play. One very popular theory is that men are individually making a cost-benefit evaluation of marriage and more and more deciding not to marry. While I think there are certainly some men who are approaching the question in such a clear headed way, I think the much more powerful mechanism has been a slow cultural shift in response to the changing risks of marriage for men.
A proposed mechanism.
Instead of men carefully researching the statistics and coming to individual conclusions, I think what is happening is each subculture is slowly responding to the new realities of marriage. Part of this is cultural knowledge, like the warning to middle class and upper middle class men that it is foolhardy to marry a working class woman, and the warning to men in general to avoid marrying a woman who already has a track record of divorce. Part of this is also about the changing sense of what is “normal”. When the divorce revolution first exploded, the men who found themselves ejected from their homes, and the sons of those men, already had formed their opinion on the nature of marriage based on a previous era. Even though the rules and risk had clearly changed, these men were slow to change their ingrained attitudes on marriage. Marriage was simply something respectable men did.
But over time, each new generation was raised with a different starting assumption on both the normalcy of marriage and its risk. This happened fastest where the change in risk was highest. In working class neighborhoods, divorce rates well over 50% meant that divorce theft, and not lifetime marriage, was the new norm. Moreover, as women continued to delay marriage, and men became less willing to marry divorced women (or even try marriage again after being ejected from their first marriage), a smaller and smaller percentage of the subculture was married at any given time. In addition, the family courts are merely the formal/legal expression of our attitudes towards married men. In the past married men were generally seen as respectable, but both the family courts and popular media make it clear that men who marry are despicable (either for being cruel to women and children or worthless fools).
In 1960 70% of white men were married, and in 1970 this had only dropped to 68%. Even in 1980, with divorce rates peaking, 65% of white men were still married. If you were white and in the middle or upper middle class, these rates were even higher. Marriage was still very much the norm, although this was becoming less and less so as each year passed. Compare this to black men, who saw the percentage of men who were married drop from 61% in 1960, to 57% in 1970, and 49% in 1980. By 1980 being unmarried was more normal for black men than being married. This continued to fall, and by 2010 only 36% of black men were married. This translates into increasing out of wedlock birth rates, and this added to the continuation of high divorce rates means that fewer and fewer children will grow up with married parents. Over time, the expectation of each generation regarding marriage has changed, but the change has been slow enough to fool many into a sense that our new marriage model isn’t failing after all.
Much of the apathy is that our elites still feel like marriage is working for them; if the changes they made to marriage have been a catastrophe for everyone else, then everyone else simply needs to become like the elites. This is a profoundly arrogant and selfish attitude, but since the elites are the ones who frame the debate about marriage there are few voices prepared to challenge this narrative.
The sexual revolution isn’t over.
But even our elites will eventually be forced to recognize the cost of redefining our family. There is a common belief that the sexual revolution started in the 1960s and ended sometime in the 1980s. While it may well have begun in the 1960s, the sexual revolution never ended. Marriage has continued to recede as each cohort marries in smaller numbers, and those who do marry wait until ever later in life to do so. While divorce rates have dropped some as marriage has become a luxury of the higher socio economic classes, each new cohort is less likely to remarry after divorce. The real sexual revolution has always been about destroying marriage, and it won’t be over until marriage is defunct as a social institution. Even if divorce rates continue to either level off or decline, marriage will continue to be something that is relevant to an ever shrinking part of the population.
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Interesting. Good post.
Susan Walsh at HUS has a post up today purporting to interpret this same study and its data. She claims that
“At the same time marriage is up, at 32.3 marriages per 1,000 women. That’s the highest rate since 2009. Marriage fell sharply during the 70s as well, from 76.5 in 1970 to about 60 in 1980.”
I don’t see how anyone can say that “marriage is up” based on the link she provided and the data in that link. Here’s the link:
http://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/hemez-marriage-rate-us-geo-2015-fp-16-22.html
Info from the link:
“The marriage rate *** has been stable since 2010, remaining at a 45-year low.”
“The marriage rate decreased by 47% in 1980 (61.4 [per 1000 unmarried women age 15 and over]) to 2015 [where it is 32.3 marriages per 1000].
This data doesn’t support a conclusion that “marriage is up”. The graph in the link shows marriage rates bumping up slightly, a tiny tiny bit. That’s not a reassuring showing that marriage is somehow making a comeback. It’s not, and it won’t be anytime soon, I think.
Alas, the standard salary in the US Congress is $174,000 per year, and the average Congressman is a millionaire based on net worth.
I can’t find a compilation of data for state-level legislators, but I’m certain it’s considerably higher than the US mean average. The bottom line is that the people who write the laws that govern marriage, divorce, alimony, custody, and child support are the elites.
This is another home run, ball out of the park, posting. Many different facts and trends drawn up into one URL with easy to examine graphics.
At various places I’ve been pointing out tirelesssly that “if this goes on”, the only people who will marry will be upper class / upper middle class, and the religious. For most people it will be something seen in grainy black and white TV reruns.
The practical implications in terms of this blog are stark. Churchgoing people, regardless of denomination, need to be serious about their religion, and they need to get a lot more serious about boundaries between their church community and the larger world. That includes much more careful teaching and supervison of children from toddler right up to young adulthood. Also, I expect at the ongoing financial crisis continues, churches that survive will become a lot more serious about “church discipline”, the days of welcoming babymommas and carousel riders hitting the Wall unconditionally will end. The free ride will be over.
What it will take to get the attention of the Upper Middle Class, where the Family Court judges come from, I have not a clue. It’s been obvious to me for a few years now that this trainwreck is real, but every time I attempt to bring it to the attention of any UMC person either online or in real life it’s dismissed out of hand. I’ve been accused of grossly exaggerating, of being confused about the real facts, of misogyny, and other things. In particular, pedestalizing, White Knighting baby boomer UMC “I Got Mine” men are almost impossible to reason with. Especially those that don’t have any sons.
A sobering home run. Good work, Dalrock.
Off topic, but relevant to the site:
A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. – 1 Tim 2:11-12 NASB
Let the women who are new converts be willing to learn with all submission to their leaders and not speak out of turn. I don’t advocate that newly converted women be the teachers in the church, assuming authority over the menu, but to live in peace. 1 Tim 2:11-12 The Passion Translation
Listened to a podcast today that went into detail about the problems with the Passion translation. The biggest problem is it is quickly becoming popular in charismatic/NAR (new apostolic reformation) churches. The translator is make wholesale changes & insertions to the text in order to support NAR theology.
NAR theology is making fast inroads into American Christianity. Ted Cruz’s dad, Charisma magazine, Brian Houston (Hillsong), Paula White, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, & Joseph Prince would all fall into the category of having NAR theology (even though they many not claim the label).
Should be men, not menu.
Short of a very powerful, heaven-sent revival that shakes this country to its foundations, and resets our moral and religious switches, America is finished. And that makes me very sad.
“In particular, pedestalizing, White Knighting baby boomer UMC “I Got Mine” men are almost impossible to reason with. Especially those that don’t have any sons.”
So are most pastors and priests. So are most men of the Roman Catholic faith. So are most men over the age of 60.
The pastors and priests who do get it are scared to death to say anything about it lest the women of their congregation mutiny and leave en masse, taking their husbands and their tithes with them.
@ Anonymous you wrote: “I expect at the ongoing financial crisis continues, churches that survive will become a lot more serious about “church discipline”
There are many churches that are serious about church discipline, but it is disciplining men who don’t make women feelings warm and fuzzy. The surest ways to get excommunicated in today’s church: porn, saying “no! to your wife, refusing to send your daughter to the university to lose her virginity and study feminism and to teach biblical patriarchy. I don’t envision the church is going to discipline a woman for fornication, vow breaking, adultery, defrauding, contumacy, or claiming a rite to a pastor for a very long time. To do so would kill off their business and allow the church down the street to pick up all their customers, then who would stroke the pastor’s ego.
Agreed Dalrock: The sexual revolution isn’t over. The next incarnation of marriage, let’s call it “Marriage 3.0” will consist of government incentives to gay couples while heterosexual couples will have to pay through taxes.
It will work for a short time, might get temporarily delayed under Trump, but will move along under the banner of “Progress” until the weight of dependency brings it all crashing down as it did to the Communists, Romans, Sparta, Greece…..
deti,
I don’t see how anyone can say that “marriage is up” based on the link she provided and the data in that link.
When do women interpret data correctly? Plus, when are women resistant to Sailer’s law of journalism/commentary/opinions?
” The surest ways to get excommunicated in today’s church …”
I think the word you’re looking for is “disfellowship”. Being excommunicated means that you are not allowed to receive Communion, you’re still a member of the Church, albeit a second class one. And given how most Protestants (especially Evangelicals) do not believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, I would think that being “excommunicated” for them would be no big deal.
The next incarnation of marriage, let’s call it “Marriage 3.0” will consist of government incentives to gay couples while heterosexual couples will have to pay through taxes.
That, or version 3.0 will be “marriage” set for a specific term of years (whether between gay or hetero couples), like any other business contract, one in which both parties will have to agree to “exercise the option” to renew the contract and stay together. Any children produced during the marriage will be treated like community property (not as actual flesh-and-blood human beings with needs and interests; in other words, Marriage 3.0 will finally abandon any remaining pretense that adults actually give a shit about their children’s wellbeing or that they’re anything to adults other than ego props/negotiating leverage).
Needless to say, churches will jump fully on board with this after a few years of token resistance. It will cost them too much to fight it (not that the will to resist the culture is there in the first place).
Good post. This is very interesting info Dalrock.
The chart (% pop. 15 yrs and older married) can be seen conforming to classic ‘death spiral’ patterns. Using the category of highest percentage for marrieds (surprisingly to me, white men), we see a drop of %5 in 20 years, followed by an additional %5 drop in 20 more years, followed by another %5 drop in only 10 years. It’s even more precipitous for the lowest percentage category of marrieds (black women), with an apparent greater than %10 decline from years 2000-2010. If nothing changes there, married black women goes to zero in less than 50 years.
As the marriage rate declines, the percentage of children coming up through the “not married” model increases. Normal for them is “not married”, so the death spiral for that institution can be expected to pick up ever increasing speed.
“Much of the apathy is that our elites still feel like marriage is working for them; if the changes they made to marriage have been a catastrophe for everyone else, then everyone else simply needs to become like the elites. This is a profoundly arrogant and selfish attitude, but since the elites are the ones who frame the debate about marriage there are few voices prepared to challenge this narrative.”
I suspect at some point there will be someone who challenges the status quo on marriage in some manner. Or, you have Irish Troubles-style attacks against the divorce courts and family courts.
This arrange is very dangerous because it creates a wide chasm between the elite and the regular person same way as in France before the Revolution.
“The real sexual revolution has always been about destroying marriage, and it won’t be over until marriage is defunct as a social institution. Even if divorce rates continue to either level off or decline, marriage will continue to be something that is relevant to an ever shrinking part of the population.”
However, there are a few problems with this trajectory. You’ve written before how the welfare state is getting strangled. Men aren’t working, but more importantly men aren’t getting married and not making the same income as a married man. I understand that other countries in the world have a similar arrangement where marriage is just for the elite, but they also haven’t been living on artificial prosperity and debt as we have. Our system needs more men getting married and earning that extra income level. They are also pulling all stops to make this arrangement work.
I just shudder to think at what proposals will come out when marriage reaches dangerously low levels and men are scapegoated for it. I fear many women currently on the carousal will hop off it to find that, rather than a loyal beta provider, they face a lifetime of loneliness and misery.
One hopes that when the market correction occurs and the economy tanks, the pumps will finally cease and marriage as an institution can rectified. But, as I’ve said before, I don’t see those invested in the currently system going down peacefully, which is why I don’t believe the restoration of traditional marriage as we define it will occur peacefully, either.
deti
Susan Walsh at HUS has a post up today purporting to interpret this same study and its data.
Snort. $usie Wal$h demonstrated years ago that she’s in the “Math is hard!” part of Barbie world.
Why do you bother with her $ite?
Jonadab-the-Rechabite says:
@ Anonymous you wrote: “I expect at the ongoing financial crisis continues, churches that survive will become a lot more serious about “church discipline”
There are many churches that are serious about church discipline, but it is disciplining men who don’t make women feelings warm and fuzzy. The surest ways to get excommunicated in today’s church:
Today’s churches are often populated by a lot of people over 50, a couple of married-with-children in their thirties (and their children are the “youth group) & a few others. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. Those churches are already fading. The megas tend to have more families but they also tend to be very welcoming to the former carousel riders, etc. They already tend to be more about socializing than anything else. Churches that can retain Millennials who are married, or who get married, and who have children – those will continue to exist. The Millennials tend to have way more student debt than anyone sane would wish. As the “good times” Boomers fade out of leadership, and as the economic crisis continues and worsens, churches will feel the squeeze. Those that choose to support babymommas and carousel riders vs. intact families with children will find fewer and fewer intact families. The old rules about church discipline will be dusted off as a way to control the free riders on the back of the church.
Churches that basically are social societies that meet on Sundays will devolve the way the Unitarians have, and their children won’t stick around. Soon they’ll be a clump of coffee drinking cotton tops making nice to each other.
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common sense,
divorce is child abuse and also defathering still is an unwritten unpayable and irredeemable capital crime, asif progressive/humane pseudological postmodern lies, at the end of the day, “women’s rights” are inhumane..
Instead of spending so much focus on fighting gay marriage (not that there isn’t a case for fighting it), that only affects a low single-digit % of the population, pro-family people should have focused on changing no-fault divorce and unfair custody, child support and divorce asset division laws that affect the roughly 80% of people who do have kids. But as Dalrock and others have pointed out the cucks are some of the worst offenders in supporting the corrupt, anti-family laws. The cuckservatives, including many “Christians,” have much of the “blood” of the “dead” marriages on their own hands.
@The Question
>I fear many women currently on the carousal will hop off it to find that, rather than a loyal beta provider, they face a lifetime of loneliness and misery.
Why “fear”? A promiscuous woman is not worthy of marriage. She is selfish, using her youth and sexuality for selfish desires instead of investing those in her husband. I would not wish that kind of woman on any man. An unmarried promiscuous woman is a victory for society and for the man she otherwise would have been with.
My attitude is close to the same for the “pious” virgin who deliberately planned to delay marriage until her best years were gone.
@Otto Lamp
That Passion translation is horrid. Reminds me of The New World translation from the Jehovah’s Witness / Watchtower.
Similar results from a different data source (National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)):
primary paper (pdf):
http://conference.scipy.org/proceedings/scipy2015/pdfs/allen_downey.pdf
The essential result is the plot on page 4. It is truly staggering.
48.9%
That is it, just 48.9% of all people 18 and older in the United States are married. It was 72% in 1976. It dropped to about 66% in 1986. It was at about 60% in 1996. It dipped to 54% in 2006. It dropped below 50% of all Americans for the first time in history in 2013 and now we are hovering closer to 48% I see nothing stopping it from dropping further. The marital decline rate is frighteningly LINEAR!!!
You can not have a functioning civilized society without marriage. Marginal people depend on marriage far more than the elites do. (Bill Maher and people like him, do NOT need marriage to succeed.) And (of course) the UMC elites don’t see this problem AS a problem because for them, it isn’t a problem. And unless something bad happens to them, then it never happens.
Marriage 3.0 would be a time bond contract. The contract needs to be renewed every 5 years. How disgraceful…
@Dale
“Why “fear”? A promiscuous woman is not worthy of marriage.”
I don’t care if they die alone. I care that they have the right to vote, and when they can’t get a man, they will take out their bitterness and resentment toward men as a whole out in the ballot box. Or, they will support replacing men with the state to make up for the lack of husband. Or, they will run to the church and scream “where have all the good men gone?” and cause the church to kick up the “man up and marry those sluts, already!” preaching to hyperactive overdrive.
I fear for the damage and harm they will cause to our culture and society, not what happens to them personally.
What’s the point of marrying someone with 20-30 partners who have ‘explored’ their sexuality and are ready to ‘settle’.
Morality and material incentives are strange bedfellows, there’s nothing intrinsically good about educated women other than there is a greater incentive to not blow things up to maintain status.
I hope the revolution keeps on going and radical autonomy makes headway, give men what women already have today.
Remove communal property, joint debt liability, alimony, child payments, default 50% custody, equal payment into communal funds and voila equality. No need for divorce as it is already presumed.
Of course feminists will fight tooth and nail by monetising nebulous activities (emotional payments, domestic duties and what not).
Marriage 2.0 is marriage 1.0 without the responsibilities, I’m all for marriage 3.0, it couldn’t be any worse….
Totally off topic but I just ran across this in CNN (Clinton News Network).
“How she fell in love with a convict ”
The solution is simple. Just tax to death single, unmarried men. It’s their fault that they haven’t manned-up and wed all those aged slutty women in their 30s and 40s.
Let her and her minions think that. Let them think it’s all rosy and they will get married after riding. It’s better this way.
Hi Dalrock. I love your data posts, a big reason I read the blog. So I hope you don’t mind my chiming in and offering that in the communities in which marriage rates are low for women, a lot of the men are incarcerated. There are is also high benefits/welfare usage with little stigma around it – meaning that women have children easily and routinely outside of marriage.
I don’t think that these trends established themselves as a result of women in these communities initiating a lot of divorces. Things started to go south in these communities way before no fault divorce. It’s complex and somewhat controversial, but alternative explanations are manufacturing jobs leaving cities in the late 50’s and 60’s and drugs ravaging the communities in the 80’s, both with lasting impact throughout the years.
Another reason that marriage rates drop is because neither men nor women want to marry when the man’s job prospects are dim, and job prospects for people without college degrees are certainly dim. Rightly or wrongly, both genders seem to view marriage as something that you do when you have your shit together, so to speak.
I think these reasons are more substantial than a cultural shift around the marriage risks for men. It would be nice to find a way to tease these potential mechanisms apart and measure them individually. Not sure how that could be done.
A bachelor tax won‘t work, as men will refuse to work under such circumstances
More like a bachelorette tax is needed.
More like a bachelorette tax is needed.
Yup. Let SIWs who are power earners take a turn at feeling the sting of confiscatory income taxes.
Re: bachelorette tax
A bachelorette tax is coming… and it’s about time. Women have outnumbered men in college since the 1980’s, and although most of them are getting degrees in non-remunerative subjects, that used to not matter because everyone understood that most women going to college were actually there for their “M.R.S. Degree” rather than whatever fluff they were “studying.”
But increasingly that strategy won’t work, as Dalrock has pointed out numerous times over the years, including as one of the ramifications of this very thread. What that means is that the women graduating college are actually going to have to work rather than just getting married like previous generations of female co-eds did.
Women whined and agitated for equality in the workplace, and now they have it (and then some). They’re starting to discover what men have learned all along: being a provider means you have to provide for the government, too. So all the times that women voted for an ever-larger “safety net” and ever-increasing wealth transfers to baby-mommas – all at taxpayer expense – will result in
the UMC “Yugo Grrlz” footing the bills for the sluts from the lower classes.
You’ve come a long way, Baby!
Ideal: Bachelorette tax, remove no-fault divorce, and asset division is based on what you contributed to the marriage, not a 50/50 split that allows moochers to steal wealth created by partner. A not-at-fault stay-at-home parent can receive some child support if the other parent really was abusive or a cheater (but no BS, fake, feminist definitions of abuse).
If no-fault divorce is still left in force:
-default of 50/50 child custody (if one parent is unfit then reduce their custody)
-default of no child support (each parent pays for the children when in their care)
-no 50/50 split of assets, you take out the % that you contributed
Also, need to remove most of the welfare like food stamps, subsidized housing and healthcare that single women and single mothers use that makes Uncle Sam their provider and removes the main survival role that most men can fulfill (most men are not perceived as sexy sperm providers and thus rely on being a provider but gov’t has often made it more lucrative for poor women to be single than marry a man of their same socio-economic status).
@Damn Crackers
Knowing how the IRS likes to social engineer I would imagine – Extra deductions per pound of wife so that their is proper incentives to marry the obese ones and one time deduction for older women, say $5000 for every year over 35. A beta who marries a 45 year old whale could have a windfall to start his future divorce fund. But a savy investor would just re-up after a divorce and find the next Rosey O’Donnell to keep some coin.
NAR theology is making fast inroads into American Christianity. Ted Cruz’s dad, Charisma magazine, Brian Houston (Hillsong), Paula White, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, & Joseph Prince would all fall into the category of having NAR theology (even though they many not claim the label).
10/10 heretics and false teachers approve of NAR Theology! Come get yours today!
Excellent post. I’d also point out that the main antagonist to marriage are the churches!
This telling comment from a blog post:
I asked a nice high school girl in my congregation which did she think would upset her parents the most, which is the most socially unacceptable to people in our culture.
a) teens in high school having sex
b) teens in high school getting pregnant
c) teens in high school having abortions
d) teens in high school getting married.
Without hesitation, she answered,
d) getting married.
But it is the only one which is actually a biblically approved way of dealing with teen sexuality.
I am not saying that it is better than continent chastity, but it is certainly better than the other choices, at least to parents in the church, but is it, really? How many parents would anguish over it, but allow contraception, but would absolutely freak over marriage? The possibility a child being less successful and maybe getting a divorce or marrying a jerk is worse than the immediate here and now sin of an illicit relationship. The approval of the world is paramount.
http://pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.in/2012/04/dirty-little-secret.html?m=1
The approval of the world is paramount
Of course it is. And the reason is because most of those who claim to be Christians have not even begun to understand what the term means. I can hazard a guess that probably up to 75% of American “Christians” have never had a personal encounter with Christ.
Ask them why they think they are Christians and they tell you they were born into a Christian household, or they attend church regularly, or were baptized, or attended some VBS crap as kids.
It’s like asking an illegal immigrant why they think they are now Americans, and they tell you “I have been living here for a long time; I have a job and I have an ID card as well”.
“The possibility a child being less successful and maybe getting a divorce or marrying a jerk is worse than the immediate here and now sin of an illicit relationship. The approval of the world is paramount.”
Indeed, As a commentor in the in link said: “Parents want successful kids with good jobs and marriages that appear perfect. If you have to turn a blind eye to your children’s multiple sex partners as they practice to get it right …”
For too many, as long as they end up with the “right person”, all is tolerated and even forgiven. This includes one night stands, engaging in sodomy, riding the carousel and cohabitating. And while having a previously straying daughter “bag a keeper” might bring relief to some parents, the truth, as we know here, is that such marriages start off on shaky ground; they are castles built on sand. A wife who rode the carousel and who has a “notch count on her bedpost” is far more likely to stray should she feel unfulfilled and even nuke the marriage to pursue a “bigger and better deal”.
I will also add, that sons who “played the field” and who are well versed in “game” also make for poor choices as husbands, even if they fulfill their wives alpha fantasies.
I love the smell of marriage burning in the morning! Smells like… victory!
“I can hazard a guess that probably up to 75% of American “Christians” have never had a personal encounter with Christ.”
Could you expand on that? I ask, because I know more than a few people who have given up on the Faith because they never had a supernatural experience, yet they hear people yammering about how they talk with the Lord all the time, so they conclude that either something is wrong with them or that perhaps that the Faith is bunk; as opposed to understanding that perhaps these experiences are indeed rare. I have had a few, but they are rare and not common everyday experiences for me.
hansolo007 @ 8:25 am:
“More like a bachelorette tax is needed.”
