On Sept. 1, Sacramento resident, John Marcotte, filed an initiative with the attorney general’s office called the California Marriage Protection Act.
The initiative says: “No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is void or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code.”
In other words, this initiative is setting forth a ban on divorce, bringing communism to the ballot in 2010.
Placing this initiative on the ballot is a way of handing over our rights to the government. The only people that will vote for this is people with a strong religious background. There is a separation of church and state for a reason.
This initiative is ludicrous.
No one's situation is the same. Sometimes divorce is the only option.
“Till death do you part.” How many times does he have to beat her in order to be granted a divorce?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States”.
There are many logical reasons for divorce. Lack of commitment to the marriage, lack of communication between spouses, infidelity, alcohol or substance abuse, emotional and physical abuse, inability to manage or resolve conflict, and financial problems are just some of the top reasons cited by the Associated Press.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the marriage rate in the U.S. is 7.1 per 1,000 total population. The divorce rate is 3.5 per 1,000 population.
Currently, Nevada holds the largest divorce rate in the nation with 14.2 percent of the population. California was last calculated in 2004 with a divorce rate of 4.1 percent of the population.
Marcotte is know to have engineered a number of harmless social pranks. In 2006, he and a group of friends placed a giant pair of Groucho glasses on a statue at a Sacramento retail center, reported by News 10.
The Marriage Protection campaign already has t-shirts stating, “You said ’til death do us part. You’re not dead yet.”; “Jesus still loves you if you get divorced - just not as much as before.”; and “Hell is eternal - just like your marriage was supposed to be.”
Do you smell sarcasm in the air?
Marcotte said that he was inspired by the Prop 8 campaign. He believes the California Marriage Protection Act would be a logical extension of Proposition 8. But, what is the true motivation for this campaign?
According to San Diego News Network, Doug Manchester, a supporter of “traditional marriage” donated $125,000 to Proposition 8. Is this another scam for money?
Marcotte said he wasn’t planning to ramp up outreach until petitions were prepared to circulate. There are still those who haven’t heard of the California Marriage Protection Act. But, news is spreading fast with Facebook fans of over 1,900, the website RescueMarriage.org, and statewide news coverage.
The website, RescueMarriage.org, has many comments with various ideas. One commenter is a mother who describes how her kids and she would be dead if she wouldn’t have left her first husband. Some agree with the initiative, while others joke about it and claim it will never pass.
Many websites such as, digg.com and asylum.com, are calling Marcotte a prankster.
For the meantime, the talk about banning divorce doesn’t seem to be anything to joke about.
I have a couple of questions, in order that they appear in the column.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly does "Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code" say?
How does this measure have anything to do with communism? Does the writer mean social or political or both?
And finally, I don't understand the Nevada statistic...
Beyond those questions, the writer has a very interesting topic here, but might have turned the whole column upside down.
In other words, if this is kind of a joke, then say that at the outset, followed by explaining the proposal, followed by why it isn't a joke and then finally talk about the likelihood of this thing even getting on the ballot.
Incidentally, what year/month ballot would this show up on - if it was passed by voters?
The mixing of the notion of wife abuse with the idea of voting on this might have muddied the waters.
Perhaps a stronger column would be to look at the abuse issue in light of the divorce rate.
One thing for sure - it was written in a very lively style. I was done with reading it muy rapido...