(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Divorce laws may be at risk if Republicans win in 2024 [1] [] Date: 2024-02 Republican populist Ronald Reagan was the first – and, until Donald Trump, only – US president to have been divorced. He is also the reason that Americans have been able to divorce without the imposition of an undue government burden over the past 50 or so years, having been the first US politician to sign a no-fault divorce bill into state law while governor of California in 1969. The vast majority of American states had such laws in place by the early 1980s, ending the need for somebody wanting a divorce to prove to a court that their spouse was at ‘fault’ due to adultery, domestic violence, bigamy, or some other accepted category. It's a bit funny that Reagan, who was swept into the presidency in 1980 on the support of right-wing evangelical Christians, ushered in the US’s era of no-fault divorce. And it’s even funnier that Trump, who is even more beholden to a Christian nationalist base, could become the president who takes the country back to the bad old days, in which abusive spouses (usually husbands) could often rely on the difficulty of obtaining a divorce to help them trap their abused counterparts (usually wives) in terrible marriages. What do you think? Win a £10 book voucher for sharing your views about openDemocracy. Tell us While the UK only got round to legalizing divorce on the grounds of ‘irreconcilable differences’ last year, Americans have been accustomed to the practice for decades. It has freed up numerous Americans, particularly women, to escape from intolerable situations and pursue better lives. Yet, in recent years, calls for an end to no-fault divorce have increasingly been made by some prominent Republicans. These include the current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson – the one who had his own son monitor his porn consumption via an evangelical app and who is himself in a ‘covenant marriage’, an extreme and explicitly Christian form of marriage that is very difficult to dissolve and legally available in only three states, including his native Louisiana. The state-level platforms of the Republican Party branches in Texas and Nebraska have also called for the abolition of no-fault divorce, and the topic has seen some debate in red states’ legislatures in recent years. Because such moves have brought no-fault divorces to the attention of Americans, CNN published a helpful explainer on the practice last week, looking at its history, as well as the reasons the authoritarian Christians who control the Republican Party want to get rid of it. Their rationale, though CNN does not say so outright, is explicitly anti-feminist and often explicitly conservative Christian, all wrapped up in a moral panic about ‘the family’. This moral panic is also driving the US’s surge in book bans, ‘don’t say gay’ laws, anti-trans laws, and the like – and it is very possible that bans on no-fault divorces will similarly escalate into the passage of state laws in the coming years. If this happens, we will not be able to count on the Supreme Court to overturn such legislation, given that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas used their bully pulpit when overturning Roe vs Wade to call for attacks on other social issues, including same-sex marriage, legal contraception, and even private sex acts between consenting adults of the same sex. If Republicans take control of the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2024, they might even try to abolish no-fault divorce nationally, just as they will almost certainly pass a national abortion ban. Both moves would undoubtedly be unpopular – the abortion issue has already caused the Republican Party to consistently underperform electorally since Roe was overturned (despite our political system giving the party a number of baked-in advantages, as I have belaboured in previous columns). But the Republican Party is in such a radicalized and frenzied state of moral panic that it will not stop with its win on abortion and pivot away from social issues, though its presumptive presidential candidate, Trump, has a habit of going off script. Presumably recognizing that in post-Roe America, abortion is a losing issue for Republicans, Trump has recently tried to rebrand himself as an “abortion moderate”. Although the latest polls for 2024 are worrisome for Democrats, Republicans are likely to underperform expectations again. To help that happen, Democratic candidates should be taking every opportunity to press their Republican opponents on abortion and other issues related to bodily autonomy and women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights – including no-fault divorce. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/no-fault-divorce-ban-republicans-win-presidency-2024-christian-mike-johnson-donald-trump/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/