For a whimsical idea, we should exempt young, attractive, unmarried women from the Bill of Rights. They have a powerful sexual attraction to the worst men in society so allowing police to monitor their movements and boyfriends would be the greatest advance in law enforcement strategy since DNA databases. “Mohammed Jose Clinton, you are under arrest for having sex with ten new hot chicks in one month. We don’t know exactly what you’ve done to attract that much ass but it’s gotta be bad.”
We could replace the War on Drugs with the War on Chicks. New for Christmas, give your teenage daughters the Samsung “Joliet” smartphone! Unlimited internet AND safer streets! (privacy waiver required) Romeo and Joliet, together at last for your special snowflake!
@Gunner Q
Talk about jail bait!
Frank K says:
November 24, 2016 at 2:16 pm
“I will also add, that sons who “played the field” and who are well versed in “game” also make for poor choices as husbands, even if they fulfill their wives alpha fantasies.”
You couldn’t be more wrong. Such men:
1) do NOT have significant impairment to bond in nearly all cases;
2) begin marriage as more attractive to their wives;
3) remain more attractive to their wives as the marriage goes on;
4) understand women better than Game-ignorant men.
Is this your first week reading on a men’s issues web forum, are you a cucked lower-Delta or an Omega, or just a broad?
Finally, a sensible solution to all these marriage problems.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/25/prue-leith-secret-happy-marriage-separate-houses/
“The writer, who this year married at the age of 76, said living a mile away from her new husband has proved “ideal”.”
Could someone explain how the Total Males (age 15+) married be nearly 5% higher than Total Females (age 15+) married? I would expect these numbers to be largely equal. I find it difficult to believe that there are enough such males married to 14 year old’s or younger females, at least not in this country. And Gay Marriage wasn’t legal for much of the timeline (though I expect it’s impact would be negligible).
What gives?
What’s a “man’s” work duty?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1032632
How to Marry an Idiot
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1032671
Priest response to spousal infidelity in marriage
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=1032720
The interesting thing about the alt right is that it is effectively embracing the leftist paradigm concerning identity politics. It isn’t a reversion to conservative ideals but rather fully embracing the leftist ideology.
What has got the left wringing their hands and their knickers in a knot is that the Archiles Heel of the left is that it requires a sucker to hold the bag. White identity politics removes the sucker and they’re perplexed.
Why couldn’t it be the same for men and marriage? Rather than appealing to Biblical marriage and headship what is wrong with embracing the left and playing them at their own game?
Forget patriarchy how about embracing radical financial autonomy within marriage, if tenants can do it in a share house why not a marriage?
The interesting thing about the alt right is that it is effectively embracing the leftist paradigm concerning identity politics. It isn’t a reversion to conservative ideals but rather fully embracing the leftist ideology.
The reason for this is as follows :
1) The real ‘alt-right’ was anti-misandry, since anti-misandry and small government are inseparable.
2) Race nationalists hijacked the term. This, despite the fact that race-nationalism is a left-wing, feminist ideology.
3) Now, these losers are seen as the ‘alt-right’, just like the KKK and Nazi Germany are now called ‘right-wing’, when in fact both were left-wing ideologies in economic and other matters.
Right wing = small government/personal accountability/free markets = anti-misandry.
Anon: Right wing = small government/personal accountability/free markets = anti-misandry.
Right wing = however someone chooses to define it. There is no one, objective definition.
The term originates from the French Revolution, when right-wing implied a supporter of the ancien régime. So right-wing originally meant a supporter of aristocracy and the Catholic Church.
It’s had many definitions over the years. The American libertarian definition is one of them, but by no means the One True and Objective definition.
Please provide a list of “conservative ideals”.
They couldn’t even conserve women’s restrooms, why should anyone support them for anything more?
You two also fail to note that all other groups participate in group identity, yet it is wrong for one specific group (white males) to do that. Take your BS elsewhere.
“I will also add, that sons who “played the field” and who are well versed in “game” also make for poor choices as husbands, even if they fulfill their wives alpha fantasies.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.”
Men who have a promiscuous history rarely abandon their promiscuous ways, especially if they’re what keeps wifey attracted to him. You can’t tame the unicorn, girls.
I’ve seen neighborhoods where most of the marriages are based on sexual attraction instead of love/submission. They’re called ghettos.
GunnerQ,
Don’t feed the the troll.
@Lost Patrol
It is a lovely idea (for those who would rather be single) but unfortunately it isn’t marriage.
This comment has been scanned for evidence of injury to any turkey and no such injury has been found.
My theory goes like this: most people, most of the time, are married; those that aren’t, cohabit ,but without the benefit of clergy; most of the single have a meaningful other, and those that don;t are searching for one. At all times therefore relationships are the norm and just as one forgets and gets over romantic disappointments when embarking on a frecsh romance so Divorces are likewise forgotten. It is thus easy to overlook the parlous state of marriage and where far too many men are seeking for mail order brides.
“When do women interpret data correctly? Plus, when are women resistant to Sailer’s law of journalism/commentary/opinions?”
It is said that a lie gets around the world twice before the truth gets its pants on. But in the feminist portions of the internet a lie gets all the way to Andromeda and back while the truth remains locked up in a dungeon, screaming.
I would consider those “shocks”. A resilient system can withstand more shocks and keep going. The black family survived slavery, jim crow laws, alcohol prohibition, the great depression, the first World War. Remove the option from men to have a family (by removing restrictions on female sexuality and default father child custody) and men will stop being productive for nothing; and the system become fragile. Mothers pass on biological life, fathers pass on civilization.
https://dontmarry.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/garbage-generation-by-daniel-amneus.pdf
Men were fine marrying women with no job prospects when men were legally the head of households. And women competed for the most educated/productive males. Ask a black engineer or nerd how he is doing in sexual competition against thugs now? Are you suggesting that black male college grads would turn down marriage offers from 18 year old black females (assuming legal protections for the man)? The women should be competing for such men, and marrying them without going through college themselves should be a double win; that is if women naturally cared about marriage.
Civilization is a technology that has prerequisites; destroy the foundation and no amount of housekeeping will save it.
Agreed.
That is it, just 48.9% of all people 18 and older in the United States are married. It was 72% in 1976. It dropped to about 66% in 1986. It was at about 60% in 1996. It dipped to 54% in 2006. It dropped below 50% of all Americans for the first time in history in 2013 and now we are hovering closer to 48% I see nothing stopping it from dropping further. The marital decline rate is frighteningly LINEAR!!!
Some people claim that this is because (1) people are marrying later, so more people remain unmarried prior to 35 than ever before, which increases the number of unmarried people and (2) people are not remarrying as much and are also living longer, which also increases the number of unmarried people. Both of these probably are playing a role in that number, I think. I think a more telling number is the “percentage who have never been married” and looking at what that has done over time.
Teasing out conclusions from the data is tricky because there’s no way to compare generations that are still alive. We know what today’s 40-somethings did when they were in their 20s and 30s, but we don’t know what today’s 30-somethings will have done in their 30s until they’re in their 40s, and we barely know anything about today’s 20-somethings at all.
If we look at the marriage rate of 15-18-year-olds in 1780, versus 1880, versus 1980, we would see differences that only weakly correlate to the eventual marriage rate of those cohorts throughout their lifetimes.
But there’s a problem with using that to dismiss the alarms… and feminism caused the problem. The problem is that women can delay marriage for a couple of years and it’s no big deal in the short term (although in the long term it may be, due to the power of geometric progressions). But if they delay it by a decade or more, they cause a demographic crash in less than one human lifetime, since a woman’s reproductive window closes rapidly in her early 30s and then slams shut shortly thereafter. A society in which the average woman has one child every three years of her reproductive life will rapidly, vastly outnumber another society in which the average woman starts having kids at 27 and only has one more in her early 30s.
But here and now we have both systems operating in the same time and space. the “productive classes” are delaying marriage and childbearing, and are having fewer children later in life, while the “moocher” classes are not waiting for marriage to start breeding, and are popping out crotch-goblins both early and often. But since feminism has always primarily been about making life even easier than it already was for UMC white women (the ones born into the “productive classes”), feminists are ensuring the demographic suicide of the thing that makes their pampered existence possible (the patriarchal capitalism that created enough societal wealth for the UMC to exist).
Not that I care very much personally – I’m child-free and I’m fairly certain that we’re close to TEOTWAWKI, but throughout history, “The future belongs to those who show up,” and “my culture” is on track to not show up in sufficient numbers for the center to hold if the Lord tarries.
Matthew 24:19, “And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!”
Off Topic
I am sure that your copies of Steve Moxon’ s The Woman Racket are well thumbed and so you might like to know that he has a new book available in Paperback/Kindle (at Amazon) and viewable at the New Male Studies website and entitled Sex Difference Explained: From DNA to Society — Purging Gene Copy Errors. I have placed it on my Xmas list to myself (for I do not get paid for this advert and neither are he and I one and the same person nor have we ever met) and trust you will do yourself a favour and do likewise.
Off topic w/ this bittersweet news: Christian Cinema has the COMPLETE Kendrick Brothers DVD collection at half off.
I can provide link to those interested 😉
Female and male infertility rates is probably the best indicator as it exposes later unproductive marriages which don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Interestingly on a side note, in Australia we’ve recently had a wave of advertising begging men to become ‘heroes’ and to donate sperm.
Infertility rates by generation would be interesting considering gen X was probably the first gen to be exposed to delayed marriages.
Is it possible to break this out by age? If age at first marriage is increasing, then perhaps the Millenials haven’t started marrying yet…but, with the oldest Boomers turning 70, the number of unmarried widows is increasing? This could also account for a reduction in the proportion of married people, unless there is a flaw in my logic that I’m not seeing.
Dalrock: “When the divorce revolution first exploded, the men who found themselves ejected from their homes…”
The thought never occurred to me to leave MY home. I ejected my wife from MY home for her repeated behavior [at least I told her to leave; there are no teeth in man’s laws for me to throw her out]. When I told a close friend this he remarked “You must be the first man to have ever done that”; all other men he knew couldn’t take it and left or got kicked out.
I think the reason it never occurred to me is because I understood that Adam did not knowingly sin in the garden, that only Adam was made in the image of God, that scripture is written only to men to administer, that pastors are significant liars, that wives were silently killing husbands behind the scene, and subconsciously sensed the worship of women.
Further, I knew I had a responsibility and I have very rarely shirked that, especially on the big things. Hell no, I’m not abandoning my post. If there is every an need and a way to see God it is in and through marriage. And when I need to be a son-of-a-bitch to make the point, I will be one. And any God damned mother fucker better get out of the Way. I’m through being Mr. Nice Guy.
God has a greater task for me than just the challenge in my marriage. It is pointing out the condition of the church, not that different from Dalrock, really, but more behind the scene. I view my role as an Ice Breaker, breaking trail through the 9 ft thick ice of lies that the church has propagated over the centuries, taking heat and hardship to create a trail for others to more freely follow behind.
In the current 180º world of swapping lies for truth, you can pretty much take the conventional wisdom of church and world and think or do just the opposite and you will be in the will and the word of God.
@Ach
Even with the same number of marriages between both sexes, I guess if remarriages are more popular among women, then more of them would remain single to balance that out.
“Interestingly on a side note, in Australia we’ve recently had a wave of advertising begging men to become ‘heroes’ and to donate sperm.”
So, being an absent father is now considered “heroic” down under.
Short of paying men to donate sperm, I fail to see what incentive there could be to make a “deposit” at the bank. And I suspect that for many, cash is still an insufficient incentive. I also fail to see the Chads donating. Why would they bother, except maybe if the pay was fairly decent. Perhaps men with strange egos might relish the thought that they sired dozens if not hundreds of children.
We certainly are living in strange times
The machine needs cogs, and if browbeating men isn’t doing the trick, maybe pretending to hail them as “heroes” will. Any man daft enough to “ManUp” will likely find himself being tasked to be even more heroic by providing child support payments… it’s not like paternity will hard to figure out, after all.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
Exfernal – That seems a logical way to interpret the data. That would mean that the some of the “married men” will have shared the same woman, while more women will have never married.
However, I was curious and tried to look at the source data. Supposedly the source data for the SOOU2011.pdf (Fig 2, P 63) has a link for the source data (cps2010.html table UC3).
But table UC3 is for “Opposite Sex Unmarried Couples by Presence of Biological Children”, so it seems to be incorrectly sourced. So I’m not sure where the raw numbers came from.
The commentary on the previous pages in the SOOU2011.pdf seems to imply that, historically, women had higher marriage rates than men, or at least very high rates. (“More than 90 percent of women have eventually married in every generation for which records exist, going back to the mid-1800s” and “For the generation of 1995, assuming continuation of then-current marriage rates, several demographers projected that 88 percent of women and 82 percent of man would ever marry” on Page 62)
If that was indeed the case, and it has inverted at some point – that would be pretty interesting. A shame that the data isn’t more readily available. My respect for Dalrock has increased – having to find these statistics to begin with.
@Ach
I think this is due to mortality rates. Men die younger than women, and when they die they are out of the data set. Widows show up as “unmarried”, and single unmarried men who die likewise fall out of the data set.
@Ach
Check out page 75 here: http://www.stateofourunions.org/2011/SOOU2011.pdf
For some reason the page number at the bottom says 63, but it is the 75th page of the pdf file.
“Any man daft enough to “ManUp” will likely find himself being tasked to be even more heroic by providing child support payments”
I strongly suspect that more than a few men are aware of this potential pitfall, given that there already is precedent for it. Though I suspect that the primary reason no one is “donating” is good old fashioned apathy.
Nova….
That is it, just 48.9% of all people 18 and older in the United States are married. It was 72% in 1976. It dropped to about 66% in 1986. It was at about 60% in 1996. It dipped to 54% in 2006. It dropped below 50% of all Americans for the first time in history in 2013 and now we are hovering closer to 48% I see nothing stopping it from dropping further. The marital decline rate is frighteningly LINEAR!!!
Its not either-or. Its both. Marriage came before all organized religion. Marriage came before Judaism. Marriage came before ALL forms of secular government. Marriage is the core building-block-unit from which civilization may be formed. Rip that away (which is what feminism has done), and we are Sodom. God sends down the Angels to investigate if there are any worthy lives worth saving and He will NOT like what they will be reporting back, and here come the lightning bolts.
If your name is Bill Maher and you are a 60 year old bachelor at his level, you’ll be fine. We are talking about a man with an Ivy League education, a very high IQ, a stage presence, and a massive earning capacity. Bill Maher (and other MGTOW men like him) do NOT need marriage to function and contribute to civilization. He doesn’t need marriage to make him feel more “equal.” I am talking about the marginal people.
Its like the post you made a month or more ago. You were discussing the elites and how things have been just fine for them because they were above average in so many key life traits (and in many cases, well above average.) They are in life. I can’t speak for what will happen to their soul in the afterlife, but for these 80, 90, or 100 years that they are here, they will be fine. This economy, this feminist centric system, they can make it work for them in some capacity. The marginal people, not so much. They DEPEND on marriage to gain equality in this lifetime. Rip that away (and it has been) and they simply can’t contribute or be part of any functioning civilization. There is no way that will happen.
We are already below 50% of adults that are married. It is already too late Nova. We are not going back. Civilization is done for. God is allowing us to destroy ourselves by rejecting His commandments, His laws, and all He can do is sit there and weep for us. Right now, the only question is when the lights turn out and what will happen when the marginal people so vastly outnumber the UMC and the elites and whether we will go the way of the French Revolution, the way of Soylent Green, or the way of The Road Warrior.
@John Galt
You have this right, and I’ve discussed this from early on with the blog. I used to track white non Hispanic nevermarried data, and broke it out by age. However the last time the data was available broken out by race was in 2014. Delayed marriage drives a large portion of the changes, but it is only one part. The other parts are people who never married, or married, divorced, and didn’t remarry. The challenge with delayed marriage is how do you distinguish between delayed marriage and someone who won’t marry at all? Moreover, even if we assume that most unmarried women in their 20s and 30s intend to marry, will the men they plan on marrying in their 30s still knock themselves out to prepare to be providers in their late teens and 20s?
Frank K,
I don’t doubt it. It would never even occur to me to donate sperm (even if I I could, and even if anyone wanted it) so I get the “apathy” angle. Even IF those things were not true… sperm donor anonymity is already being challenged (successfully in some cases). Governments don’t like to spend their own money on baby-mommas if they can coerce individual men into doing it, and retroactively changing the terms of private contracts is a minor inconvenience rather than a moral crisis. A man would have to be naive to donate sperm now. His paternity could be instantly established with a subpoena of the clinic’s records – and the subsequent DNA test would confirm his biological fatherhood. That ALONE is sufficient justification for a support order (retroactive to the birth of the child) under threat of debtor’s prison if he will not – or even cannot – pay.
Dalrock asks (perhaps) rhetorically: “Moreover, even if we assume that most unmarried women in their 20s and 30s intend to marry, will the men they plan on marrying in their 30s still knock themselves out to prepare to be providers in their late teens and 20s?”
But I’ll answer anyway: Apparently not. We all know that boys are behind in school and are on the glide path for more of the same, only worse. College girls outnumber college men 3-to-2 already, and that’s not getting any better, either. Young professional women out-earn men, and the educational trends are going to make that worse as well. Meanwhile, boys and men are being emasculated and hindered by design at every turn to help women achieve an “equality” they already have (in fact, real equality would be quite a step down for women of any age, particularly ours).
As for the guys in that cohort: not only have their female age-peers been allowed to stand on ladders while claiming to be taller, but we’re cutting boys off at the knees with chainsaws and demanding that they “Stand up,” and “ManUp,” and “do their part” for the good of society (in other words: for the benefit of women), while exercising no authority that cannot and will not be retroactively categorized as “abuse” by pastors and judges the moment the tingles wear off.
Honestly, if I was a young Millennial man knowing what I know now, I would likely either be a MGTOW or working overseas. I doubt I’d be busting my butt to feed the Divorce-Industrial Complex in the U.S..
Lyn87 said:
“A society in which the average woman has one child every three years of her reproductive life will rapidly, vastly outnumber another society in which the average woman starts having kids at 27 and only has one more in her early 30s.”
Isn’t it mostly a myth though that there’s huge numbers of poor people in America having lots of kids? The truth is you only need 2 children per women to ensure population stability anyhow with the early death rate in America being so low, which is precisely the pattern you describe here. I know this is a Christian bible-believing site where contributors generally don’t believe in the concept of overpopulation, but would it really be a good idea to go back to baby boom or 19th century levels of fertility, even if this were possible?
johnnycomelately
Interestingly on a side note, in Australia we’ve recently had a wave of advertising begging men to become ‘heroes’ and to donate sperm.
That’s the kind of “public service” formerly reserved for blood banks, so it is interesting.
Wonder how long before the sheilas decide to nick legit sperm donors for child support?
CSI asks, “Isn’t it mostly a myth though that there’s huge numbers of poor people in America having lots of kids?”
Nope… it’s real. Birth Rate 3X Higher for Women Receiving Welfare
I’m not suggesting that we need the sort of population growth that occurred at other times in history. My point is that the productive classes are reproducing well below replacement level, while the people who contribute the least to society and engage in the most anti-social behavior are mating like rabbits. That can’t end well.
@The Question
>I fear for the damage and harm they will cause to our culture and society
Thanks. I understand now.
@Lyn87 In the USA, men get paid a decent fee to donate sperm, and those who do it use the money to help pay their way through school, or to supplement their wages after they graduate. Many countries no longer allow “donors” to be paid for their donation, and in those countries there are few donors.
As a practical matter, many donors end up fathering dozens of children, so even if the law were changed retroactively, 50% of a man’s salary apportioned among 100 children might not be worth pursuing, as men who are financially successful generally don’t donate. Many of the donors exaggerate their resumes, and more than a few have donated to multiple sperm banks to avoid the limits that the sperm banks impose on the number of children fathered by any one man.
It is unwise to donate, but the financial risks appear to be small.
Original Laura,
I think you’re missing the point. The fact that a man may have dozens of “test-tube” children doesn’t lessen his risk – it increases it. Let’s say a guy “fathers” 20 children through anonymous sperm donation. He may or may not have been paid (in Australia the reimbursement is trivial – $50AUS according to the relevant website). There are now 20 women out there to whom he is vulnerable to child-support wage slavery the moment some judge decides that the “best interests of the child” coincide with cash payments by the biological father. Finding out who he is is as simple as that same judge issuing a subpoena to the clinic. The fact that the “hero’s” wages divided by 20 is close to nil won’t be of much comfort to him if just one of them finds a judge willing to pull the trigger “for the sake of the children.” And if several of them come forward it’s even worse, since judges are notorious for assigning men financial responsibilities (for the unilateral decisions of women, yet) that are far beyond what they are capable of paying, with debtor’s prison for the ones who default. THAT ALREADY HAPPENS EVERY DAY in normal custody cases. Of course as soon as the loss of anonymity is set as a legal precedent for child-support purposes, every man whose sperm has been used to fertilize an egg in that jurisdiction is screwed, since every woman who has one of those children will instantly have a legal right to the paycheck of a man they don’t even know…
Every day we see how little empathy many women have for their own kin… how much empathy will they have for male strangers who suddenly “owe” them large sums of money? And empathy or not, how many will forego free cash as a matter of principle when money gets tight? If the answer is anything other than “every last one of them,” then how much justice will those men receive?
Would you be willing to bet your family’s finances and your personal freedom in such a scenario, stipulating that the courts would treat you exactly the same as a man with judicially-imputed fatherhood? And would you feel more safe or less safe knowing that the pool of potential litigants is twenty rather than one or two?
Original Laura,
It is unwise to donate, but the financial risks appear to be small.
Here is yet another example of how even a supposedly ‘allied’ woman does not see CS as immoral, or even at all costly to the man. Even though the man sees income imputed, and is under penalty of imprisonment, all this should not be seen as a big deal. Remember that since women (certainly not children) are the beneficiaries of the current CS model, women are so practiced in the sleight of hand we have just seen that it is truly second nature for them.
Women think men earn money as easily as they grow hair – this is apparent from the comment of even a supposedly allied woman like Original Laura. That is why, outside of Dr. Helen or Karen Straughan, there is virtually no woman who even grasps how unjust the current CS laws are (they are indeed the most unjust laws the US has had in the last 150 years).
That said, I don’t think a formal bank is at risk of having donors attached to CS, as that would destroy their business overnight…
Lyn87,
You could explain this for hours on end, and Original Laura still won’t see that CS is a ‘cost’ to the man, that also harms children. Try it, and see. You will see a concerted effort on her part to not ‘get’ the crux of what you are saying, or otherwise not be troubled by the extreme injustice of ‘child support’..
And she is one of the ‘good’ ones. Remember that 99.9% of women just don’t have any idea what makes a civilization. They can no more grasp what the foundations of a civilization are than they can bench press 225.
@Frank:
Could you expand on that? I ask, because I know more than a few people who have given up on the Faith because they never had a supernatural experience, yet they hear people yammering about how they talk with the Lord all the time, so they conclude that either something is wrong with them or that perhaps that the Faith is bunk; as opposed to understanding that perhaps these experiences are indeed rare.
As I understand it, a person becomes a Christian (or born again, John 3:3) when they come to the realization that, religious or not, they are not better than the worst sinners out there, and, with this knowledge, they fully throw themselves on God’s mercy for total cleansing from sin by the blood of Jesus. It is during this process that they receive a new heart, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within them, assuring them of their salvation (or encounter with God). Some people will obtain this assurance the very first time they pray; others will need to seek God longer and repeatedly. But when this experience takes place, the recipient will have an unshakeable conviction that they are indeed born anew, and it will show in their daily experiences.
Like many other things in the modern church, this process has been watered down. Preachers (many of whom never had this encounter) simply tell folks to “raise up your hands (or eyebrows, or stand up), if you want to be saved”, without any real encounter with God taking place, thus, causing many church folks to become disillusioned .
Anyone can seek God on their own, without a preacher, until they have the assurance that their case is settled with Him.
CSI @ 6:21 pm:
“I know this is a Christian bible-believing site where contributors generally don’t believe in the concept of overpopulation, but would it really be a good idea to go back to baby boom or 19th century levels of fertility, even if this were possible?”
No need for another baby boom but people are the greatest resource of a nation, especially the disciplined peoples. Everything you value except pretty sunsets is made by people from food to cars to video games so gradual population growth is a good thing.
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@Lyn87 and @Anon
Alas! I have failed to make myself clear. There have been a relatively small number of cases in which a “sperm donor” was required to pay child support, but as far as I can tell, none of these cases involved anonymous sperm donation through a sperm bank.
In the past, a man donating sperm to a sperm bank had anonymity and little risk of ever being identified, much less being asked to pay support. I would say that men should not count on that being the case indefinitely, so “anonymous” sperm donation is probably becoming riskier for men, especially men who expect to be high earners in the future. That being said, even if a case of extreme hardship came up at some point in the future, and a man who had donated anonymously was required to pay support, the fact that he was the “donor” for 20 or more children would tend to limit the amount of the child support award.
The nasty cases that occasionally make the newspaper seem to involve men who have been tricked into fathering a child, or men who have provided sperm voluntarily to a female friend who later broke her promise not to ask for support. Usually, only one or two children are involved, and the judge treats it like a regular child support case. This would not be possible if the man had fathered 20 or more children.
I would say that a guy who fathered 100 kids ten years ago when he was in college through a sperm bank will probably never be sued for support, but going forward, whatever money a man is being offered today to provide sperm is not worth the risk of future financial obligation, as the law is continually evolving in a direction that makes this activity increasingly risky. The courts simply cannot be trusted to enforce the contract as it was signed, because the original contract does not take into consideration the child’s right to be supported.
Most of the men who post on this blog would not donate sperm no matter how much they were offered, due to religious objections. However, I imagine that quite a few judges donated sperm to help support themselves during college and law school. I doubt that they want the anonymity overturned.
The more recent trend is toward allowing some openness or contact between the child and the sperm donor, and this is a big part of why I think that the “sperm donor is not a parent” legal theory may fail at some point in the future.
@Anon: I do understand that no-fault divorce is a civilization killer, as the “option” to leave at any time, for any reason completely obliterates the concept of marriage. Once a marriage ends, you have a financial mess. Something like 40% to 50% of households can’t come up with 400 or 500 dollars in a hurry, and people who live beyond their means are far more likely to end up divorced. It goes without saying that most divorcing couples end up trying to support two households plus their respective legal bills on income that wouldn’t support them while they were together. If you got rid of child support, women would be less likely to file for divorce in the first place, but men would surely become more tempted to divorce, especially in states in which alimony is seldom granted. There is no judicial solution to the problem of sin.
“However, I imagine that quite a few judges donated sperm to help support themselves during college and law school. I doubt that they want the anonymity overturned.”
The threat of “it could happen to me” sure hasn’t stopped them from banging their gavels in support of no fault divorces.
” There is no judicial solution to the problem of sin.”
Perhaps not, but men can avoid placing themselves in financial and emotional peril by avoiding marriage and siring children (in or out of wedlock) in the first place. And they appear to be doing just that in ever increasing numbers.
Seriously?! I hope you meant that there is no judicial solution to the problem of breaking your vows… even though I disagree, the outright statement to the idea that there is no judicial solution to sin is a very inept statement? Murder, rape, theft, corruption, assault… I mean, really? Come on.. it depends on the will of society to punish law breakers and whether those laws cover the sin committed. If we lived in a society serious about marriage, the sin of breaking your vows would be a punishable offense.. that’s the difference, either get serious about marriage or don’t. Fuck if I care.
I keep telling you Laura, rather keep quiet, your continued statements just lead to more men packing up their shit and going home. Lol, who am I kidding, please, continue!
That is why, outside of Dr. Helen or Karen Straughan, there is virtually no woman who even grasps how unjust the current CS laws are (they are indeed the most unjust laws the US has had in the last 150 years).
Add Janet Bloomfield (a.k.a. “JudgyBitch”) to that list too.
Very revealing also is that none of these three women are Christians (JudgyBitch is a self-professed atheist), yet they “get it” whereas most “Christian” women do not.
If you got rid of child support, women would be less likely to file for divorce in the first place, but men would surely become more tempted to divorce, especially in states in which alimony is seldom granted.
A nice example of female projection.
No, most men would absolutely NOT be “more tempted to divorce,” especially if they have reached middle age, have been married for decades, and have children or grandchildren. Divorce for a man, even absent any financial restraints that would impede such a decision or make it less appealing, is STILL a catastrophic, life-disrupting event that the vast majority of men have no interest in pursuing. I most assuredly would never have considered it at my age, and after as many years as I had been married, had my wife not decided to create conditions that made pulling the trigger unavoidable. Even with relatively minimal financial liabilities in the aftermath, it is something that I would NEVER wish on any man and no man of my acquaintance, even the few who had it even easier than I did, would want to go through it again. Divorce, by its very nature, is a disruptive, destructive event that tears the fabric of one’s life apart, male or female, initiator or respondent, young or old, parent or childless. No man goes about it frivolously. Women, on the other hand …
Original Laura,
I think you had made yourself clear. As I understand it, your argument boils down to, “It is unlikely that an anonymous sperm donor would be ordered to pay child support, and even if he was, dividing his income 100 ways wouldn’t be worth the trouble anyway, but going forward it is becoming more risky.” I got it. We all did. In fact, I’m sure we all agree with the last part, and I’m willing to stipulate so.
What you’re failing to consider is that 1) judges are not particularly likely to be sperm donors (it’s pretty rare, actually), 2) judges are not at all hesitant to issue rulings that they would consider unfair if they were applied to them (they know they generally won’t be – and a lot of judges are female anyway), and 3) how much a legally-designated father is able to pay has very little to do with how much he could be ordered to pay when one or more female complainants brings children into the equation. What’s more, 4) a donor doesn’t have to be sued by 100 women in order to have his life ruined – he only has to be sued by one of them, so more “test-tube babies” makes him more vulnerable, not less, because the moment a single mother applies for public assistance the hunt begins for a man to offset the cost. All he has to protect himself from financial ruin is a contract that stipulates that he assumes no obligation for any child that results from his donation. That brings us to 5) The way the law is written and applied in the U.S. is that no contract involving children is ever binding… it’s literally not worth the paper it’s printed on because “the best interests of the child” (as determined by judges under the advice of (feminist) social workers) ALWAYS determines the outcome of the case. It is – literally – the only thing that matters in the eyes of the law… and in the eyes of the law women and their children are to receive protection and resources, and men are to provide them, no matter what “protections” for the man were agreed to at the time. The courts have consistently ruled that a mother has no right to proactively decline child support if the state demands it of a man (even if she wants to… the money “belongs to the child” and it’s not her decision). It’s really that simple, and it plays out just like that thousands of times every week in courtrooms all over the country. It just hasn’t quite reached anonymous sperm donors… yet. I suspect that it will, though.
The argument that court-ordered child support from anonymous donors would end the practice is both true and irrelevant. Since when have feminists declined to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs when there was a short-term advantage to be gained at the expense of men? I cannot think of a single example, although the cultural landscape is littered with such “dead geese.” And just as today we have “Strong, Independent Women[TM] crying, “Why won’t men marry us?” after feminism destroyed marriage for men, some day childless spinsters will cry, “Why is there no sperm at the sperm bank?” after feminists turn sperm donation into financial roulette for men.
“No, most men would absolutely NOT be “more tempted to divorce,””
Agreed. And before Laura says “what about the dead beat dads?”, those guys will bail in any case.
” I most assuredly would never have considered it at my age, and after as many years as I had been married, had my wife not decided to create conditions that made pulling the trigger unavoidable.”
I know of a few guys who were in the same boat. They did everything they could to save the marriage, including counseling, changing behavior, ‘courting’ their wives, etc., to no avail. She made sure the marriage was pure Hell. It was then and only then, with great regret, that they pulled the trigger. Many of those men were sufficiently scarred by the experience and decided not to try and find a replacement for her.
feeriker said to Original Laura,
No, most men would absolutely NOT be “more tempted to divorce,” especially if they have reached middle age, have been married for decades, and have children or grandchildren.
Agreed. All societies where men held the cards in divorce (19th century US, present-day Muslim societies) have very LOW divorce rates. Men always put the children first, while women never do.
The only way to have a low divorce rate society is for men to have most of the rights in the marriage, and then rely on the time-tested fact that men are just more responsible and aware of what is best for society.
A statement like this from a woman merely reveals how little they know about history, and how little curiosity they have for it.
Anon says:
November 29, 2016 at 3:36 pm
Laura’s assertion is a variation of the Apex Fallacy in which a small handful of exceptions and ouliers are framed as the norm. Women don’t really believe this assertion, but the thought of men reasserting control over all aspects of marriage, and thus limiting women’s ejection options, sets off panic alarms and thus puts the hamster on the wheel in a quest for a rationale to maintain the status quo (and, of course, project blame for women’s hypergamy-driven behavior back onto men).
“…exceptions and outliers …”
Oh, for the day when WordPress adds an “edit” option …
” What’s more, 4) a donor doesn’t have to be sued by 100 women in order to have his life ruined – he only has to be sued by one of them”
THIS. And it appears that men have learned enough about how the legal system is biased against them, at least in the case of family law, that they are staying away from the sperm bank and are refraining from making “deposits”.
“No, most men would absolutely NOT be “more tempted to divorce,” especially if they have reached middle age, have been married for decades, and have children or grandchildren.”
+1. Most men don’t like to even replace our underwear. We cry when our first car goes to the scrapyard. We’re traditional like that. If our first wife makes us happy then we’ll never care to “trade up”… and making us happy is so easy, a dog can do it. A rat can do it. But women won’t.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are married and never divorced. Therefore, send your daughter to a seven sisters school.
John and Prestonia Martin wrote a prophetic book: Feminism, Its Fallacies and Follies. Don’t ever believe the people who say college for women is good for marriage. College educated women voted for Hillary Clinton, because they don’t like traditional values. Women from good families are more likely to remain married and more likely to receive a college degree, but the university is essentially a system for putting career ahead of motherhood and for the corruption of the values of young women.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are married and never divorced.
The same can be said of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Of course Chelsea Clinton is no “Bess” Tudor (Mary, on the other hand…).
making us happy is so easy
So true. And yet so irrelevant to most of Woman-World.
making us happy is so easy
The fact that something is easy has never precluded women from thoroughly fucking it up (ref. the original instructions from God in the Garden).
The latest statistics that I have seen are that 69% of divorces are initiated by women, with the remaining 31% initiated by men. I assume that that statistic is calculated by identifying the plaintiff in the action, which is somewhat misleading in that the person who causes the marriage to fail isn’t always the one who actually files for divorce.
Nevertheless, accepting this statistic at face value, and recognizing that some divorces are “frivorces” while other divorces are not, it is foolish to assume that a major re-write of the divorce laws in one direction or another would have a huge effect on women’s propensity to divorce without influencing men’s propensity to divorce at all. Incentives matter to both sexes.
I believe that no-fault divorce is a disaster for both sexes, as it has turned holy matrimony into an easily-revocable civil partnership, and always rewards the “bigger user” in the relationship. I also agree with @Lyn87 that sperm donors cannot be sure that they won’t be held retroactively liable for child support obligations because they cannot be assured that the contract that they signed will be upheld over the course of the child’s upbringing, which now extends to age 26.
I was very surprised that the estimate for donor-conceived babies was 30,000 to 60,000 per year. I thought that it was higher than that, although 60,000 per year over a number of years does add up to a lot of people.
Original Laura,
it is foolish to assume that a major re-write of the divorce laws in one direction or another would have a huge effect on women’s propensity to divorce without influencing men’s propensity to divorce at all. Incentives matter to both sexes.
The fact that every single society where men held most of the power in marriage had a low divorce rate, and always had children grow up with both biological parents, proves you wrong. Your point would be true only if 1948 or 1920 America had a 45% divorce rate…
Men are just more self-sacrificing, and have a far greater sense of responsibility and civilization. All successful societies, whether Western or Eastern, came to the same conclusion. Patriarchy is the only path to civilization. Women have proved it.
@Anon
Be careful with social science statistics. You may be right, but it is also true that poor countries with no societal “safety net” (food stamps, HUD housing, etc.) have low divorce rates. No doubt this is partly due to (a) the wife fearing poverty; (b) the wife’s parents fearing the wife returning to the parental home with her children (and therefore pressuring her to stick with the marriage, even if bitterly unhappy) and (c) more shame associated with divorce for men, as post-divorce financial destitution of the wife and kids would be very real, and in a small village or closely-knit neighborhood, it would be very obvious to everyone that the children and maternal grandparents were bearing a big burden post-divorce.
Saudi Arabia has a very patriarchal system, and it is my understanding that a big portion of the women there choose to live unmarried under their father’s roof rather than to risk marrying. This isn’t the basis of a healthy society, either.
Only when countries become very prosperous can they afford to institute no-fault divorce, and at some point the bottom is going to drop out of the system even in the prosperous countries. Too many people riding in the wagon & too few pulling, etc. When the welfare benefits are finally trimmed in order to continue providing some level of support to the destitute, becoming a baby momma or a divorced woman will become less appealing to most women.
I’m older than most of the people who comment on this blog, and I can tell you that when I was in high school, the bulk of the kids at my high school who had divorced parents had a dad who had left the marriage in his 40s and married a younger woman, often starting a second family. I don’t deny that women of the present day have become frivolous beyond belief, but a lot of men in the Silent Generation pushed for no-fault divorce. (“People shouldn’t be trapped in a bad marriage for a lifetime. If things aren’t working, a simplified divorce would give both parties a second chance at happiness.” Consider the 1970s song, “Please Release Me.”) Just as the full implications of birth control pills didn’t become obvious for several decades, the final results of no-fault divorce are only now coming into view as an astonishing percentage of adults avoid marriage and parenthood.
I’m actually somewhat hopeful — I think we may be close to the bottom, with positive changes possible in the next decade or so. But maybe it is just the approach of Christmas that lifts my spirits. Best wishes to one and all.
It’s always good to be hopeful, but when we look at European countries or Japan what we see is that things can still get a whole lot worse than they are now in the US.
Saudi Arabia has a very patriarchal system, and it is my understanding that a big portion of the women there choose to live unmarried under their father’s roof rather than to risk marrying. This isn’t the basis of a healthy society, either.
Saudi Arabia is indeed so patriarchal that if the father wants his daughter to marry a man in order to solidify tribal/family alliances, she will do so whether she wants to or not. Her desire to marry or lack thereof plays no role in whether she ultimately gets married or not (and yes, I know this for a fact, having spend a considerable amount of time in that country). Arranged marriages are the norm in Saudi Arabia, not the exception – and the groom often has just as little choice/say in the matter as the bride. Their fathers arrange matters despite their own preferences.
I’m older than most of the people who comment on this blog, and I can tell you that when I was in high school, the bulk of the kids at my high school who had divorced parents had a dad who had left the marriage in his 40s and married a younger woman, often starting a second family.
And of course these being the pre-no fault divorce days, those dads almost certainly wound up paying very dearly for their decisions in the form of alimony/child support, because they had essentially broken their marriages without valid legal grounds (i.e., these men were AT FAULT for blowing up their marriages;therefore they paid for it by being slapped with alimony by the courts).
This is why what you describe has ALWAYS been rare and why most men have always thought twice, thrice, four times or more before “trading in for a younger model.” Unless Dad is part of the UMC or UC and rolling in dough (i.e., fewer than five percent of the married adult male population), the idea of initiating a frivorce was/is foolhardy, unless his goal was/is to commit financial, social, and professional suicide.
@Frank K — I had been thinking of North America, Europe, Australia & NZ. Japan didn’t cross my mind. I don’t really know anything about Japanese culture, except that they seem admirable in so many ways while being extremely strange in so many others. It is odd that Japan also has the same low birth rates and marriage rates that we have when they are not Western, not Christian, and from what I have heard, their social welfare system isn’t generous. According to what @Boxer posts, the Muslim immigrants to the USA will have the same issues that other Americans have within one or two generations.
State pensions for the elderly are probably a big factor in the decline of the family. It used to be that if you raised a big family, and did a good job of it, the kids would take good care of you in your later years. Now, the linkage is broken. The senior-citizen baby momma who raised violent criminals gets a package of benefits that is often just as big as the benefit package for the married woman who raised great children with her husband.
The whole situation can lead you to despair if you dwell on it too much, because from a human point of view it all looks completely hopeless. May God have mercy on us!
the bulk of the kids at my high school who had divorced parents had a dad who had left the marriage in his 40s and married a younger woman, often starting a second family.
Did HE leave? Or did the woman frivorce? Remember that the narrative of fathers leaving is false in the vast majority of cases.
Plus, if this era of yours was so long ago, the divorce rate was still under 10%, vs. 50% now that women have all the power.
The two points Original Laura is avoiding are :
1) The anecdotes she provides reveal nothing about whether the divorce rate was 45% when men had more power (it was not).
2) She still will not, under any circumstances, say that current ‘childimony’ laws are hugely unfair. Nothing about unilateral female custody, imputation of income, imprisonment, seizure of drivers licenses and passports, etc. strikes her as problematic
feeriker – agreed. The “trade in for a newer model” was something that was associated with executives and other members of the upper class and especially media stars. I grew up in the 60’s and I recall that back then that middle class divorce was rare. None of my friends were from broken homes. NONE.
Fast forward to the present and we find that “blended families” are not only not unusual, they are quite common and are part of the cultural landscape. They are even celebrated in the popular media.
I grew up in the 60’s and I recall that back then that middle class divorce was rare. None of my friends were from broken homes. NONE.
Yup, me too. Same generation. For the first 12 years of my life I did not know a single soul among my peer group that came from a home broken by divorce – and my peer group included plenty of non-Christians as well as kids from other Christian homes. The tiny handful of kids I knew who were growing up in fatherless homes had lost their fathers to death by illness or injury and their mothers were widows, not divorcees (and interestingly, none of their mothers that I can remember ever remarried in the wake of widowhood).
Actually looks pretty good from my stand point. Repeal the 19th for women, repeal no fault divorce, repeal primary caregiver laws, stop welfare; or do not.. and wait for reality to do it for you. Everything, and I mean everything, returns back to womens’ liberation, their vote, their need for bigger government and more security. Equality, the liberal manifesto, is the problem.
We have thousands of years of proof that men leading and doing, works. Not perfectly but it works. A hundred years at most of giving women all their liberation and the most well off country in the history of the planet is looking debauchery, despair and destruction in the face. A better case for sending women back to the kitchen and sewing their mouths shut couldn’t be made if the biggest misogynists of the galaxy got together for a night of Patriarchal tomfoolery and devised a plot to despoil womens’ angelicness.
A hundred years at most of giving women all their liberation and the most well off country in the history of the planet is looking debauchery, despair and destruction in the face.
It took Rome about 300 years to slowly collapse. It won’t even take us 50. Truly amazing.
My computer is not allowing me to cut paste from @Anon’s comment, but
1) The divorce rate wasn’t anywhere near 45% in the 70s, even in the UMC heavily reformed Jewish neighborhood that I lived in. I’m not even sure what the divorce rate was in the 1980s for first marriages, when the divorce rate supposedly peaked. When you change important rules or incentives in society, it often takes a generation or two for the bulk of society to fully adjust. In the 1920s, if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat, and most people had a much stronger work ethic in those days. But even after the welfare state was introduced, it took a couple of generations before large numbers of freeloaders began to appear. British author Peter Hitchens says that Britain is living in the “afterglow” of Britain’s past civilization, and that things are going to get uglier and uglier as those raised under the modern standards supplant the older generation raised in more traditional days.
2) If I were in charge, I would (1) establish statutory waiting periods prior to marriage; (2) liberalize the annulment provisions, allowing annulments on no-fault grounds for the first two years as long as no children are involved. Most people who make a dreadful mistake are aware of their mistake within the first twelve months, so twenty-four months would be plenty of time to decide to end a marriage in the event that the bride or groom is bitterly disillusioned before the honeymoon is over. When a marriage is childless, and lasts less than two years, divorced people can usually move on with their lives fairly quickly. This isn’t Biblical, but “for the hardness of their hearts,” etc.; (3) make divorce (after two years) fault-based, with a jury trial; (4) the “guilty” party in a divorce is not allowed to remarry, although they can form “civil partnerships” after a two or three year waiting period. This would encourage pastors to disallow grandiose second and third marriage ceremonies if either the prospective bride or groom left a previous marriage as the “guilty party.” It would also create a powerful social stigma regarding remarriage.
As far as alimony, child support and custody go, I would consider fault before awarding any of them. Alimony should almost always be temporary, unless the marriage lasted 25 years or more, or unless the ex-spouse has a debilitating illness or handicap. There will always be some hard cases, so judges would have discretion to award alimony in all cases, with the proviso that only the “innocent spouse” has the possibility of collecting alimony. Child support should be capped at a maximum level of reasonable support, no matter how high the income of the non-custodial parent’s income is, and the person paying support should get some degree of accountability as to how the money is spent. His support should not be going to the ex-wife’s new boyfriend’s car payment, etc.
I’m opposed to locking up people who fall behind on child support payments unless they have made little or no effort to comply with the order. The same goes for yanking professional licenses, passports, etc. The upper percentage limit on what can be taken from the non-custodial parent’s earnings is generally too high, and it should never be possible to take ANY percentage of what he earns while moonlighting. Moonlighting should be a way for a recently-divorced non-custodial parent to clean up their financial situation, and they should be allowed to moonlight openly.
The popular belief at the time I was divorced was that someone can be an awful spouse but be great with children, so bad behavior within the marriage is no reason for reducing custody time. This is nonsense. In general, I would say that the children are usually better off with the mother at least until age 8 or 10, but at that point they should either move in with the father or at least be spending every weekend with him, etc., and that goes double for boys.
The real life problem is that post-divorce one or both parents move out of the neighborhood, or even out of state, and one or both will re-marry, or have additional children, etc. After the age of ten, it is risky, especially for a child of divorce, to be moved to a new school system. When they move, they lose their entire social network and have to build a new one while starting at the bottom of the pecking order. You can guide a younger child into making appropriate friendships, but a divorced mom and dad, each with a full time job, cannot do anything much to help an older child transition to a new place. The child can very easily end up with the wrong social group, and the results can be devastating. For lots of children whose parents divorce, they never stop moving and changing schools, and the “collateral damage” from the instability causes almost as much damage as the divorce itself.
I posted this to another thread a while back, but this article has a fantastic chart on divorce & marriage rates, so I’m going to post it again.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-years-of-marriage-and-divorce-in-the-united-states-in-one-chart/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.44635d031cdb
Original Laura:
So many excellent ideas in your article. If I were to add anything, I’d encourage
1. a. A monetary penalty for babymothers/babydaddies. Out of wedlock births are a drain on resources, and those who do this should never be rewarded. This includes people who adopt out their children. Society will be forced to rehabilitate children born under these circumstances and that remains the biological parents’ fault.
1. b. Abortion should be restricted to people who can prove, before a panel of physicians, serious mental or physical hardship. A baby that will be born disabled, or parents who are legitimately and seriously mentally/physically ill, would qualify. Those that can’t meet the standard get the penalties laid out in proposition 1.
The other alternative, of course, is that the couple could get married, and force themselves to live a civilized life. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but somehow, every generation but the last three were somehow able to manage. I have faith that we can get there again.
I have another idea: Automatic divorce for people who have a felony conviction. Marriage is an institution which is for serious and competent people. Parasites and miscreants don’t qualify for it. This would send the right message, I think.
Boxer
Original Laura,
As far as alimony, child support and custody go, I would consider fault before awarding any of them. Alimony should almost always be temporary, unless the marriage lasted 25 years or more, or unless the ex-spouse has a debilitating illness or handicap. There will always be some hard cases, so judges would have discretion to award alimony in all cases, with the proviso that only the “innocent spouse” has the possibility of collecting alimony. Child support should be capped at a maximum level of reasonable support, no matter how high the income of the non-custodial parent’s income is, and the person paying support should get some degree of accountability as to how the money is spent. His support should not be going to the ex-wife’s new boyfriend’s car payment, etc.
OK, good.
The default of custody should be joint. Many divorces just won’t happen in the first place if the unidirectional income stream (under penalty of imprisonment) were not a guarantee…
If you were in charge, lol! If I were in charge I would scrap the annulment process, institute a marriage based on vetting of the spouses by parents and family, allow divorce only on the basis of adultery and stipulate a strict separation period for cases of abuse, drunkenness and other such sins, to be done under the supervision of the family of the bride or the groom, depending on the guilty party.
Annulment before two years, you’re utterly delusional, why not just call them mini decider marriages perfect for women to decide which cock is best? If this is the best you can come up with, it is worse than the offerings for today’s men. Just wipe away the cum on her mouth and she’s ready for her new husband. Fuck you.
Children always go to the father, except under the most serious circumstances.
Laura,
Why does a long term marriage automatically deserve alimony?
I am facing having to pay that now because my soon to be ex-wife got unhappy. We agreed she would stay home and take care of the house and I would work. She does not have the skills for a high paid career, but could make some.
Texas law provides for some aspect of “maintaining her standard of living,” but that will be impossible given her earning power, even if she got the max alimony. (It is capped at 20% of the gross income of the other party here.)
She chose to blow things up, why does she deserve alimony? No fault has been demonstrated other than by the one who filed (she did).
Re: marriage, divorce, annulment, etc.:
I don’t understand what’s wrong with just doing it God’s way. Marriage predates government, and we call it HOLY Matrimony for a reason – it is instituted by God. Why “Render unto Caesar that which is God’s?”
Why place it under the authority of the state at all? Their track record sucks.
The only substantive thing that changes when a couple marries is that they can have sex without it being sinful. That’s it: everything else is ancillary to that. It is not at all an exaggeration to say that the sexuality of each spouse belongs to the other – and by “belongs to,” I mean it is their literal property. It goes both ways, too. I Corinthians 7: 4-5 says this,
To modern ears bombarded by feminism, that seems like strong language… but we are men, so let’s not mince words here: we’re talking about property rights. A wife owns her husband’s sexuality, and he owns hers, and thus either spouse has the right to “collect” at any time. The Bible absolutely precludes using the withholding of sex as a weapon or means of control.
PRECLUDES IT. Husbands do not have to “earn” their way into the marital bed (I’m looking at you, Mr. Driscoll, and Mr. Osteen, and Mr. Powell, and the rest of you heretics). A wife who acts as the gatekeeper of sex to control her husband’s behavior is committing a sin – specifically the sin of rebellion, which “is as the sin of witchcraft.” (1 Sam 15:23).
Back to the matter at hand. Since marriage is what separates legitimate sex from fornication, and marriage confers mutual property rights, the husband (as the head of the house and owner of the wife’s sexuality) is the default parent in the event of a split. Bastards are under the authority of the mother – legitimate children are under the authority of the father. In both cases authority includes responsibility. If a woman wants “her own kids” outside the authority of a husband, nobody will stop her from getting knocked up and giving birth, but she gets 100% of the responsibilities that go with that decision, and she and her kids will likely suffer terribly for it. Currently we greatly mitigate the consequences of those bad decisions by women by forcing non-husbands and tax-payers to provide for sluts and “their” children, but if we stopped subsidizing such bad behavior we would soon see a lot less of it.
That leaves open the question of “Who decides?” But that’s easy, too. It’s necessary for the state to know who’s married to whom, but it is outside the legitimate scope of the state to grant or withhold permission to marry or separate. It should be up to the husband and the bride’s father (or senior male relative in cases where the father is dead) to inform the state that a marriage had been formed, which transfers the wife and any children she bears into the household of the husband, at which point they fall under his protection and become his legal responsibility.
There would be exceptions (such as older widows, or women with no living male relatives, or women who are estranged from their families), but in those cases she could go to the courthouse and simply declare herself emancipated, at which point she would be free to legally act on her own behalf unless and until she marries. Needless to say, declaring herself emancipated would remove any obligation her male family members have towards her (which is a precipitous step in the absence of a big, socialist safety net).
As for divorce, there would be a lot fewer of them if we did things the way I described (which is how it was done for centuries with far better results than what he have now). But since there are legal rights and responsibilities pertaining to marriage, it’s important for the state to know who is no longer married as well. In those cases it would probably have to involve the courts as a practical matter, but the presumptions should be heavily stacked in favor of not creating perverse incentives, and the avoidance of creating anti-civilizational legal precedents (“stare decisis“) for the sake of short term false “compassion.”
Being stupid should be painful, and that applies to marrying unwisely. If we stopped over-mitigating the consequences of bad decisions, it would suck for the people who have to live with those consequences in the short term, but people would make a lot fewer of them in the long term (and even in the short term it wouldn’t be any worse than it is now, overall).
@JoeS
I dated a woman from a Seven Sisters school: three divorces so far (though unmarried when I dated her) – in love with Obama, of course.
I don’t understand what’s wrong with just doing it God’s way.
Because God’s way holds people accountable for their decisions and actions. Nobody, including –especially– so-called “Christians,” has any stomach for that.
Why place it under the authority of the state at all? Their track record sucks.
Because, despite its obviously abysmal track record, everbody, including –especially– so-called “Christians,” continues to put their trust in Caesar. Also, the State, where marriage is concerned, is like the absentee parent that lets their kids do pretty much whatever they want. In particular, the State allows (sometimes even encourages) marriage “do-overs,” whereas that meanie God won’t allow it and wants married couples to resolve their problems and stay together. Small wonder that Caesar is every spoiled human brat’s “favorite parent.”
“I dated a woman from a Seven Sisters school: three divorces so far”
You’d think that some people would get a clue and realize that they are the common denominator of their problems. But to do that requires introspection and (shudder) a willingness to admit that one was wrong that that personal change is required.
It’s so much easier to play the victim card, especially when the state will back you up and even reward you with cash and prizes.
Re: BillyS’s situation,
If society did things the way I suggested, that situation would probably not have gone off the rails, and if it did anyway, the innocent party (BillyS) would be protected.
Since nobody is suggesting that adults should be legally forced to not do stupid things, the way to keep people from doing them without creating a police state (which we are well on the way toward creating), is to stop subsidizing them and mitigating the consequences at the expense of others.
In this case, if Billy’s wife decides that she wants out and she files for divorce and there’s no fault on his part, she’s free to go (she’s not a prisoner, after all). BUT… she takes nothing with her. NOTHING AT ALL. Her engagement and wedding rings? They go back to him. And if she conveniently “loses” them, she would owe him their full replacement value.
If she just leaves without filing, then BillyS could file on the grounds of her abandonment, which would constitute fault on her side, so the same consequences would apply. In either case, she should not be entitled to one red cent from him going forward. If she no longer wishes to be married, she is no longer entitled to the protection and provision she enjoyed as his wife.
In either case, not only should he not owe her alimony, but she should be on the hook to him to mitigate any financial hardship he suffers as the result of her ending the marriage, including hiring domestic help in perpetuity if she was a stay-at-home wife, and a big portion of her salary if she worked for pay during the marriage. The one who is NOT at fault is the one whose lifestyle is worthy of preservation.. not the one who makes less money. The fact that he makes more money than her is irrelevant – we don’t let litigants off the hook on the grounds that the people they defrauded are more wealthy than they are.
Boxer @ November 30, 2016 at 8:30 pm:
“I have another idea: Automatic divorce for people who have a felony conviction. Marriage is an institution which is for serious and competent people.”
Marriage is for the incompetent. They need the crutch and there’s no shame in that. UC couples maintaining Marriages 2.0 is proof that it isn’t the Elites who benefit most from marriage and the cock carousel proves it isn’t the Alphas.
This is the endgame scenario I worry about, men deciding that only the strong deserve to thrive in the Brave New World. Women go wrong when they stop submitting, men go wrong when they stop caring.
@BillyS I would be open to an innocent spouse receiving alimony, especially if the marriage lasted many years without the accumulation of substantial assets, meaning that the property split will not yield much. If there ARE substantial assets, then there would generally be no reason to award alimony IMO. It is hard to say “never” because every divorce involves a unique set of circumstances. Your wife appears to be leaving you for no reason, so from what little I know, I’m not sympathetic to her cause.
Judges typically do not care whether there was any fault or not. They see their job as splitting up the assets and liabilities, and awarding child support and alimony if necessary. Don’t run up big legal bills trying to prove that your wife had no reason to leave you. Accept the inevitable and try to extricate yourself from the situation as quickly and as cheaply as you can.
Generally, your attorney should be arguing that your ex-wife could get a job of some sort, and should ask the court to order her to start looking for a job. If there are very substantial assets, and you have a high income, and your wife is over the age of 50 or 55, then your case might be an exception to the general rule, especially if your wife hasn’t worked in twenty years or more.
I’m sorry that you are being dragged through the divorce courts, and I know that this Christmas will be really hard for you. Try not to worry too much about the money. You will survive one way or another, and by this time next year, things should be settled.
Hmmm … seems to me that the carousel benefits Alphas immensely. They get first crack at all the young girls, who much later get passed off to thirsty Betas as sloppy seconds (or one hundred and seconds). Said Betas then marry them, in some cases raising Chad’s offspring as their own, while Chad moves on to “this year’s model”. But best of all for Alphas, they don’t even have to spend any money on their Friends With Benefits. No wining, no dining, Maybe a bag of Skittles as a reward for her favors.
I should clarify that my spouse is innocent in the eyes of the law, just not in the eyes of God and morality.
Laura,
She has her reasons and I am not perfect, but nothing Biblical or even anything that could be charged according to the current laws. I won’t go into all the details here, but she has built a quite firm case in her head and “is not longer in love with me.”
The first part of this statement implies you would support alimony in this case, but the latter indicates not.
I am personally attempting to do that, but it is hard no matter what. Lots of legal questions. Waiting for the mediator appointment in January now.
My wife is over that range, but has worked, albeit not at high paying jobs. Several factors may make alimony much less likely than she expects, but I won’t know until next year when the arbitrator decides. (My lawyer liked the mediator we will work with, so hopefully that works well for me.)
Not as bad as I might have thought in early October. I am resolving it fairly well already. I will have a few bumps I am sure, but I am closer to my son and his family now, ironically. I won’t see them much as they live on the other side of town, but it is better than it was.
I have stepped back and I am taking a more measured approach to life now. God can use me as He wishes. I am going to do what I can to make good connections in several areas.
I do wish it was easier for men to connect, but that is another problem:
https://billsmithvision.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/finding-a-core-group-of-male-friends/
Hopefully I can restart the blogging I put on hold when this hit. I have several staged ones in place and lots more to talk about.
Lyn87,
I would agree that she should get nothing, but I could live with her taking that and the car she normally drove.
I found it very ironic that most of the furniture and stuff she did take came from my family. Almost nothing significant we had came from her family. Her dad only funded the marriage and then the divorce.
Texas is better on this, but still not perfect. I suspect I will try to push for some divorce reform in the coming years, but I don’t put too much hope in that. Even my lawyer (who seems quite sharp) claimed No Fault divorce was valuable to have. (She does benefit from it, so I don’t blame her thinking that.)
At least my wife got a bit jealous that my lawyer is hot looking. I would never marry someone like my lawyer, as it brings up too many risks, but strong legal counsel in this case is worth it. Being pleasant to look at is a plus.
@Lyn87 If there is a complete breakdown of society through war or hyperinflation, etc., we might well end up with your preferred scenario, or something close to it. A strong argument can certainly be made that the government has made such a mess of marriage and divorce that the church should not recognize the government’s actions with regard to marriage.
My scenario was based on the assumption that moderate changes might become possible over the next ten to twenty years without a complete societal collapse as the welfare state becomes completely unaffordable, and as marriage rates and legitimate birth rates continue to decline.
Sometimes I think that we will muddle through the current financial crisis somehow, and at other times I think that WWIII or a civil war is probably inevitable at some point in the reasonably near future. Whatever happens, stable marriage is the foundation of society, and a society that only offers stable marriage to the UMC is rotten from top to bottom.
“My scenario was based on the assumption that moderate changes might become possible over the next ten to twenty years without a complete societal collapse as the welfare state becomes completely unaffordable, and as marriage rates and legitimate birth rates continue to decline.”
I believe that contemporary hedonism, tied together with the “married with a singles lifestyle” culture will continue to decimate all birthrates.
As state and federal budgets start to come under pressure from a shrinking tax base, so too will Uncle Sugar’s largess. The welfare state is already under pressure. In many, if not most locales there are waiting lists to get Section 8 housing vouchers. In many cases they are years long. In Denver there is lottery to just get onto a waiting list. This will expand to other entitlements such as EBT/SNAP cards and medicaid benefits.
As these benefits slowly but steadily erode would be baby mommas will realize that maybe they are better off without having bastard offspring, since they will actually have to work to provide for them.
Whether or not this gets people back onto the straight and narrow remains to be seen. The call of the carousel is strong, and not just on the unwashed. Many of my adult children’s middle to upper middle class female friends ride it with relish, all planning on marrying much later, “after they’e had their fun”. Anyway, my guess is that many of the the would be baby mommas will chose to ride the carousel (which they already do) but remain childless. Of course this means that they will have to work, but if they can’t get a Section 8 voucher they’ll have to work anyway, except that in the childless case there are fewer mouths to feed.
To have a crystal ball that actual works!
@BillyS
Without knowing much of anything about your circumstances, I would say that your wife might be entitled to alimony if YOU were divorcing HER and the assets being divided up were inadequate to provide her with a reasonable standard of living post divorce. As the decision to divorce was apparently 100% her own, I don’t care if she has to experience a severe drop in her standard of living. She wants to be “free” and being “free” can be expensive. A housewife in her 50s being dumped by the husband would be a different situation, as without alimony or a substantial property settlement she ends up going back to work and losing her entire previous social network, etc., which can be psychologically devastating in conjunction with the loss of a long-term marriage that she thought would last a lifetime.
You seem to be handling things well. Don’t get hung up on who gets what furniture, etc. You do not want your new place to be a living shrine to a marriage that failed, and household goods generally sell for a tiny fraction of what was paid for them. Furnish your new place to your own taste.
I’m curious about why you don’t move to the side of town that your son lives on?
I would say that your wife might be entitled to alimony if YOU were divorcing HER and the assets being divided up were inadequate to provide her with a reasonable standard of living post divorce.
What if Billy, like me, pulled the trigger first and filed because his wife had moved out and abandoned him for an opportunity to try to relive her teen years by riding the carousel? Would you be advocating alimony for the wife under those circumstances?
I’m curious about why you don’t move to the side of town that your son lives on?
Do you own a house in a locality that has a less-than-vibrant real estate market, or the mortgage on which is upside down (or appraises at little more than the original purchase price)? Then there’s the issue of soon-to-be-ex’s name still being on the title and deed to the house and him either having to buy her out (which he probably can’t afford to do under the circumstances) or her having to quit-claim deed her share (which, even if she were willing to do it, probably requires him to refinance the mortgage in his own name, which he might not now qualify for if he’s taken financial hits connected to the divorce). More than likely at least one of these conditions applies, which makes moving a non-option.
It just floors me how so many people think that packing up and moving is as easy as getting up out of bed in the morning.
I don’t believe my wife is headed for anything past being with her quite old mother and “getting her own life back” now.
I am very close to my job, something that has great value now. He and his family are also working some issues out and being this far away (about an hour) has merit.
I grew up about 45 minutes away from my grandparents and saw them fairly frequently.
He is also building his own life and I am not planning on just injecting myself in too many areas either.
God has taken care of me in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
I’m assuming that ‘Original Laura’ is a woman. If so, then why is anyone taking advice from her, or Dalrock giving her platform?
God clearly chastised Adam for ‘harkening to the voice’ of Eve [Gen 3:17]. The perspective of a woman is important at few times, and never to tell a man what to do or how to think. If it is asked of her by her husband to give him a perspective on how to “dwell with them according to knowledge giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel” called for in 1Pet3:7, them at times, OK.
Men are to “Be not effeminate” 1 Cor 6:7-9 and Paul likens that to being a liar, a murderer, a thief, and an adulterer ….not good company. And he is not primarily talking about a liking for the same sex; he is primarily talking about being soft on the toughness of God, on the understanding of God, as in “…but in understanding be men” 1Cor14:20b.
Women [you] are wonderful, but only in God’s designed purpose. All else is blasphemy, whether initiated by the man or the woman. Men be men, women be women. That is beautiful.
@feeriker: I don’t ever assume that the person named as the “plaintiff” is necessarily the one responsible for the divorce. In many cases, it is just as you said. Too many people assume that the person who filed the papers is the one who “gave up on the marriage” when the reality is that the other spouse is already living with someone else, or has already impregnated someone else, etc., and the spouse left behind has to file to force the division of marital assets before they go up in smoke. The act of abandonment is the end of the marriage, not the filing of the papers.
@BillyS: It’s great to be close to your work, and I understand the decision to not move around the corner from your son. He needs his space and you need yours.
sipcode says:
December 1, 2016 at 5:07 pm
I can see a whole series of sermons being preached on this subject – in a home/non-corporate church. Too bad that professional pastors won’t touch this part of Scripture eith a 100-foot pole.
Sipcode, Laura has still not even justified her blatant appeal to female nature by spewing forth the shit she did on two year starter marriages up thread. As if that isn’t every woman’s dream come true, get to relive the wedding and honeymoon period over and over again, every two years. Fuck, how can she be so fucking dense?!
Just in case the cunt decides to try and backstop her ‘treat marriage like a game’ ideals.
An annulment means the marriage didn’t happen, I mean, perfect right. Every woman’s dream come true. They get to spend money, have their wedding, fuck, have their two years of wedded bliss and then when she gets bored, pull the cord with no strings attached and gets to pretend like it never even happened and do it again to the next twit.
Oh, it isn’t Biblical, you don’t say… wow… she’s not even using the correct reason for the ‘hardness of hearts’ which is the reason for divorce being granted under the strict reason of adultery, not easy two year starter marriages to get their pussy’s wet and then pretend that they are still tight.
Why do the men here pretend she never stated this. And yet still listen to her.
Divorced means “We were married and we split up.” Annulled means “We were never really married.”
Feminist Hater is correct, of course. A marriage does not become “real” after two-years-or-one-kid-whichever-comes-first. A marriage becomes real after the couple has a ceremony and then has sex. Once a marriage has been consummated it cannot be “annulled” – It can only end in divorce or death. It’s the difference between being married by law (“de jure“) and being married in fact (“de facto“). Nobody (be he President or Pope) can annul a marriage once it has been consummated, despite any claims to the contrary.
A couple is married “by law” when they have a ceremony, but they are not married “in fact” until they consummate the marriage by having sex. (Thus the once-common practice of having witnesses in the bed-chamber on the wedding night among the European ruling class – so there can be no question about the validity of the marriage nor the legitimacy of any offspring that appear nine months later.) An annulment can only happen in unusual cases wherein the split occurs after the ceremony but before the consummation… cases such as impotence, or after a proxy wedding but before the couple sleeps together. In those cases it would be correct to say, “There was a ceremony, but we were never husband-and-wife because we never had sex.” THAT is what “annulment” means. It certainly does NOT mean, “We tried being married for a while, but one or both of us decided we didn’t like it – so we’re going to pretend that it never really happened and we want everyone to pretend with us.”
Only a tiny number of marriages are annullable at any one time, and it’s really a throw-back to the days when proxy weddings were more common, and also when people had more sense and realized that a virgin has higher MMV than a non-virgin, and the difference between “divorced” and “annulled” greatly affected a person’s ability to marry well – or even marry at all. What Original Laura is suggesting with her “two-years-or-a-child rule” is to create “divorce-lite” to remove the consequences of divorce – mostly for the benefit of young women – so they can pretend to be blushing virgin brides as many times as they like and expect everyone to play along. It’s a way to give divorced women the same cachet in the marriage market as virgins.
The last thing we need is for society to treat divorce even less seriously than it does already by pretending that divorced women are no different than virgins as potential brides.
You may want to walk that back, Laura.
[For those familiar with the history of the Borgia family… Rodrigo Borgia (as Pope Alexander VI) married off his daughter Lucretzia to Giovanni Sforza for political reasons in 1493, but the tides of politics changed and the alliance with the Duchy of Milan lost much of its value, so he decided to marry her to Alfonso of Aragon to secure an alliance with the Kingdom of Naples instead. But since she was a Pope’s daughter and already married (and the Catholic church theoretically forbids divorce-and-remarriage), a means had to be devised to make it seem that Lucretzia was still “virgo intacta” despite the fact that she had already been married for three years. The solution was for Lucretzia to falsely accuse her husband Giovanni of impotence and for her father the Pope to coerce/bribe the Sforza family into playing along so an annulment could be granted on the grounds that although the couple had a wedding ceremony and had lived together as husband-and-wife, they never had sex. The well-plowed Lucretzia got her annulment and a new Milanese husband, and Giovanni Sforza married someone else and had children with her (thus proving that the charge of impotence was a lie all along.)]
(2) liberalize the annulment provisions, allowing annulments on no-fault grounds for the first two years as long as no children are involved. Most people who make a dreadful mistake are aware of their mistake within the first twelve months, so twenty-four months would be plenty of time to decide to end a marriage in the event that the bride or groom is bitterly disillusioned before the honeymoon is over. When a marriage is childless, and lasts less than two years, divorced people can usually move on with their lives fairly quickly. This isn’t Biblical, but “for the hardness of their hearts..
God’s gonna have some issues with that suggestion. Not, of course, that most women care about what this God guy thinks.
“Most WOMEN who make a dreadful mistake are aware of their mistake within the first twelve months…”
Fixed, in the interest of honesty. A clearer and more honest (albeit certainly inadvertent) admission of the fact that women themselves don’t even believe in their own ability to make a serious adult decisions and weight in advance the consequences thereof I have never before seen.
I believe that there are legitimate cases where a marriage can be annulled:
1) Coercion was involved, say a threat of violence unless you marry
2) You were either drunk as a skunk or drugged
3) You married someone who was already married (AKA divorced) which is the root of most annulments in the RCC,
But yeah, a valid, consummated marriage cannot be annulled. A lot of people think that the RCC hands out annulments like Halloween candy. Given how common divorce and “remarriage” are in the USA, the RCC does annul a lot of those remarriages; but over the years I’ve met plenty of people who couldn’t get one because, lo and behold, the tribunal ruled that the marriage was valid.
It is also worth remembering that at least in the RCC that annulments are not considered infallible. So if you go into the process and deceive the tribunal, while they might grant you the annulment the reality is that you are still married.
Frank K @ 9:36 am:
“I believe that there are legitimate cases where a marriage can be annulled:
1) Coercion was involved, say a threat of violence unless you marry”
Au contraire, the shotgun marriage is an excellent idea. But if it makes you feel better, we’ll just shoot the Chad instead.
So you’re saying that people can be forced to marry against their will? Then why bother asking the groom and the bride for their consent in the ceremony?
If you think it’s such a great idea, why not have Uncle Sugar coerce young Betas into marrying baby mommas and provide for Chad’s brood?
Frank K,
1) Thanks. I see where you’re going with that, but I think you’re still being a bit too loose with it. I’ll buy the coercion exception up to a point. Certainly a girl taken by Boko Haram and forced to marry some muzzie rag-head at the point of an AK-47 is not married, and has every right to escape (and cut his throat on the way out if the opportunity arises), and should be considered a rape victim rather than a divorced woman if she gets to freedom. I don’t think anyone here would dispute cases like that. On the other hand, there’s nothing within Christianity that precludes arranged marriages, and they were actually fairly common for centuries (they still are in some places, although not among Christians any more). One could make the case that a father telling his daughter, “No, you may not marry Dark-Triad Chad, you will marry Steady Eddie or you will be disowned” is applying a form of coercion, but if she follows his command – no matter how reluctantly – her marriage to Eddie would be perfectly valid after consummation.
2) Being voluntarily drunk or high does absolutely nothing to absolve one of any consequences of any actions one takes in that state. Note the word “voluntarily.”
3) In cases of marriages to divorced people who are not otherwise permitted to remarry, I agree that those marriages are not valid (as Matthew 19 strongly implies), but then it becomes necessary to apply the rule evenly and all the time… As you noted, one can fool a tribunal (and a tribunal can rule incorrectly even when they know all the facts), but God isn’t fooled at all.
_____
I guess the main point is that “annulment” is a religious construct that has nothing to do with the secular legality of divorce. The state considers you to be married when you file the certificate with the court – the state couldn’t care less if you’re having sex or not. As I understand her argument Original Laura was talking about establishing trial marriages that could be easily annulled… and considered by everyone, including the state, to have never existed. Of course, the state couldn’t care less if you used to be married, so the only reason for that scheme is to get everyone else to pretend that you weren’t, which gives divorced women the same value in the MMV as virgins.
Frank K @ 10:17 am:
“So you’re saying that people can be forced to marry against their will?”
Arranged marriages have been the norm for most of history.
“Then why bother asking the groom and the bride for their consent in the ceremony?”
In a shotgun marriage, they gave consent when they first fornicated. Making the vows is accepting responsibility. “I took your daughter’s virginity and don’t want her anymore” definitely warrants a 12-gauge response.
The RCC only has annulments because it’s a gigantic bureaucracy. Like all bureaucracies, they insist things follow the proper rules or they don’t exist… and we all know how THAT attitude plays out in our daily lives. Jesus never said “you’re banging him but didn’t file the paperwork correctly, so he’s not your husband”. He said “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.” (John 4:17-18)
I’m not suggesting that any true Christian church would recognize most or all of the annulments that would be granted, just as they presently don’t have to recognize divorces or annulments sanctioned by the government. The percentage of true Christians in American society is very low, and very few people would vote in any “reforms” of marriage/divorce that resulted in “no second chances,” as 10 or 20% of marriages are absolutely awful, and a largely secular society is not going to force an unhappy person to remain trapped in a marriage that they hate. My comment was directed at answering @Anon’s challenge and was geared toward considering what might actually be possible given the times we live in.
My program is not designed to lead to heaven on earth, it is designed to reduce the number of divorces involving minor children in the very imperfect world in which we find ourselves. Maybe it wouldn’t work at all, and maybe our society will completely fall apart fairly soon, enabling groups of Christians to form their own state with the sort of close-to-lifetime marriage that existed in England prior to WWII. The problem in the USA at present is that there are so many different denominations that the post-divorce individual can shop for a church that will allow remarriage, and these days they won’t have to investigate very many churches before finding one.
I would also have mandatory paternity testing after each birth, BEFORE the father’s name goes on the birth certificate now that paternity testing has become relatively cheap. No man should ever have to pay a nickel for a child that isn’t his, and no man should ever have a vasectomy because he “already has two children” when in fact one of the children belongs to someone else.
As to frivolous annulments allowing women to be “brides” time after time, how is that any different from what we have now? If churches don’t have the guts to say that you don’t get to have a big church wedding if you ended your first marriage for non-biblical reasons, then how is it worse if they are allowing grand weddings after an annulment? Right now, the wise person avoids marrying anyone who has lived in sin, and if my program were put into place, the wise person wouldn’t touch anybody who initiated an annulment or divorce for non-Biblical reasons. Some would be willing to consider the “innocent party” from a marriage break-up, and some would not. Just like now.
@Lyn87 & @FrankK: I’m aware of the technical difference between an annulment and a divorce, I was just trying to create two clear categories. You could call it all divorce, but simply allow “no-fault” provisions for the first two years, but make divorce very tough after the first two years.,
The purpose of allowing “easy divorce” for the first two years is to encourage the bad apples to cut and run before children are involved. I’m fairly convinced that the people who take advantage of this option are people who would not end up in the “lifetime marriage” statistics under any set of circumstances.
For example: Walter teaches high school chemistry and earns $50,000 per year. He marries Skylar who earns $30,000 per year at a clerical job. Walter sets up a budget that will enable them to pay off all remaining student loans and accumulate a house down payment within five years, while giving each of them a small, but reasonable, amount of discretionary income each month. Skylar refuses to live within the budget, and keeps buying clothing, shoes, presents, make-up, spa days, etc., and putting it all on the credit cards. At the same time, she grumbles incessantly about having to live in an apartment. Every time Walter tries to get Skylar to re-commit to the budget, she talks about how unhappy she is, and about how Walter is draining all the joy from her life.
IMO, this marriage is DOOMED. Skylar wishes she had married somebody with a lot more money, and all the marriage counseling in the world isn’t going to fix this. If they don’t divorce soon, Walter will end up very, very bitter about working year after year and ending up with nothing but credit card debt. This bitterness will make it difficult for him to have a successful second marriage after his marriage to Skylar ends, as it inevitably will. Give decent-human-being Walter a second chance at happiness now EVEN THOUGH this means that selfish, immature Skylar also gets a second chance. Hard core counselling from the church PRIOR to marriage might have prevented this marriage from occurring in the first place, but it is too late for that. But it is not too late to prevent children from being added to the problem.
Just because our post-Christian society isn’t interested in a system of Biblical marriage doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be possible to come up with a set of rules far better than what currently exists.
In my original comment I did say “say a threat of violence”. I wouldn’t count financial threats, such as being disowned, as grounds for annulment. But in the end, the bride and groom have to be in a position to freely consent, even if their marriage was arranged.
I would still think that you would need to be of sound mind to enter into a valid marriage. I’m not talking about being tipsy or high on pot. But I can see how others could disagree with this.
Prior to the advent of no fault divorce, civil annulments were more common, especially in the cases of bigamy. That has pretty much gone the way of the horse and buggy. I would think, however, that there would be no alimony awarded after an annulment, but who knows what judges might say about that. After all, they will award cash and prizes to an adulterous wife.
As for Laura’s proposal for using annulments to dissolve “trial marriages”, I fully agree that there is no ground for that in the Christian realm. In the secular realm they are not needed, courtesy of no fault divorce. Plus we already have “trial marriages”, it’s called cohabitation; and its track record of predicting future success is quite dismal.
Oh for fuck sake Laura, you could have just said you were wrong about the annulment idea and realize it was a really, really fucking bad idea but no.
Your solution would literally allow women to sleep around, garner all resources, have all their fun without any of the responsibility of their own decisions and dump men after two years, leaving men to pick up the pieces and jump on the next cock, what the fuck is the point of that you dimwitted, spectacular piece of a shitstain?!
You will never get it. If that is your mindset, dissolving marriage would be the most appropriate solution, after all, the serious people would stay together no matter what and wouldn’t waste time with wedding planners, dresses and expensive honeymoons or the million other bullshit excuses women use to need their day..
Your idea sticks worse than diarrhea… it is no better than cohabitation, virtually identical to it bar the expensive wedding, honeymoon and buying that first house.
… Or Walter could just go into “freelance pharmaceuticals” and make a few hundred million dollars. Skyler will come aboard in no time…
As for your clarification at 11:41… when you wrote,
I assumed that’s what you meant. You can understand our confusion when we didn’t know about the invisible caveats. There’s nothing wrong with talking about the gap between what may be achievable in the short term based on pragmatism and what is the right thing to do based on eternal principles, but if you do, you need to make it clear which one you mean. The words, If I were in charge strongly implies the latter.
Laura – There are many churches that won’t allow you to walk down the aisle if you were married in another church. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about the ones that will allow it.
I know that you’re trying to be pragmatic with your proposals; but I would say that pragmatism is what greased the slippery slope that has got us to where we are today. And as I pointed out above, cohabitation, which is essentially a trial marriage, does not help couples improve their chances at having a successful marriage. If any, studies show that it has the opposite effect.
The Natural Family Planning (NFP) folks make an interesting claim: they say that Catholic couples who practice NFP have a divorce rate in the low single digits, whereas those who contracept have a rate that matches the population at large. What the actual reason for this is, I am unsure; though I suspect that it’s tied to their religious conviction. I have heard it said that one of the biggest sources of Catholics becoming Protestants is being able to have a church wedding after a divorce (I’m assuming these people did not qualify for an annulment). I knew a woman, who was married as Catholic, divorced and remarried in an Evangelical Church, who loved to yammer about her relationship with Jesus Christ. Of course, her putative husband was also divorced and remarried as well.
Oh Lyn, you fall for her trap so easily. It was a bad idea, it isn’t pragmatic in the slightest, it offers no solution at all. None, in fact it offers such possibility to reckless women to use and abuse marriage further. It is treating marriage as a game at it most fundamental core.
“Jesus never said “you’re banging him but didn’t file the paperwork correctly, so he’s not your husband””
Did He ever say “You’re banging him, so he’s your husband”?
And who’s talking about “paperwork”? We’re talking about freely exchanging vows, not bureaucracy.
Fem H8r,
I get it. What she’s saying is that a system that allows unilateral no-fault divorce only-for-two-years-if-no-kids, with a complainant having to show fault after that would still be wrong, but it would be less bad as a practical matter than allowing unilateral no-fault under any circumstances, which is what we have now.
To the extent that that is her position now, she’s correct: very nearly anything that reduces the window for unilateral no-fault divorce IS a practical (but not necessarily moral) improvement over the current state of not having restrictions at all.
Of course that’s not what she originally wrote, and that may well be a telling omission.
My primary objection is with her use of the word “annulment,” which means “It never happened.” Allowing / encouraging people to pretend that short, childless marriages are not “real” marriages would be an even worse disaster than the way we treat them now. No argument from me on that score: Laura does not appear to have thought that aspect through.
@ Lyn87 says:
December 2, 2016 at 7:45 am
“But since she was a Pope’s daughter… ”
Never mind that little detail.
@ Original Laura says:
December 2, 2016 at 11:41 am
“As to frivolous annulments allowing women to be ‘brides’ time after time, how is that any different from what we have now?”
Read that out loud, slowly, and listen to how it sounds.
@Lyn87 Good job of restating my position. I am indeed in favor of the STATE reducing the time-period during which no-fault divorce is available as a practical step toward restoring stable marriages as a foundational institution in society. Raising the minimum age for marriage to 21, and requiring people to register their intention to marry six months prior to the wedding date, etc. are some small changes that could increase marital stability over the long term. Reworking child custody and paternity rules could make marriage less risky for men. A mandatory waiting period to remarry after a divorce would also be a good idea, as “rebound marriages” are notoriously high risk.
What the churches ought to be doing is entirely different, and for the most part, clearly laid out in the Bible. We don’t live in a theocracy, though, so Biblical rules on divorce and remarriage are not going to be enshrined in law any time soon. As we all know, Biblical rules on divorce and remarriage aren’t even enshrined in the Church.
@Lyn87 In a previous post you stated:
“I guess the main point is that “annulment” is a religious construct that has nothing to do with the secular legality of divorce. The state considers you to be married when you file the certificate with the court – the state couldn’t care less if you’re having sex or not. As I understand her argument Original Laura was talking about establishing trial marriages that could be easily annulled… and considered by everyone, including the state, to have never existed. Of course, the state couldn’t care less if you used to be married, so the only reason for that scheme is to get everyone else to pretend that you weren’t, which gives divorced women the same value in the MMV as virgins.”
There has always been a difference between how the government defined annulment and how the various churches defined it, BUT if the marriage was never consummated, that would have been a valid basis for being granted an annulment by the state, as well as by some churches. So the government DOES care if you have sex or not.
No piece of paper is ever going to give divorced women the same value in the MMV as virgins.
In a legal annulment, there was no alimony, and generally no child support because there were no children. Each person took the property that he/she brought to the marriage, and because the marriage was of such brief duration, there generally would not have been any other property for the court to consider.
In a society in which fewer and fewer people remain virgins until marriage, I don’t think that it is unreasonable to broaden eligibility for state annulments. If doing so meant that no-fault divorce went out the window for long-term marriages and in marriages which have produced children, I think it would be a step in the right direction. Others obviously disagree.
@ Feminist Hater – You are in rare form today.
@ Original Laura
Nonsense I say.
Get the bad apples to cut & run by not inducing them to get married in the first place.
You want to eliminate broken families and divorce? Eliminate cash and prizes to women for getting married and burning the place down.
There is a DEARTH of accountability for women within the family law courts; and that is by design.
You want to have a meaningful change in divorce rates, you have to cause everyone pause to give the institution of marriage the respect it used to receive, and damn well deserves. Marriage is a pale ghost of itself, as it’s no longer the cornerstone of our societies.
There is profit in misery, for those who are in the right profession to skim off the productive resolve of others. The Divorce industry is a full-on multi-billion dollar business.
There will be no change in direction until some sort of crisis is upon us that requires MEN, once again, to step up & clean up the mess liberal fools (read: women, LGBT, white knights) have made of the world.
Marriage was always about a man extending his bounty & protection around his family.
It was this way not because of patriarchy (fools use this word in solely degrading terms), but because that’s what worked to provide stability to women, children, & society in general.
So long as we can continue to pump 70-80 million barrels of oil out of the ground each and every goddamn day, ad infinitum; then things will be just hunky dory. As a barrel of oil is the equivalent of a hunky handyman around the house that delivers TONNES of labour on the cheap.
If that production number begins to fall because we simply cannot get from the earth what we WANT (liberal fools, are you listening?) then the earth will begin to deliver on what we NEED (but don’t necessarily WANT).
Until that cold, hard reality hits, don’t expect much in the way of reprieve from the current deviant ‘norm’.
So… let me get this straight. We must now, according to you, wait till women are done with their first degree before marriage thus increasing the chance of sex outside of marriage, thus allowing women to sample more. Once they’ve done this sampling because you are so scared of actually telling women they have to take responsibility for their actions, the waiting time must be further increased during the new ‘courting phase’ allowing our princesses to tango without responsibilities for even longer. Then, even after marriage, little princess needs another two years to decide whether her new John is good enough for her or if she should jump ship at the last minute.. Just what is it that makes your plan good for men. No marriage is far better, in every feasible way to your plan, you get that right? Government isn’t needed to increase the waiting period for marriage, government intervention and interference for nannies like yourself need to be stopped. People have been getting married in their teens for ages, the problem isn’t age, it’s lack of responsibility and taking of vows seriously. You, by your continued avoidance, prove your lack of treating marriage as anything other than a game.
Even after all of this, you still think that these annulled women should get married again, after a waiting period, even though that is diametrically opposed to what the Bible says, just get out you Jezebel whore.
Frank K @ 12:14 pm:
“Jesus never said “you’re banging him but didn’t file the paperwork correctly, so he’s not your husband”
“Did He ever say “You’re banging him, so he’s your husband”?”
Yes, in John 4:17-18 as quoted.
“We’re talking about freely exchanging vows, not bureaucracy.”
Yes. “Marry the girl you deflowered or I will kill you” is a freewill decision if Daddy will accept either choice. It’s an unpleasant decision but just because “let me walk away unpunished” isn’t offered does not stop it from being a freewill decision between two options. Every promise you make is binding even if somebody is holding a gun to your head. The only alternative is lying to protect yourself. Prison is full of those guys and justly so.
Annulments are bureaucracy because they’re the product of second-guessing lawyers who think divorce doesn’t count if you spell it differently.
A quibble, GunnerQ,
“Every promise you make is binding even if somebody is holding a gun to your head.”
I disagree. If I recall correctly, you have military experience so you, like me, are familiar with the concept of “lawful orders” which must be obeyed versus “unlawful orders” which must be disobeyed even though the one giving the orders is of superior rank, since the person is giving an order that is outside of his authority to give (if it would countermand an order from an even higher authority, usually).
I look at coercion the same way… if a father tells his daughter to marry Steady Eddie rather than Dark-Triad Chad and she doesn’t want to, he would have every right to coerce her into doing so by (for example) threatening to disown her if she disobeys. Assuming she marries Steady Eddie, her wedding vows are binding, because a father has rightful both authority over his daughter and rightful authority over how his property is distributed amongst his children, and she has a legitimate option (assuming responsibility for herself outside of her family). On the other hand, if a bank robber puts a gun to my head and makes me promise not to call the cops for ten minutes after he leaves, I’ll gladly promise not to do it, but as soon as I get the chance I’m going to call them, because unlike the father, the bank robber has no rightful authority over me, and thus anything I agree to under his coercion is not binding in the slightest. In fact, I would be well within my moral (and in most places in the U.S., legal) right, not only to alert the authorities, but to shoot him if the opportunity arises.
As far as that applies to “shotgun weddings,” that’s a little trickier. A father has the the right to tell his daughter what to do – including to marry the father of her bastard child – but he does not have the right to tell someone else’s son what to do. A arguable mitigating factor is that the father of the bastard doesn’t have the right to have sex with someone else’s daughter, and society used to understand that such an act is a crime (akin to theft) against the girl’s father (as his daughter’s protector), which gives him the right to demand that he marry the girl – applying coercion as needed. Whether the threat of death is an appropriate level of coercion may be another matter. We wouldn’t allow someone to shoot someone for refusing to return a pack of stolen gum… so the question is, “Does having sex with a willing woman supply sufficient justification for killing the guy if he won’t marry her?” And if the answer is “No”, then, “Does a pregnancy supply sufficient additional justification?” (Obviously we’re not talking about legal justification here – this is a question of morality, not legality.)
And if it would be moral in the absence of any law that forbade it, what is the father’s responsibility to ensure that the groom is the actual father? What Women lie about paternity all the time. If your son was forced into a shotgun wedding – credibly threatened with murder – because some girl was carrying Chad’s bastard and she fingered your son as the father, would you consider the words he said with a gun to his head to be binding once the kid pops out and looks nothing like him – but has a striking resemblance to Chad? I know I wouldn’t.
Lyn87 @ 6:27 am:
“If I recall correctly, you have military experience so you, like me, are familiar with the concept of “lawful orders” which must be obeyed versus “unlawful orders”…”
I’ve never served in the military although many of my friends and coworkers have. I also follow authority in dangerous situations as a civilian so these aren’t academic discussions to me.
“…so the question is, “Does having sex with a willing woman supply sufficient justification for killing the guy if he won’t marry her?”
The way I see it, marriage equals sex. The Biblical standard is unlimited sex within marriage and zero sex outside, and once you start you can’t have anybody else until death. Forced marriage vows, then, are comparable to “pay for what you have stolen”. Only the price isn’t money, it’s the rest of your life. If we don’t act like sexuality is a deadly serious issue then most people won’t realize it is.
Of course, shotgun marriages are only a good idea when Chad’s correct identity is known. Nobody should trust a promiscuous girl’s unverified word.
” In fact, I would be well within my moral (and in most places in the U.S., legal) right, not only to alert the authorities, but to shoot him if the opportunity arises.”
No problem. Shoot him dead then wait ten minutes as promised. Sigh, I’m freakish this way. I’ll lose sleep over breaking a promise but not over hurting people.
Gunner Q,
Like you, I try to be VERY scrupulous about keeping my word, and I almost never say anything about the future without caveats. It’s better to not say anything than to say something and be wrong, and that’s doubly-true of promises. Having said that, we’ll just have to agree to disagree about whether promises made under unjustified coercion are binding. The Bible commends the Hebrew midwives who lied to the Egyptian exterminators about delivering baby boys (Exodus 1: 15-21), also Elisha (2 Kings 6: 18-20), and Rahab (Hebrews 11:31 and James 2: 25). I don’t see how this is any different. All those cases had one thing in common: the lie was told to prevent something evil from happening. Telling a lie to an assailant to prevent a murder seems like a pretty good trade-off. In fact, I’ll say that it’s not only optional, but required.
I’m a bit of an expert on Military Deception, and I can tell you that I wouldn’t think twice about being deceptive towards an enemy. If I can deceive an enemy commander so that he sends his forces into a kill sack, I don’t call that a moral dilemma: I call that a win… and I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over either the enemy casualties or the deception that made them possible. So you can bet your bottom dollar that I would lie with a straight face and a clear conscience if someone put a gun to my head and said, “Promise not to call the cops or I’ll shoot you.” If somebody who has no legitimate authority to give me orders demands my compliance under threat, I’m happy to say whatever they want to hear until such time as the threat is no longer present, then I would consider myself free to do whatever I thought was best with no thought to whatever I said under coercion. The only exception I can think of is if someone demands that I deny Christ.
Oh well… enough of that, let’s more to a more entertaining topic: a thought experiment, if you will. Whatever one’s stance on such vows, the question becomes whether a credible death threat by a girl’s father is justified in the case of premarital sex. I see it as a straight-up matter of proportion. I agree with you about the sanctity and purpose of marriage, of course, but then I have to ask, “Is there a gun to the girl’s head, too? Will “Daddy” shoot his “little girl” if she won’t say, “I do?” If not, then it’s just more White-Knighting and male disposability. (In which case I gotta’ say: I’m not a fan.)
Then we get into the whole problem of establishing which guy is stuck with a whore for a wife. We know that we cannot just take her word for it, or else we’re left with the prospect of treating a woman’s unsupported accusation as a legitimate reason to determine a man’s fate. (And we know from the high prevalence of false rape accusations that if we give women a blanket power to hurt men by telling lies, a non-trivial percentage of them will do it.) So do we force any man she names to choose between marriage to a whore or his own murder? Some choice. Will she use Daddy’s threat to force Dark-Triad Chad to marry her, or will she use it to force Steady Eddie to raise Chad’s bastard?… or will she name the guy from her Math class whose family is wealthy, but who barely knows she’s alive?
If it’s only to be applied in cases of pregnancy, who’s paying for the in utero DNA test to determine who’s the father? Personally, I think it’s best to allow these things to be settled by impartial third parties (I don’t know… maybe we could call them “judges” and “jurors”), rather than a White-Knighting father who couldn’t keep his own daughters off the carousel and now wants to make her some other man’s problem.
Finally, do guys get same treatment as girls? If Norbert-the-Neckbeard tells you that your daughter the cheerleader seduced him, will you put a gun to her head and pull the trigger if she doesn’t marry him? She denies it? Well of course she does. But you’re not going to believe the denials of a whore, are you?
Like I said… just indulging in a thought experiment on a boring Saturday night.
Dear Lyn87 and Gunner Q:
I’m really enjoying this ethical exchange. It’s nice to see the heavy hitters argue about substantive stuff. It’s also cool to think that there are still some soldier-philosophers, after the fashion of Marcus Aurelius.
https://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-socrates.htm
In any event, you’re sorta losing me here…
I don’t think there’s as much historical justification for the idea of the “shotgun wedding” as we might think, today. Such fables are common, but I read them as symbolic rather than literal. I mean, really, is a son-in-law in an immobile society someone you threaten, or someone you mentor? Even in the worst possible case, he’ll likely inherit some of your property. Making an enemy of him isn’t conducive to an easy (or long) life.
In 19th century Deseret (i.e. the Mormon ethnostate) it wasn’t uncommon for kids of 14-16 to get caught banging. What usually happened was the parents who found out first would approach the parents of the other party, and work out a deal. The kids were usually approached by all the adults, with the understanding that they could get married, or they could both get cast out of the tribe to fend for themselves.
I think this is the standard response that probably existed in healthy patriarchal societies worldwide. It’s a good motivator, with a much better chance of success than a literal wedding at gunpoint. As Lyn points out, there’s a tendency of coerced people to seek revenge for mistreatment when the threat abates, and like Lyn, I’m not a deontologist, and wouldn’t really blame a man for killing the party that forced him to choose between a violent death and a marriage he didn’t want.
Anyway, carry on. Good discussion!
Boxer
The daughter mentioned would have much less incentive to pick “the wrong guy” if she would be stuck with him for life and if she would be stoned for committing adultery. Though I would only force a marriage, in a case like that, when the parentage was clear. Her word would not be reliable.
Society would have to be far different for that approach to work.
Its existence would help reinforce many to not get involved in such dalliances, but they would still happen.
The Bible commends the Hebrew midwives who lied to the Egyptian exterminators about delivering baby boys (Exodus 1: 15-21), also Elisha (2 Kings 6: 18-20), and Rahab (Hebrews 11:31 and James 2: 25). I don’t see how this is any different.
I don’t either and those passages annoy me. Lies are not the Christian path. The temptation is understandable, however, and God sometimes overlooks it. There’s a funny story about a Biblical prophet Micaiah in 2 Chronicles 18:6-17 who lied and got called on it. By King Ahab, no less.
…
Boxer @ 11:29 pm:
” I mean, really, is a son-in-law in an immobile society someone you threaten, or someone you mentor? Even in the worst possible case, he’ll likely inherit some of your property. Making an enemy of him isn’t conducive to an easy (or long) life.”
Yeah, the idea works best when it’s a “you need to get serious about your life” thing. I’ve heard enough statements from self-described Alphas about how having their first child changed their behavior etc. to be convinced that some guys, specifically those with lots of female options, simply need that last nudge to be set right. Like a skydiving instructor giving you a little shove. But this was when vows meant something.
In modern America’s low-trust, completely feral society? There’s no point. He’s already a pimp and she’s already a whore, and marriage is a dead institution anyway. Sad. The more I realize how poisonous my society is to manhood, the more I realize the need for (sometimes over-the-top) displays of honor.
Forget marijuana, we should legalize dueling.
Boxer asks where I was going with this in my discussion of the morality of the “Shotgun Wedding:”
will you put a gun to her head and pull the trigger if she doesn’t marry him? She denies it? Well of course she does. But you’re not going to believe the denials of a whore, are you?
My point was to extend the thought-experiment to see how far it goes. Is coercing a guy to marry a girl he slept with and/or impregnated a two-way street? If fornication and/or bastardy is serious enough to credibly threaten murder if the male party won’t “make her an honest woman,” is “refusing to become an honest woman” also grounds for murder? I extended it to include a denial by the girl because the tendency is to believe specific women when they accuse specific men of sexual transgressions (all evidence to the contrary). I was attempting to show the flaw in the way shotgun-toting fathers (and society in general) treats these allegations by flipping the sexes: we never extend the same willingness to suspend disbelief when the accuser is male and the accused is female.
This is my line of thought: getting caught in the act is not as common as the girl finding herself pregnant and having to ‘fess up to her family. In the former case, there’s no ambiguity about who’s banging her, but in the latter case, the only way to identify the father is if she knows who it is, and then identifies him. Of course, women lie about sex and paternity every day, and a lot of guys who are accused of being fathers deny it (just watch a few “Daytime TV” shows for a couple of days), but nobody believes their denials until and unless the DNA test comes back negative. So I was wondering if our hypothetical “Shotgun Daddy” would take a girl’s denial of hanky-panky any more seriously than anyone takes a guy’s denial (which is to say: not very seriously at all).
I obviously don’t dispute what you’re saying about the myth of the shotgun wedding. I’m sure that some form of the “Deseret model” (social ostracism) is FAR more historically common than literal murder threats, and in those cases the couple really can take-it-or-leave-it in a way that a murder victim cannot. You can live as an outcast, but you obviously can’t live if you’re dead.
I think that makes a lot more sense than putting murder on the list of options, and it fits nicely with the “little nudge” that Gunner mentioned in his post at 0132. And we all understand that at this point it’s mainly “pimps and ho’s” – there aren’t a lot of “otherwise good kids” making a “one-off mistake” that a healthy society can remedy by forcing a choice between patriarchal marriage on the one hand and being shunned on the other. In fact, neither of those options is readily available these days, which is why this is a thought experiment rather than an action plan.
Lyn87 @ 9:14 am:
“My point was to extend the thought-experiment to see how far it goes. Is coercing a guy to marry a girl he slept with and/or impregnated a two-way street?”
Justice demands it. In my own extended family, there was a couple with several daughters. The eldest became a baby momma and the parents disapproved but financially supported her. The other daughters then followed the eldest’s hypergamous example. Making a horrific example of the first one would probably have kept the others on the narrow path.
It’s not the brutality. It’s the visibility. It’s the old writing adage of “Show, Don’t Tell”. You see this in the Bible itself. Old Testament: Do this and be rewarded. Do that and be punished. Epic fail. New Testament: I am God, living the same kind of life you are. Follow my example. Epic win. I wonder how much of the dindus’ poor behavior is due simply to the fact that the punishment for all crime is being sent to your room for half the threatened amount of time. The whipping block and stockade are more visible and visceral than a concrete hotel in Nowhereville. That means twenty lashes in public are (illogically) a more effective deterrent than a dime in the pen. Similarly, dramatic maltreatment of welfare queens is better than merely saying “she ruined her life, don’t be like her, I’m only helping her for the childrens’ sake”.
Lastly, the shotgun marriage ultimately worked because marriage was a rewarding experience. Early resentment at being forced to settle down gave way to pride over one’s kids and becoming accustomed to your wife treating you well (under Yiayia’s merciless supervision). The PUAs say they like a variety of women but I wonder if what they actually value is the freedom to move on when the hamster drama starts. Pressuring women as well as men to behave can fix that. Otherwise, we’re just practicing slavery.
@GunnerQ The oldest girl becoming an unwed baby momma is a double whammy for the younger sisters. They get the wrong message when the church and the parents are too accepting of the situation at the same time that the MMV value of ALL the girls in the family drops like a stone.
The parents in this situation are very often aware that the oldest girl’s marriageability has suffered, although they typically convince themselves that some nice guy will come along who will be willing to marry their daughter and adopt the child. But the younger girls are now seen as coming from a trashy family and the parents never seem to recognize this. The younger girls find it harder to stay in the crowd of “good kids” because the parents of other “good kids” don’t want them to be part of their own children’s social network.
The younger daughters are responsible for their own bad decisions, but the parents’ giddy excitement over the arrival of their first (bastard) grandchild is a huge mistake.
The eldest became a baby momma and the parents disapproved but financially supported her. The other daughters then followed the eldest’s hypergamous example. Making a horrific example of the first one would probably have kept the others on the narrow path.
Is it possible to crazy-glue a teenage girl’s vagina shut and then have it surgically re-opened when she finally gets married (IF she ever gets married)? Or booby-trap it with explosives that detonate on penetration? THAT would do more to discourage pre-marital sex than any shaming.
@Feeriker, the real problem here is the wild misinterpretation of Scripture at 1st Corinthians 6:16 that makes everyone think that it’s wrong to have sex with prostitutes. If we solve this problem the whole thing about teenage pregnancies will go away.
Paul was NOT saying don’t have sex with prostitutes, Paul was saying that Christian men should not marry them. Or, more “loosely” translated, that men should not marry promiscuous women. Just look what happened to Hosea! Look what feminism is doing right now!
The entire thing comes down to the meaning of the Greek word “kollao” in 1st Corinthians 6:16 and no-where in the rest of the New Testament does that word mean sex. It means to glue, to join, to fasten. The word doesn’t mean sex anywhere and the parallel to the Hebrew word “dabaq” is striking because “kollao” is the word that was used to translate “dabaq” when Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24 in Matthew 19:4. Everyone here at Dalrock’s place knows that the word “dabaq” means “commitment” when it was used in Genesis 2:24 because that’s where the wedding ceremony is! In fact, Paul quoted half of Genesis 2:24 in 1st Corinthians 6:16 just so everyone knew the words dabaq and kollao meant the same thing! Therefore, Paul is forbidding Christian men from getting married to prostitutes.
This is completely in keeping with the rest of the Bible, because 1st Corinthians 6:16 is the only place in all of Scripture which forbids men from using the services of a prostitute. And, of course, Romans 4:15 and 5:13 says that if there is no prohibition in the Law, there can be no violation and without a violation there is no sin imputed. And there is certainly no prohibition in the Law that forbids a man from using a prostitute, so absent such a prohibition in 1st Corinthians 6:16, sex with a prostitute is not a sin for Christians.
The solution should be obvious by now. We need experienced prostitutes servicing the young men professionally in a regulated and disease-free environment. That way we don’t get the teenage pregnancies and the boys gain valuable experience, receiving expert instruction in how to be a better lover. Why would a young man want to spend money dating a girl, taking the chance she won’t put out and sinning with “premarital sex” when he could spend less money on a professional who will treat him right and make his pleasure his business. And he’s not sinning!
Interestingly, this also means that it’s perfectly legitimate for husbands to have sex with prostitutes because we know that adultery requires a married woman. And everyone at Dalrock’s place knows for a fact that sex does not and cannot make a woman married unless she gives her agreement and consent at a ceremony, so a legitimately divorced woman or a widow is perfectly free to be a prostitute. Sex with her cannot make her married unless she consents and has the ceremony, and sex with her cannot be be adultery because she is not married.
But, I’m just a toad.
I could be wrong and “kollao” actually means sex in that passage. But that means “dabaq” as used in Genesis 2:24 means sex, which means the virgin is married when she gives some guy her virginity. In that case the prostitutes are off limits and the problem is keeping our teenage girl together with her husband rather than breaking them apart after she marries him by giving him her virginity. This sure is a dilemma, isn’t it, because either both words mean sex or both mean committing to marriage. Either virgin girls are married to the man who gets her virginity and prostitution is off limits, OR, the girls must have a wedding ceremony in order to be married and marrying prostitutes is forbidden but banging righteous prostitutes is a moral and legitimate activity for any man.
@Lyn87
>If I can deceive an enemy commander so that he sends his forces into a kill sack, I don’t call that a moral dilemma: I call that a win… and I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over either the enemy casualties or the deception that made them possible.
This is what the Russians in Ukraine did to the Ukrainians stuck in Ilovaisk in 2014. The Russians, and Putin himself, agreed to allow the Ukrainian armed forces to withdraw within a specific corridor. After the Ukrainians entered that corridor, the waiting Russians attacked, killing either over 100 or over 1000, depending on source. The truth is probably in between.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_of_Ilovaisk
Putin is a legitimate authority over Russian troops, assuming you ignore the morality of the people that run the country. And also assuming you ignore than the Russians in Ukraine are terrorists or thieves, with no morally acceptable reason to be there.
So if your commander offers that a corridor be offered, then orders that the retreating enemy be attacked, what is the moral choice?
I would be with GunnerQ on this one. And yes, I am ignorant in this area. I am interested in what rationale you would offer in the above case.
>Then we get into the whole problem of establishing which guy is stuck with a whore for a wife. We know that we cannot just take her word for it
Ex 22:16-17 does not say anything about determining who is the man that seduced the virgin. However, Deut 19:15-21 starts off by saying “One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.”
And it continues to deal with false witnesses, saying “then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party… Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
So we definitely should not take a known harlot’s word as sufficient proof of who is the relevant man. So, in cases where they were not caught in the act, what would happen?
Either:
a) The girl accuses a particular man, he denies it, and that is the end of his involvement. Or
b) The girl accuses a particular man, and he admits it. He probably knows that God’s law will require him to marry her. If he does know the consequence of the admission, before he gives it, and yet gives the admission anyway, I suspect in most cases he will be willing to marry the girl. So little coercion is involved.
And if he is not wanting to marry her, but has the moral character to not lie about it, then he probably would similarly obey God’s law re marrying the girl, despite his preferences. So again, little coercion involved.
Since I have not seduced a virgin however, I suppose I may not be able to reliably anticipate the actions of the man who would do such a thing.
@FeeRiker
>Is it possible to crazy-glue a teenage girl’s vagina shut and then have it surgically re-opened when she finally gets married
Not sure if it is true, but supposedly some Muslim cultures do this, but with actual surgery, not glue.
It seems pretty horrible to presume that a person will commit a crime, and then pro-actively punish them ahead of time for the offense, just in case.
Better just to treat the woman who has failed like a whore, unworthy of marriage, and do so publicly. Part of the passage I mentioned to Lyn about from Deut 19 says about punishing the false witness, “The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you”.
@AT
Bastard! I started writing a rebuttal of your post without reading the whole thing first. Then I (finally) saw your switch at the end, which means my rebuttal actually agrees with your stance.
@Dale
Specifically in Ethiopia and Somalia they have “surgeries” like that. After removing the outer and inner labia as well as the clitoris using a razor blade of unknown sanitary state, they then sew together the remaining tissue to leave a hole roughly quarter sized to allow for menstruation and urine. The girl who is about 8 then has her legs tied together for about a week to make sure they edges are not unseparated. Before marriage, the woman needs to be cut open slightly to allow intercourse, and then cut entirely open again before childbirth. After childbirth, a similar sewing tying procedure is followed, but leaving the amount of space necessary for intercourse rather than a tiny hole.
Oddly, I would not recommend this type of surgery. It also seems that the lack of oxytocin bonding due to the lack of a clitoris may make the marital relationship much less stable.
Of general interest, there is actually a recent movie about unwed pregnancy, shotgun marriage, and attempted murder of both parties. Title is “An Afghan Love Story” and the subject matter is pretty brutal. Good viewing for anyone above the age of 13 I would imagine, no explicit sexual activity and limited violence. On either Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Toad,
Biblical condemnation of fornication does not begin and end with 1 Corinthians 6:16, so basing you argument on disputing the meaning of the word dabaq” isn’t particularly relevant. Your caveats at the end notwithstanding… if you think you can Biblically justify having sex with prostitutes by playing word-games with the Hebrew word “dabaq” in Genesis 2:24, you’re not fooling anyone but yourself. It is not a technical word in any legal sense, and just because “dabaq” is a common verb (for joining things together) that does not only and always apply to marriage does not mean that its use in this context permits non-marital fornication: especially since there are literally dozens of other passages of scripture that condemn it in the harshest terms. This calls for “rightly dividing the Word of truth” here. The Book of Proverbs alone has plenty to say about men who go to prostitutes, and all of it is bad, and that’s just the tip of the scriptural iceberg. Attempting to negate the entire context of scripture based on applying a technical definition to a common verb, then latching onto an obscure (and not even the implied) interpretation of the way that Hebrew word from the Fifteenth Century B.C. was translated into Aramaic in the First Century A.D. strikes me as the actions of a guy looking to rationalize a loophole rather a guy looking for the truth. I hope that’s not what you’re trying to do, but it’s pointless even as an intellectual exercise, since there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to tease a loophole for prostitution out of scripture, even in the absence of 1 Corinthians 6:16.
__________
Dale,
What the Russians did was not Military Deception. They broke a cease-fire agreement, which is a war-crime (technically known as “perfidy”) under both the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). If a U.S. commander ordered his troops to do that they would have a positive duty to disobey that order, and they would be subject to prosecution if they obeyed. Personal story (although not related to MILDEC): I’m not going to give many details because the story was widely reported and I don’t want to doxx myself, but I was tangentially involved in the case of a soldier who refused to obey an order that he considered to be unlawful. It was, in my opinion, a gray area, and I said so at the time. In the end, although the final “official” position was that the order was lawful, he was not prosecuted for refusing to comply. Then again, the U.S. and the Russians have very different ideas about what constitutes an “unlawful order.”
If you want to learn about what MILDEC is, Joint Publication 3-14.2 is available for download. It’s pretty generic since all the juicy stuff is classified, but it gives the basics. Once you skim through that, read Judges Chapter 7 to see how Gideon used MILDEC against the Mideanites. Pay particular attention to verse 22, where it says that what Gideon did (what we would now refer to as a MILDEC plan) was met with Divine approval. In fact, it was Divine Intervention that made the plan work!
As for my question about how to determine who the “lucky” groom is going to be, I agree with you. My point is that there’s often no reliable way to determine who a girl has been shagging, and “shotgun-wielding fathers” (and brothers) are not known for being particularly concerned with Blackstone’s “Statues on Evidence,” or parsing ancient Hebrew law. “Shotgun weddings” are basically the application of coercion by a very non-disinterested party, who is more likely to believe that his “little girl” was seduced by a “bad boy” than to accept that he raised a carousel-rider who was too stupid to avoid getting caught. Such “mob mentality” is precisely why we find such strict rules of evidence in Deuteronomy and, later, English Common Law and the legal systems that derive from it, as well as the requirement that cases be decided by people other than the very ones who consider themselves to have been wronged.
@Lyn87
So, according to Lyn87 the Apostle Paul was a liar? Romans 4:15 and 5:13 isn’t true? Sure, sin is in the world but I’m not talking about issues of conscience where “that which is not of faith is sin.” I’m talking about violations of Divine Law, which is sin for everyone. Just a reminder, Paul, speaking in Romans 4:15 and 5:13 said that where there is no law there is no violation and with no violation there is no sin imputed.
There is no prohibition on men using prostitutes in the Law. Not one. Which means it isn’t a sin… or Paul is a liar. So, it all comes down to the Christian prohibition on Christian men using prostitutes in 1st Corinthians 6:16.
Since it all comes down to that one verse and all focuses on one word (kollao), what does the word mean as used in that particular verse? If the word means sex, then Christian men are forbidden to use prostitutes. If the word means marry, then Christian men are forbidden to marry prostitutes… but there is still no prohibition on using prostitutes and it isn’t a sin. Which means that using prostitutes is not immoral or prohibited or a sin.
Don’t talk to me about Proverbs and why you think the Apostle Paul is a liar, explain what kollao means in that verse.
Artisanal Toad @ 12:57 am:
“This is completely in keeping with the rest of the Bible, because 1st Corinthians 6:16 is the only place in all of Scripture which forbids men from using the services of a prostitute.”
Oh, well, if God only told us once than we can totally blow Him off. He doesn’t always mean what He says, you see, and giving up prostitution means some of us would have to curb our sexual appetites… and God wouldn’t want us to be inconvenienced for His sake, right? He knows He isn’t worth it. /eyeroll
“We need experienced prostitutes servicing the young men professionally in a regulated and disease-free environment.”
In other words, we need to let everybody have lots of casual sex but without the inevitable consequences? Now you’re defying reality as well as Christ.
“All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.”
1 Corinthians 10 is pretty good. Verse 23 keeps it simple for me.
“For a prostitute’s fee is only a loaf of bread, but an adulteress goes after a precious life.”
Both Proverbs and the Wisdom literature mention the foolishness of wasting money on prostitutes. But, they both mention adultery is the much graver sin.
Gunner Q
In other words, we need to let everybody have lots of casual sex but without the inevitable consequences?
Transactions with a prostitute, assuming disease-free prostitutes, are designed to avoid consequences. Understand that the man pays her so that she’ll leave when he gets done using her. Consider the consequences and potential consequences of marrying a modern woman and compare them to the regular use of prostitutes. Ooops… did I say prostitutes? Sorry. I meant actresses. Because no matter what happens, as long as a camera is filming while it happens, paying a woman to have wild, screaming sex with you in order to produce a video is definitely NOT prostitution. Best of all, you not only have video proof that it was a purely professional transaction, but you’ve got your memories on video!
But, I’ll offer the same challenge to you that I gave to Lyn87 above. Explain what that word “kollao” means in 1st Corinthians 6;16.
@BubbaCuck
“All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.”
Obviously, you’ve met my ex. I’m so sorry you had to experience that. But, keep your chin up and remember that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes. How much money did it cost you? Did she call 911 on you?
Artisanal Toad
Obviously, you’ve met my ex. I’m so sorry you had to experience that.
Back when you were still married you were pretty proud of your “how to stay married” advice, if I remember rightly. Now you’re full of “how to have an alternative marriage” advice. Is it as good as the advice you used to give on “staying married” until you were divorced? Just wondering.
@AR
I’ve never, to my knowledge, been married. I once thought I was and everyone told me I was, but as it turns out, no amount of wedding ceremony and sex will create a marriage when the woman is already married to another man. Which means I have been a most fantastic and flagrant adulterer in the past, something I have repented of. I suspect that the difference between me and most men is that I admitted my adultery and repented of it, others refuse to admit they are in adultery and refuse to do anything about it.
As to any specific “how to stay married” advice, if I gave it (I don’t recall), it was given in good faith. However, I have never given any “how to have an alternative marriage” advice because I don’t know what an alternative marriage is. I do know what the Bible says about marriage and discuss it quite frequently, but in this thread I was talking about prostitutes.
The question is what the word “kollao” means in 1st Corinthians 6:16. Would you like to take a stab at it? Are Christian men commanded to not have sex with prostitutes, or commanded not to marry them?
AT writes, But, I’ll offer the same challenge to you that I gave to Lyn87 above. Explain what that word “kollao” means in 1st Corinthians 6;16.
This is too easy. It means exactly what the dictionary says that it means: it’s the verb form of the Greek noun for “glue” and it means “to join something to something else.” Here’s the Strong’s Concordance entry for it. Google is hard, I guess.
Note that it is NOT a technical word that means “fastened together in any way except within the context of marriage.” You, or someone whose opinion you wish to believe, simply made that up. You are inferring a meaning that is not – IN ANY SENSE – implied. Paul isn’t a liar… and neither is God, and scripture is both internally and externally consistent. κολλάω is a common verb and you should stop trying to turn it (or its Hebrew synonym) into something it is not. Essentially you have taken a word that doesn’t apply exclusively to marriage and then deduced that since what is not expressly forbidden is allowed, that it is legitimate to ignore the plain meaning based on your linguistic sleight-of-hand. You can only do that if you zoom in on ONE verse of scripture (1 Cor 6:16) to the exclusion of the other two-dozen-or-so scriptures that address the topic. But we are to apply the WHOLE WORD, so you have not found a loophole. I, and several others guys here have disproved your argument every time you’ve brought it up… and can do so without reference to 1 Cor 6:16, or even to any of the epistles of Paul, since it’s found in so many other places. WE are not the ones dependent of 1 Cor 6:16: YOU are, because that’s the only scripture you’ve found that you’ve been able to wrench out of its context, and only by pretending that a common verb has a very narrow meaning that is at odds with the obvious meaning of the text and the overall context in which it occurs. The rest of us just accept that 1 Cor 6:16 means what it plainly says, and that it is in keeping with the totality of scripture. Then again, the rest of us aren’t looking for a Biblical loophole like you are.
Look, if you want to pay for sex with whores, go right ahead. Nobody here is going to stop you. We’ll warn you, but we won’t stop you. But if you want to say that “The Bible says I can have sex with prostitutes!” we’re going to call you out.
By the way, I notice you didn’t even attempt to argue against what I wrote, but just re-stated your specious “argument” and claimed that I was calling Paul a liar, when in fact you are the only one here who is NOT taking him at face value.
Art Toad
However, I have never given any “how to have an alternative marriage” advice because I don’t know what an alternative marriage is.
I see, so all that stuff someone posted under your handle about having multiple wives wasn’t real? Or polygamy wouldn’t be rather an alternative to the standard marriage, even 2.0?
So again I’m asking, how is this current advice any better than your previous advice, going back several years?
Dear Lyn87 / Artisanal Toad:
Thanks for another interesting and civil argument. I’m learning a lot.
Come on, man. We all know that’s not true. Unless you’re claiming there’s some other Artisinal Toad, who would come around to extoll the virtues of plural marriage.
I think you’re too smart to play jiggery-pokery.
Boxer
I have no desire to argue with AT about polygamy. Some of the nicest people I have known in my life have practiced polygamy, many of them are close relatives and their neighbors.
I think that polygamy is inferior to monogamy, in many respects. Sigmund Freud talked about this in the 20th century. Sublimation (a form of ego-defense) is the most productive way to channel the libido. The genius of the Jewish and Christian thinkers, from antiquity onward, was building their societies around strict moral laws that allowed pro-social outlets for the libido. Having a wife lets the common man get his needs met, gives him the honor of a family, and sets him free to direct his energies toward building institutions and works that enhance the value of society.
Societies that endorse widespread prostitution, polygamy and celibacy are inferior to their patriarchal competitors. This is the case in every possible comparison.
Allowing for immorality is also cruel. This was pointed out by the Talmud scholars (AT seems preoccupied with the moral laws in the old testament, so this should be interesting to him). Allowing for prostitutes tends to fill the world up with people who don’t know who their fathers are. This is unjust.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/prostitution.html
Anyway, just some other sources to ponder on a Monday afternoon.
@Artisanal Toad,
I haven’t been around for long at all, but even I have seen your prostitute and polygamy material, here and elsewhere. I actually find it all interesting, and usually love a good loophole, but Lyn’s and Gunner’s logic seems rock solid here. I’m not even an amateur theologian, but I have worked around dozens of sea lawyers; and you might be in danger of straining out a gnat to swallow a camel with this one (Matt 23).
From the Parable of the Prodigal Son…
Luke 15:15 So he went and hired himself out [kollao] to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
Apparently, the Prodigal Son married the pig farmer.
Luke 10:10 But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your city which clings [kollao] to our feet we wipe off in protest against you; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’
Apparently, the dust married the Apostle’s feet.
Acts 5:12 The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade. 13 No one else dared join [kollao] them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
Apparently, a bunch of people married the Apostles because of the “many signs and wonders” they performed, but after that, no more of them dared marry the Apostles.
Revelation 18:4 I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her [the whore, Babylon], my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; 5 for her sins have piled [kollao] up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Apparently, the Great Whore’s sins married each other.
Acts 9:26 When he [Paul] came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with [kollao] the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.
Apparently, Paul attempted to marry the disciples. Maybe this is the “alternative marriage” of which AR wrote?
From Peter’s meeting with Cornelius…
Acts 10:28 And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with [kollao] a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man [u]unholy or unclean. 29 That is why I came without even raising any objection when I was sent for. So I ask for what reason you have sent for me.”
Apparently Peter went to Caesarea to marry Cornelius.
I could go on, but y’all probably get the idea. Ya gotta love Strong’s Concordance.
Artisanal Toad @ 11:42 am:
“Transactions with a prostitute, assuming disease-free prostitutes, are designed to avoid consequences”
Assuming there are no consequences, prostitution is designed to avoid consequences? Wow, um, that’s a hard act to follow. Don’t you know how prostitutes acquire diseases in the first place?
Okay, here’s one: assuming people can shit gold bricks, communism works because it’s designed to avoid economic consequences.
Ooh! Ooh! Assuming he’s licensed, hiring a hit man is designed to avoid the consequences of murder.
Symbolic logic class, sign me up!
@Lyn87
I asked a simple question, you even quoted it. You replied with 474 words and never answered that question. What is the meaning of the word “kollao” as used in 1st Corinthians 6:16. The meaning of that word determines whether 1st Corinthians 6:16 is a prohibition on sex with prostitutes or marriage to prostitutes. In fact, you REFUSED to answer the question while claiming you knew the answer.
You said:
“The rest of us just accept that 1 Cor 6:16 means what it plainly says, and that it is in keeping with the totality of scripture.”
I am DYING with anticipation here! What does it mean? What does it plainly say? Why won’t you plainly say what it plainly says so everyone can plainly understand the plain truth of the matter?
Now, you did say previously that “[of prostitution] literally dozens of other passages of scripture that condemn it in the harshest terms”
I notice that you did not cite any particular chapter and verse that “condemns” prostitution, but the thing is… you can’t. Because such a verse does not exist UNLESS it is 1st Corinthians 6:16 and even there, it would be limited to Christian men only.
The only place in the Bible that COULD “condemn” prostitution (and I’m pretty sure you don’t understand what that word means) as being immoral (contrary to the Law- a sin) would be limited to Genesis through Deuteronomy. Not because that’s my opinion, but because the Bible says so. Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 both prohibit adding to or subtracting from the Law. With the death of Moses, the Law was closed and from that point the Law could not be changed. By anyone. Again, I cite Romans 4:15 and 5:13, in which Scripture plainly says that where there is no Law there is no transgression and without a transgression there is no sin imputed.
It is thus impossible for any passage in Scripture AFTER the Law to add to the Law or subtract from the Law. Which brings us to an interesting point- Christ can place whatever restrictions He wants on His servants and He can require more than the Law allows. And He did. In 1st Corinthians Christ (Paul was very clear about that) said that for Christians married to each other, there is no divorce for any reason. While the Law allowed a man to divorce his wife for adultery, a Christian husband is specifically forbidden to divorce his wife (verse 11). That was not adding to the Law, that was a case of “house rules” for servants of Christ.
Which brings us back to 1st Corinthians 6:16 and what does that word “kollao” mean within the context of that particular passage? Won’t you plainly tell us?
@Oscar
Are you saying that when Paul used the word “kollao” in 1st Corinthians 6:16, he meant sex? That he was forbidding Christian men from having sex with prostitutes? Gosh! I bet that means we need to look really hard at the word “porne” and make sure we know what that word means. We all know that men don’t go to prostitutes to marry them, they go to prostitutes to have sex with them. But… Paul quoted HALF of Genesis 2:24 in that verse, and he used the same structure as Genesis 2:24 and put “kollao” in the same position as “dabaq” is used in Genesis 2:24. And when Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24, He used the word “kollao” to translate the Hebrew word “dabaq” so they must mean exactly the same thing.
If the word “dabaq” means “commitment” in Genesis 2:24 and that is the wedding ceremony, which is followed by the “one flesh” part, then “kollao” MUST mean the same thing in 1st Corinthians 6:16. Because the two words mean the exact same thing within the context of Genesis 2:24.
@Boxer
I did not bring up polygyny. The discussion is prostitutes. If morality is a concern, consider Romans 4:15 and 5:13. You can trust it, Lyn87 says Paul is not a liar. Immorality is sin. Sin is a violation of the Law. Romans 4:15 and 5:13 spells it out: where there is no law there is no transgression and without transgression there is no sin imputed. I’m not saying anything about your faith or lack thereof. Many men have very weak faith and we know that “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) so obviously many of you guys are just walking on eggshells. But, it’s OK. I don’t judge you, neighbor. Maybe one day you’ll get there.
@Gunner_Q
“Ooh! Ooh! Assuming he’s licensed, hiring a hit man is designed to avoid the consequences of murder.”
Sshhhhh!!! Not so loud! But we don’t call them “hit men” these days, we call them “doctors” and they have a license to kill. And when you get done figuring that out (you might want to look up the legal definition of the word “license”), consider the consequences of divorce rape: separation from children, a destroyed family, children growing up in a female-led household and all the other social pathologies at work as a result of marriage to modern “Christian” women. But, what if she doesn’t divorce-rape you, she just exercises her NPD/BPD batshit craziness and makes your life living hell?
Then consider the consequences of using “actresses” to occasionally satisfy sexual needs.
I cannot wait to see your cost-benefit analysis of the two in comparison, since you have apparently chosen to completely ignore my question of what the word “kollao” means within the context of 1st Corinthians 6:16. It either means sex or marriage, one or the other. But, I’m not throwing rocks at you. Some were given the gift of teaching, some of preaching, some of snark. I wish you well.
Artisanal Toad
The solution should be obvious by now. We need experienced prostitutes servicing the young men professionally in a regulated and disease-free environment. That way we don’t get the teenage pregnancies and the boys gain valuable experience, receiving expert instruction in how to be a better lover. Why would a young man want to spend money dating a girl, taking the chance she won’t put out and sinning with “premarital sex” when he could spend less money on a professional who will treat him right and make his pleasure his business.
So you argue that if there was a country where prostitution was legal, that young men could be “serviced” in disease free, regulated environments, there would be less divorce because men would know how to be good lovers prior to marriage, therefore women would be less unhaaaaapy?
Is that correct?
Art Toad,
I have answered your question… twice (at 9:13 AM and again at 1:24 P.M. today). I even cut-and-pasted the answer from the Greek lexicon in the Strong’s Concordance. Just because you didn’t like my answer does not mean that I did not provide you with one. I also notice that you didn’t answer any of my counter-arguments by anything other than restating your position – “Truth by acclamation” doesn’t cut it here. Now before I leave you to your own devices, if you really, truly don’t think that the Bible condemns what you advocate, take the link I gave you to the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance website and look up all scriptures that refer to fornication, prostitution, cleaving, and joining. You will find dozens of scriptures… I’m not going to quote them all for you here… you’re a grown man: just look them up. It won’t take you more than a few minutes (a lot less time than it took you to write your latest post demonstrating, yet again, that you are incapable of grasping the idea of context, language, or the basics of Biblical exegesis). Read ALL OF THEM (not just 1 Cor 6:16), and understand that God does not contradict Himself, so your feeble attempt to apply lawyer-speak to your ONE. PET. VERSE. does not and cannot make it contradict the other two-dozen-or-so scriptures on that topic.
I’m done with this one-sided argument. You can keep sniping and obfuscating if you wish, but I’ll take my queue from Matthew 7:6 and move on.
@ AT
“We all know that men don’t go to prostitutes to marry them, they go to prostitutes to have sex with them.”
If “men don’t go to prostitutes to marry them, they go to prostitutes to have sex with them.”, then why would Paul feel the need to prohibit Christian men from marrying prostitutes? Why would Paul feel the need to prohibit Christian men from doing something they don’t do? Doesn’t it make more sense to prohibit something they actually do?
“But… Paul quoted HALF of Genesis 2:24 in that verse, and he used the same structure as Genesis 2:24 and put ‘kollao’ in the same position as ‘dabaq’ is used in Genesis 2:24.”
You do realize that Paul did not quote the part of Genesis 2:24 that includes the word “dabaq”, right? He quoted this part: “the two shall become one flesh”.
By what physical mechanism do a man and a woman “become one flesh”?
@Lyn87
It’s really sad. Even though you were specifically commanded to study to show yourself approved, so that when asked you could provide an answer…. you refused to do so.
I asked for the meaning, not the definition. I was specific and even clarified that for you. You are well aware of that. You claim you know the meaning, you refused to answer. Why are you afraid to answer? Are you scared of the truth? Go in peace, I wish you well.
@AR
“So you argue that if there was a country where prostitution was legal, that young men could be “serviced” in disease free, regulated environments, there would be less divorce because men would know how to be good lovers prior to marriage, therefore women would be less unhaaaaapy?”
Ahhh… a series of conflations that amount to a conflagration!
In the United States prostitutes and porn actresses are both paid to have sex. These are both commercial transactions in which the duty of the woman involved is to have sex. The difference is that prostitution (sex without a camera) is illegal, while producing pornography (sex with a camera) is perfectly legal. Call her an actress and have a camera going, no problem. Given the number of women who already have naked pics on the internet, I’m truly surprised this isn’t a trend, although it’s available pretty much everywhere.
Could these actresses interact with their co-star in a disease-free, regulated environment? Yes. Various locales have certain rules and industry standards that require testing. Would the actresses in question work with their co-star to help him become a better performer, able to provide a better performance? Some would do so automatically, perhaps out of pity, perhaps professionalism. Certainly they would do so if that was part of the employment contract.
If the young man in question repeatedly hired actresses and developed his *ahem* skill in order to perform to a higher standard…. would he be a “good lover” before marriage? I have no idea. I’m not sure what the word “lover” means and then there’s the question of how good a student he is.
If all these things happened, would whatever woman he married be less unhaaaaapy?
We both know that a man’s sexual skills have nothing to do with her attraction to him and how happy/unhappy she will be in her marriage to him. There is a good argument that repeatedly having sex with very attractive women will help destroy one-itis, but women are attracted to masculine dominance, confidence and a ZFG attitude. Amused mastery. Muscles. Money, status and power.
On the other hand, if the young men are not busy chasing the young women because they’re otherwise either occupied or uninterested, the question is how that would impact the young women. Would they have a higher likelihood of making it to marriage as a virgin? Or with a less than worn-out vagina? I suppose we could speculate.
@Oscar
“Why would Paul feel the need to prohibit Christian men from doing something they don’t do? Doesn’t it make more sense to prohibit something they actually do? “
In keeping with the idea that we are a holy priesthood of believers (1st Peter), and along with Lyn87’s “totality of Scripture” Paul was re-iterating the prohibition of Leviticus 21:8-15 that forbid priests from marrying prostitutes, extending it to include all Christians.
“By what physical mechanism do a man and a woman “become one flesh”?”
First, tell me what “become one flesh” means. Just like the words dabaq/kollao, there’s a question as to what that actually means. Is becoming one flesh the action of the man or the action of God? Does it mean the physical act of sexual intercourse by the man? Or is that the part where God joins the two as one (Matthew 19:5); the joining that Paul described as being a spiritual joining similar to becoming part of the body of Christ, which is a great mystery (Ephesians 5:28-32).
What’s your point with regard to prostitution, A. Toad? All that word salad doesn’t get to any sort of logical conclusion. Ok, you’re in favor of legalizing prostitution, apparently on the lines of certain counties in Nevada, not to mention various other places. So? Is that supposed to be a rational response to high divorce rates? Has it made any difference in Nevada divorce rates? What’s it supposed to accomplish?
What’s your point? Do you have one, or is this just an extended game of Bible AMOG ?
Frankly I’m begining to suspect you are just trolling for flames at this point.
Dear Toad:
A bit upthread you were discussing the primacy of the law, but now you’re relying upon St. Paul.
We definitely have different interpretations. For example: Leviticus 19 talks about the need to shun prostitutes, lest the land become full of immorality. 1 Corinthians 6:13-14 also talks about the need for a disciplined man to steer clear of the ho. The body is not made just to indulge in animalistic rutting, and all that.
I take these commands not as symbolic, but literal. The ideal man in the Jewish and Christian tradition is one who doesn’t slouch around with loose women, just bangs his own wife, and leaves the ho’s alone.
The ideal woman in those traditions, likewise, is chaste until marriage, and faithful after that.
Wherever it is that we’re all supposed to get to, I hope we both get there one day.
Good talking to you, as always…
Boxer
One more thing, A. Toad, what’s your read on Proverbs 7?
@Lyn
Thanks for the comments and the link re Military Deception. Interesting. One section gave four techniques of MILDEC: feints, demonstrations, ruses, and displays. As you indicated, breaking an agreement / cease-fire does not fall under the US definition of what is appropriate.
Given that, in the past, Russia deliberately sought to stamp out morality by suppressing their churches, I should not be surprised that the people of that nation become willing to engage in great sin.
This should be seen as a warning for my nation however. Our choice to endorse and legally protect the encouragement of sexual immorality, murder on demand by mothers, and a refusal to allow people to receive the rewards and consequences of their own actions will not lead to anything good. I think Lyn was the one who recently re-posted a link to Daniel Amneus’ book “The Garbage Generation”. The one-generation lag he describes between immoral, uncontrolled mothers and increases in legal and social problems by her children is sobering.
@AT
>Are Christian men commanded to not have sex with prostitutes, or commanded not to marry them?
I originally thought your first post was using an initial false strawman position, revealed in your last paragraph, to point out an absurdity in conclusions based on the initial position.
Since you ask the quoted question above re whether God’s servants are not to marry or have sex with prostitutes, perhaps you are confused. Read verses 13 and 15, immediately preceding your quoted verse. Paul is clearly talking about sexual acts.
If you think we can never spiritually join with a prostitute, this makes Jesus’ statements about tax collectors and prostitutes entering the kingdom of heaven (Matt 21:31) rather strange. Also his choice to hang around with “sinners”. I do not think it a stretch to say marriage is supposed to be a spiritual connection, not merely physical, given how God speaks of it.
Dale,
My pleasure. You’re correct of course… a nation is only as moral as its people, and law follows morality as surely as night follows day. The US still frowns on war-time atrocities because of our moral character (or at least our tradition of moral character… we are by far the most “Christian nation” left standing). Personally I find that sobering since we’re also four decades into an abortion holocaust that rivals the greatest genocides in history… and the lag time between the loss of morality and sweeping changes in the law must be nearly over. A nation that has allowed a million murders every eight months for forty-four years will find a reason to exterminate other groups soon enough. It’s a matter of the requisite shock to the system, and we are tap-dancing in a mine field of potential disaster scenarios (many of our own making).
Like Prof. Amneus noted, major societal changes don’t necessarily occur rapidly, or in the most intuitive fashion. I would argue that we’re already starting to experience the effects of the moral cliff we seem to have collectively hurled ourselves off, and it seems inevitable that, like an object in free-fall, we will continue to accelerate until we hit something hard. To continue the analogy: perhaps the most recent election is an example of reaching terminal velocity, but I suspect it is, at best, a temporary reprieve rather than a consensus that we need to climb back to where we were before we jumped. Even most churches doesn’t seem to want that.
“In 1st Corinthians Christ (Paul was very clear about that) said that for Christians married to each other, there is no divorce for any reason. While the Law allowed a man to divorce his wife for adultery, a Christian husband is specifically forbidden to divorce his wife (verse 11). That was not adding to the Law, that was a case of “house rules” for servants of Christ.”
Not true. It was Jesus himself that said adultery was the only valid reason for divorce.
Okay guys but coming from my rant at Laura, this is hysterical.. over there I was laying into her for coming up with the futile attempt of two year started marriages to stop the proliferation of ‘no fault’ divorces. It seems it’s all for naught anyway, Laura. If you have had sex with anyone, you are married to that person. Which means most women are married to all the Chads they dated at school, university and at work. They all just get annulments, right! Have sex with prossies, get the marriage annulled the next morning, Lol! I’m loving it.
You only marry a virgin, nothing else. Funny though, to me anyway.
Thinking about it further. This is the perfect passage to use on those Christian women who state that men must marry non-virgins because of all the delaying of marriage and the expecting of virgins to be unreasonable. Well, you ask them to read Paul, if Paul states that the sexual act between the John and the whore binds them in the flesh, as married, well, by the same token, they are binded to their many Chads through the sexual congress of their actions. It’s perfect! Either or folks, no quibble here. Either these ladies MUST condone prostitution or marry their Chads.
@ AT
“In keeping with the idea that we are a holy priesthood of believers (1st Peter), and along with Lyn87’s ‘totality of Scripture’ Paul was re-iterating the prohibition of Leviticus 21:8-15 that forbid priests from marrying prostitutes, extending it to include all Christians.”
Did you actually read Leviticus 21:8-15?
Lev 21:10 “The priest who is chief among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil is poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments… 13 And he shall take a wife in her virginity.[a] 14 A widow, or a divorced woman, or a woman who has been defiled, or a prostitute, these he shall not marry. But he shall take as his wife a virgin[b] of his own people,”
That scripture also prohibits the priest from marrying a widow. If your “logic” is correct and Paul is “extending it [Lev 21:8-15] to include all Christians”, then all Christian men are prohibited from marrying widows. Are Christian men prohibited from marrying widows? If so, whom are young widows supposed to marry?
1 Cor 7:8 But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. 9 But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
1 Timothy 5:14 So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.
“First, tell me what ‘become one flesh’ means.”
As you pointed out, it “is a great mystery”, which the Bible doesn’t reveal to us entirely. So, what do we do when the Bible doesn’t entirely reveal a mystery to us? One thing we can do is rely on the wisdom of the Church fathers. Why do we refer to sex as the “consummation” of a marriage? What does the word “consummate” mean?
con·sum·mate (verb)ˈkänsəˌmāt/ 1. make (a marriage or relationship) complete by having sexual intercourse.
Why has the Christian tradition been that without sex the marriage is not valid? Why is pair bonding a biological reality? Who designed our biology?
Why are you ignoring the fact that in 1 Corinthians 6:9-20 – 7:1-5 speaks repeatedly about multiple sex acts?
1 Cor 6:9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”[b] 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.[c]
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 Cor 7:1 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Note that Paul’s remedy for sexual immorality is that “each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband”, NOT to have sex with prostitutes.
Having sex with prostitutes is Artisanal Toad’s remedy, NOT Paul’s, and certainly NOT God’s.
@Oscar
Well put.
Thinking about it further. This is the perfect passage to use on those Christian women who state that men must marry non-virgins because of all the delaying of marriage and the expecting of virgins to be unreasonable. Well, you ask them to read Paul, if Paul states that the sexual act between the John and the whore binds them in the flesh, as married, well, by the same token, they are binded to their many Chads through the sexual congress of their actions. It’s perfect! Either or folks, no quibble here. Either these ladies MUST condone prostitution or marry their Chads.
Churchian women despise Paul (they’re not big fans of the rest of the Bible either) and will avoid paying him any attention at all costs except for the parts of the Epistles that they can quote out of context in support of the FI.
What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy.
St. Augustine, De Ordine 2.4
Prostitution isn’t chastity; but, making whores into wives is worse. Unless you married a virgin, let’s not throw stones at each other.
Feeriker, they despise anything that has to do with being modest, good and wholesome or loyal. It’s a thought experiment I was having in my head. If pushed though, it would be hard to not argue, that if you’re going to admonish men not to use prostitutes because they get bonded to them, then likewise, non-virgin women have already been bonded and thus cannot be married.
Feeriker,
They don’t even have to despise Paul. Some women just ignore verses that contradict a course of action they choose. Logic and following what is written is irrelevant to them “because reasons” in many cases.
My personal data set is limited, but I have never seen a woman change her actions based on what is Written.
They don’t even have to despise Paul. Some women just ignore verses that contradict a course of action they choose. Logic and following what is written is irrelevant to them “because reasons” in many cases.
Usually it’s “because feelz.”
My personal data set is limited, but I have never seen a woman change her actions based on what is Written.
It never happens unless a Christian man “assists”* her in making the right decision.
(* Depending on who the man is and his relationship to her, this can either be gentle persuasion or thinly veiled coercion.)
Just to clear up the confusion and wild speculation…
Contrary to AR’s implication, I wasn’t trying to AMOG anyone or to support prostitution, I have been pointing to the absurdity of trying to claim two separate meanings for words that mean the exact same thing. I did this by making a completely absurd argument using an uncomfortable amount of irrelevant truth.
The main and only real point is that within the context of Genesis 2:24, the words dabaq and kollao mean the same thing. Genesis 2:24 was translated by Apostolic Authority in Matthew 19:4. The word “dabaq” as used in that verse was translated as the Greek word “kollao” so we know that the meaning of the word “kollao” and the word “dabaq” are exactly the same within the context of Genesis 2:24. Note that the definition (are you catching this, Lyn87?) of the word “dabaq” is to cling tightly, to join, The definition of the word “kollao” is to glue, to bind, to join. The meaning of the words as used is either “commit to marriage” or “sexual intercourse.”
Feeriker, I confess, when you suggested gluing vaginas, I simply could not resist… After all, Paul was forbidding Christian men from “gluing” prostitutes…
So, we have Paul using the word “kollao” in 1st Corinthians 6:16 and Paul used the structure of Genesis 2:24 and quoted half of Genesis 2:24 within that verse, making it clear that the meaning of the word “kollao” as used in 1st Corinthians 6:16 is the same as in Genesis 2:24, which Jesus quoted in Matthew 19:4.
Gunner_Q, here’s your logic: “dabaq” = “kollao” and “kollao” = “sexual intercourse” so “dabaq” = “sexual intercourse” within the context of Genesis 2:24. Or, A=B and B=C, therefore A=C.
The doctrinal position of folks here at Dalrock’s blog (as argued before and proven by the history) is that the Hebrew word “dabaq” means “commitment” and the “he shall cleave (dabaq) to his wife” is held to mean “he shall make a commitment to his wife in the wedding ceremony.” This position supports the doctrine that an eligible virgin is NOT married when she gives a man her virginity because she is not married until she has a wedding ceremony, because sex doesn’t make you married, only the wedding.
Interestingly, the other doctrinal position of folks here at this blog (according to the comments in this thread) is that the word “kollao” means sexual intercourse and Paul was forbidding Christian men from having sex with prostitutes. Why he did that is irrelevant, because if that’s what God said in His Word, the duty of the Christian is to obey.
These two doctrinal positions cannot both be correct.
Everything else is a sideshow, this isn’t about “loopholes” or anything like that, the problem is the absurdity of claiming two different meanings for words that mean the exact same thing in the same context. There are only two possibilities for the meaning of the words “dabaq” and “kollao” within the context of Genesis 2:24.
What do the words mean?
If the words mean “sexual intercourse” then the eligible virgin is married when she first engages in sexual intercourse and loses her virginity and her consent is not required in order for her to be married. Which is why we have the example in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 in which the eligible virgin is married when her husband was discovered raping her into marriage. This also means that as far as 1st Corinthians 6:16 goes, Paul definitely forbid Christian men from having sex with prostitutes. Marriage to a former prostitute or a banged up slut is permitted, good luck with that.
If the words mean “commit to marriage” then a marriage ceremony is required in order to be married and Paul forbid Christian men from marrying prostitutes but Paul DID NOT forbid men from having sex with prostitutes. Given that there is no other prohibition on using prostitutes, it is not a sin and is therefore a moral activity for Christian men. Moral being the opposite of immoral, Romans 4:15 and 5:13 defining sin, issues of conscience notwithstanding.
At the end of my original comment I made it clear what I was doing with this argument. Dale caught it and called me a bastard for explaining the absurdity of my own argument. Yet, as I pointed out three times, I was arguing the accepted doctrinal position here at Dalrock’s place, using the accepted (and completely wrong) meaning of the word “dabaq” to determine the meaning of the word “kollao” in 1st Corinthians 6:16. Because A=B and B=C, therefore A=C.
So, for all you men who correctly identified the meaning of “kollao”, as “sexual intercourse” I congratulate you. You are correct, Christian men are forbidden to have sex with prostitutes. Which also means the word “dabaq” as used in Genesis 2:24 means “sexual intercourse,” so as a matter of doctrine, the eligible virgin is married with the act of having her virginity taken by an eligible man.
Which also means that as a matter of doctrine, what is commonly known as “premarital sex” is not a sin because the first time the girl has sex she’s married and marriage sex isn’t sin. Of course, sex with any other man after that is adultery, which is not “premarital sex” at all. And it also means that the definition of the word “fornication” can now return to it’s original meaning, which referred only to the sin of Christian men having sex with prostitutes and nothing more.
“Gunner_Q, here’s your logic:”
My logic here is Matthew 5:28, Mark 12:31, 1 Corinthians 7:2 and Ephesians 5:3. I don’t play dead-language word games.
AT asks “(are you catching this, Lyn87?)“,
I said I was done, so please stop trying to drag me into this. I “caught” it the first time, although you don’t seem to have done so even now. I know what you wrote, and I know what I wrote. The end.
@ AT
Just hours after whining that Lyn didn’t answer your question (he did), you answered exactly zero of my questions.
I’ve learned to not bother with AT. Dishonesty, false accusations, no love for Christ’s body. Reason will not work on him, and he disqualifies himself well enough for the most part. Responses just encourage him to make more long posts about how the true meaning of the Bible lets him do what he wants.
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
@Oscar
Please excuse the misunderstanding. I was making an absurd argument in order to point to the absurdity of claiming that a pair of words that mean the exact same thing in context have two different meanings. However, the answers to your questions are found here with the complete chart linked at the bottom.
Also, I’m really not a grammar nazi, but you misspelled “winning.”
@Anonymous Reader
As to how I read Proverbs 7, it’s an entire chapter devoted to the wisdom of avoiding adulteresses and says nothing about prostitution. After an intro on the virtues of wisdom, Verse 5 says “that they may keep you from the adulteress.” That word is Strong’s 802 “ishshah” which is defined as “wife.” In context, the word means “adulteress” in that passage and various translations have it as “adulteress,” “immoral woman,” “forbidden woman” and “strange woman.” All of which mean “adulteress.” Verses 10-12 describe the adulteress. Verse 19 again identifies her as a married woman living with her husband, (by implication a wealthy merchant) who is gone on a long journey and will not return home for some time. Which leaves his adulterous wife with the time to “play the harlot.”
AR, I’m curious. Did *you* actually read Proverbs 7?
Other proverbs also talk about adulterous women, warning men against them.
Proverbs 5:3 “For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil”
Proverbs 23:27 “for an adulterous woman is a deep pit, and a wayward wife is a narrow well.”
@Damn Crackers
You quoted Proverbs 6:26 upstream and although I wanted to mention it, I had to leave it alone for reasons which I’ve already explained. Look closely at that verse because it’s pretty much saying it’s better to get paid sex from a prostitute than to get “free” sex from the wife of another man and eventually pay for it with your life. In other words, it is a comparative recommendation of prostitution:
Proverbs 6:26 “For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life.”
We must balance that with the warning that frequent use of prostitutes squanders a man’s wealth.
Proverbs 29:3 “A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.”
Adultery gets you killed and using prostitutes squanders your wealth, so marriage is best. Of course, back then a wife had no authority to divorce her husband and could not divorce-rape him, steal half his stuff, take his children away and make his life living hell, so marriage was obviously a better option. However, what we are NOT seeing is a “condemnation” of prostitution or using prostitutes in the book of Proverbs.
Finally, you quoted the words of the Supreme Pervert, Augustine of Hippo, as if he was an authority. The following quotes are from “Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe” by James A Brundage, his 698 page magnum opus. For these two quotes, I included the authors footnotes, bold emphasis added.
From page 80
The Church Fathers’ views of sex were dominated by ascetic values, for most of the Fathers were, at one time or another in their careers, monks or hermits. The most important patristic authority on sexual matters, the one whose views have most fundamentally influenced subsequent ideas about sexuality in the West, was St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Augustine held strong, deep seated convictions about sexual relationships and the role of sex in human history, convictions that flowed from his own experience and his reflections upon it, convictions that brooked neither denial nor dissent (3).
Sexual desire, Augustine believed, was the most foul and unclean of human wickednesses, the most pervasive manifestation of man’s disobedience to God’s designs (4). Other bodily desires and pleasures, Augustine felt, did not overwhelm reason and disarm the will: one can be sensible while enjoying a good meal, one can discuss matters reasonably over a bottle of wine. But sex, Augustine argued, was more powerful than other sensual attractions; it could overcome reason and free will altogether. Married people, who ought to have sex only in order to beget children, can be overwhelmed by lubricious desires that blot out reason and restraint; they tumble into bed together simply in order to enjoy the pleasure of each other’s body. This, Augustine thought, was not only irrational but sinful (5). Augustine’s underlying belief in the intrinsic sinfulness of carnal desire and the sensual delight that accompanied sexual union became a standard premise of Western beliefs about sexuality during the Middle Ages and beyond. (6).
Not only was sexual desire a basic and pervasive evil, according to Augustine, but it was also a vice that no one could be sure of mastering. We are born with it and it lasts as long as we live. No one, whatever his age or position in life, can confidently claim to have conquered it (7). “As I was writing this,” Augustine noted in his polemic against Julian, “we were told that a man of eighty-four, who had lived a life of continence under religious observance with a pious wife for twenty-five years, has just bought himself a music-girl for his pleasure.”(8)
Footnotes quoted, page 80
3. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 390-91; Edward A. Synan, “Augustine of Hippo, Saint,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer et al., 13 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982- ; cited hereafter as DMA) 1: 646- 59. See also Bailey, Sexual Relation, pp. 58-59; Kosnik et al., Human Sexuality, p. 36.
4. Augustine, Contra Julianum 4.5.35, in PL 44: 756: “In quibus [cupiditatibus malis] libido prae caeteris est, cui nisi resistatur, horrenda immunda committit.”
5. Augustine, Contra Julianum 4.14.71, in PL 44: 773-74.
6. Miller, Lehre, pp. 22-23; Lecky, Hist. of European Morals 2:281-82.
7. Augustine, Sermo 151. 5, in PL 38: 817: “Ergo semper pugnandum est, quia ipsa concupiscentia, cum qua nati sumus, finiri non potest quamdiu vivimus: quotidie minui potest, finiri non potest.” See also St. John Cassian, Conlationes 4.11.2 and 4.15.1, in CSEL 13: 105, 110, as well as his Institutiones 6.1, in CSEL 17: 115.
8. Augustine, Contra Julianum 3.11.22, in PL 44: 713: “Nam cum hoc opus in minibus haberem, nunciatus est nobis senex octaginta et quatuor agens annos, qui religiose cum conjuge religiosa jam viginti quinque annos vixerat continenter, ad libidinem sibi emisse Lyristriam.” Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 405.
From page 82
Augustine wrote eloquently on the theology of sex, but he was by no means the only patristic writer to deal with the subject. His contemporaries by and large shared Augustine’s negative attitudes toward the role of sex in Christian life. A few were even more certain than he that sex was a root cause of sin and corruption. St. Jerome (ca. 347-419/20), for example, maintained that sex and salvation were contradictions. Even in marriage, coitus was evil and unclean, Jerome thought, and married Christians should avoid sexual contact whenever possible. St. Gregory of Nyssa was still more emphatic: he taught that only those who renounced sex completely and led lives of unblemished virginity could attain spiritual perfection (13).
Such views as these owed as much to philosophy, particularly to Stoicism, as to religious teaching, and St. Jerome explicitly acknowledged in his treatise against Jovinian that he was drawing upon Stoic sources (14). But although fourth-hand fifth-century patristic writers borrowed heavily from pagan sexual ethics, they nevertheless sought to legitimize their borrowings by finding support for their conclusions in the Scriptures. This sometimes required ingenious feats of imaginative interpretation, but a Scriptural foundation for their ideas about sexuality seemed essential.
Footnotes quoted, page 82
13. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 1.13, 1.26, 1.28, in PL 23: 229-30, 246, 249; Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 2, in PG 46: 323-24; Bailey, Sexual Relation, pp. 45-46; JoAnn McNamara, “Cornelia’s Daughters: Paula and Eustocium” Women’s Studies 11 (1984) 12- 13.
14. Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.49, in PL 23:280-81; Aries, “L’amour dans Ie mariage,” pp. 118-19; Philippe Delhaye, “Le dossier antimatrimonial de L’Adversus Jovinianum et son influence sur quelques ecrits latins du Xlle siecle,” Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951) 68. Jerome found some strands of Stoic ethics so congenial that he numbered Seneca among the saints; De viris illustribus 12, in PL 23: 662. But his use of the Stoics was highly selective; Colish, Stoic Tradition 2: 70-81.
@ Artisanal Toad says:
December 7, 2016 at 2:33 am
“Please excuse the misunderstanding. I was making an absurd argument in order to point to the absurdity of claiming that a pair of words that mean the exact same thing in context have two different meanings. However, the answers to your questions are found here with the complete chart linked at the bottom.”
No, they aren’t. I asked you (who whined about others not answering your questions after they did) a series of direct questions. Please answer them directly.
Artisanal Toad
AR, I’m curious. Did *you* actually read Proverbs 7?
Yes. Thanks for replying.
@Artisanal Toad “Adultery gets you killed and using prostitutes squanders your wealth, so marriage is best.” Honestly, I think that is what St. Paul is getting at….don’t cleave to a prostitute because they are nothing but gold-digging hos. Jesus wouldn’t be with someone that low.
As for St. Augustine, he gets all the flak for sexual repression in Christianity. But as you stated, he was actually a moderate compared to the other Desert church fathers on matters of sex.
Nevertheless, the quote by Augustine (De Ordine 2.4) I used still supports your point as well as the point of much of this blog. Don’t make a ho a wife. It rewards the unjust and unchaste and denigrates the very idea of marriage.
@Oscar
“Did you actually read Leviticus 21:8-15?”
Yes, but I confess, I didn’t limit myself to just verses 8-15. The comprehensive word study in Hebrew was focused on verses 8-15 though. Does that count?
“Are Christian men prohibited from marrying widows?”
That depends on their faith. “That which is not of faith is sin” and I have it on the highest authority that Christian men are to avoid sin.
“If so, whom are young widows supposed to marry?”
Who told you that young widows are supposed to marry? Paul said it’s better that they don’t marry. Are you now asking for my opinion? I think widows are best served by marrying established men as their second or third wife. Especially if they’re older and not very sexually attractive.
“Why do we refer to sex as the “consummation” of a marriage?”
Who is this “we” you’re talking about?
The idea of the “consummation” of the marriage being sex… is part of the lie that has been floating around for a thousand years, that a couple is not married without a ceremony and only after the ceremony is the marriage “consummated.” So, the only reason I could give for why someone like you would use that word is because you believe the lie that something is required before the sex in order for the person to be married when they finally get around to having sex. That, however, is not what the Bible actually says.
Or, you may be a more enlightened person, a kind and gentle soul who understands that a virgin needs a lot of time and effort in terms of foreplay before the penetration occurs. Perhaps you refer to the “consummation” as the penetration that only occurs after extensive foreplay. I truly have no idea and you’d probably be offended by my speculation.
“Why has the Christian tradition been that without sex the marriage is not valid?”
Of what tradition do you speak? The early church claimed that sex was no part of becoming married and consent was all that was necessary, that a couple could live together and never have sex. In fact, that was claimed to be the *ideal* of Christian marriage by many of the patristic writers.
I have already explained that marriage to an eligible virgin begins with the act of penetration by her husband. No ceremony, license or permission is required. For a non-virgin who is eligible to marry, she must agree to be married before the sex makes her married. There are multiple posts on my blog that explain that.
I notice that you avoided answering the question about becoming one flesh. I was specific and I asked you what “becomes one flesh” as used in Genesis 2:24 meant. That’s the connotation, the meaning, not the denotation or the definition. Since you seem to have a problem understanding the difference and you avoided the question, I will provide it for you, because it has a great impact on your follow-up question.
A Covenant is an agreement and what we notice about covenants to which God is a party is that they’re always initiated by the man with the shedding of blood. That is why women come with a hymen as standard equipment. It’s a single-use tamper-proof seal on the vagina that’s designed to be broken and bleed upon the first instance of sexual intercourse.
The act of sexual intercourse with the virgin breaks the hymen, shedding her blood. God seals that covenant by making the two “one flesh” as Jesus stated in Matthew 19:5, that God joined the two together. It is a spiritual joining, not a physical one. We notice that Genesis 2:24, properly read, has the man leaving his father and mother (a status change- he becomes the head of his own house) and has sexual intercourse with his wife. The status change is family/community in nature, a recognition he is the head of his own household. The sex with his wife is the action of the man. The becoming one flesh is the action of God.
All that begs the question of whether a widow (non-virgin) becomes one flesh when she marries again. If you want to tackle that, go ahead.
The lie that has been told for over 1000 years is that the “cleave” is where the man makes his commitment to his wife at the wedding ceremony and the “becomes one flesh” is where the husband and wife later “consummate” their marriage with the act of intercourse. It’s a lie.
“Why is pair bonding a biological reality?”
“Pair bonding” is a psychobabble term that originates from what was once known as sociobiology, now known as “evolutionary psychology.” Not being an evolutionary psychologist, I am unqualified to answer that question. In fact, given that the general theory of evolution is complete and utter horse-shit and psychology is a modern form of idolatry, I can only say that their idea of “pair bonding” is a concept designed to confuse gullible Christians.
“Who designed our biology?”
Without getting a direct answer from God, that question cannot be answered.
“Why are you ignoring the fact that in 1 Corinthians 6:9-20 – 7:1-5 speaks repeatedly about multiple sex acts?”
Oscar, I’m glad you asked that question, because I’m not ignoring it. I actually know what the words mean, although you evidently don’t.
“The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality”
“Flee from sexual immorality. ”
“since sexual immorality is occurring”
Is something that is described as “immoral” a sin. Yes or no? I’m claiming that anything the Bible describes as being immoral is a sin. If you disagree, argue it later. That means that anything that is “sexual immorality” is a sin of a sexual nature. According to Romans 4:15 and 5:13, sin is a violation of God’s Law and without a specific prohibition, there is no violation and no sin imputed. That is what Romans 4:15 and 5:13 says. So, what is the definition of sexual immorality? It is those things of a sexual nature that are forbidden in God’s Law. I have a post that covers this specific issue, this is the list, with one exception:
A man may not uncover the nakedness of any close male relative (Leviticus 18:6).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his mother (Leviticus 18:7).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his father’s wife (Leviticus 18:8).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his sister (Leviticus 18:9).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his half-sister (Leviticus 18:9).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his son’s daughter (Leviticus 18:10).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his daughter’s daughter (Leviticus 18:10).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his father’s wife’s daughter by his father [half-sister by father] (Leviticus 18:11).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his father’s sister [aunt] (Leviticus 18:12).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his mother’s sister [aunt] (Leviticus 18:13).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his father’s brother’s wife [aunt] (Leviticus 18:14).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his son’s wife [daughter-in-law] (Leviticus 18:15).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of his brother’s wife [sister-in-law] (Leviticus 18:16).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter [step-daughter] (Leviticus 18:17).
A man may not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her son’s daughter [step-granddaughter] (Leviticus 18:17). [Polygyny ONLY]
A man may not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter’s daughter [step-granddaughter] (Leviticus 18:17). [Polygyny ONLY]
A man may not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her sister as a rival while the woman is still living (Leviticus 18:18). [Polygyny ONLY]
A man may not uncover the nakedness of a woman during her menses (Leviticus 18:19).
A man may not have sexual intercourse with another man’s wife (Leviticus 18:20).
A man may not lie with another man as with a woman (Leviticus 18:22).
A man may not mate with an animal (Leviticus 18:23).
A woman may not have sexual intercourse with an animal (Leviticus 18:23).
The exception, explained in the post on this subject, is the fact that idolatrous sex is also specifically forbidden as part of idolatry.
Note that Paul’s remedy for sexual immorality is that “each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband”, NOT to have sex with prostitutes.
Take a deep breath, Oscar, and try to hold two concepts in your head at the same time. You do not have to be an attorney to do this because these two concepts are not opposed:
1. Prostitution and/or the act of having sexual intercourse with prostitutes is not immoral because it is not forbidden in God’s Law.
2. Christian men were forbidden to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes.
Therefore, Christian men were NOT forbidden to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes because sex with prostitutes was immoral. Christian men are forbidden to have sexual intercourse with prostitutes because their Master forbid it. Period.
What Paul actually said was “It is good to abstain from sexual relations. But, because there is so much incest, adultery, bestiality, male homosexuality, idolatrous sex and the immorality of intercourse with a woman while she’s menstruating…
each [masculine] should have his own wife and each [feminine] should have her own husband.
A single man does not have a wife, therefore the [each, masculine] is best translated as “husband” and a single woman does not have her own husband, therefore the [each, feminine] is best translated as “wife.” Husbands have wives, wives have a husband.
Notice that Paul DID NOT say “each MAN should have A WIFE”, he said each HUSBAND (because he has a wife) should have HIS OWN WIFE. Likewise, Paul did not say that each WOMAN should have A HUSBAND, he said that each WIFE (because she has a husband) was to have HER OWN HUSBAND.
This is actually better read as Paul saying
“Because of all this adultery, idolatry, incest and male homosexuality that’s happening around you in Corinth, known far and wide for it’s sexual debauchery; each husband is to have sex with his own wife rather than any other man or his wife; and each wife is to have sex with her own husband rather than with any other man. And both husbands and wives are to be diligent to do their duty and give their spouse as much sex as the other one wants. Wife, your body belongs to your husband. Husband, your body belongs to your wife. Do not deprive each other of what is rightfully theirs unless it’s during short periods that are set aside by mutual agreement for fasting and prayer.
Now, if you do abstain for a short period, as soon as you’re done you are to go at it like sex-starved teenagers and make sure your spouse is completely satiated with sex so they might not be tempted to commit immoral acts. But, I say that not as a command, it’s just avuncular advice.”
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