This is getting a lot of attention:
Seven Republicans in the Iowa House are pushing a bill to prohibit parents of minor children from getting a "no fault" divorce and the proposal could be debated in a House committee this week.This is getting a lot of attention because Gassman cited the recent divorce of his daughter and son-in-law as a reason the law is needed, and did so in a squirm-inducing way:
... Representative Tedd Gassman, a Republican from Scarville, said he's concerned about the negative impact divorce has on children....
Under the proposed legislation, parents with kids under the age of 18 could not get a no-fault divorce. Instead, they'd have to show a spouse was guilty of adultery, had been sent to prison on a felony conviction, had physically or sexually abused someone in the family, or had abandoned the family for at least a year.
"There's a 16-year-old girl in this whole mix now. Guess what? What are the possibilities of her being more promiscuous?" Gassman said. "What are the possibilities of all these other things surrounding her life that a 16-year-old girl, with hormones raging, can get herself into?"But, um, where did he get this idea? Divorce only if there's adultery, abandonment, sexual abuse, or a prison conviction? Where does this wacky stuff come from?
Glad you asked, because I'm old enough to remember:
Notice the year: 1997. This was when The Most Important Thing In The World was the president of the United States having an extramarital fling. What would we tell the children? Surely promiscuity would run riot in the land (because no impressionable young person had ever considered having any kind of sex pre-Monica) ... unless right-wing Christians opportunistically framed the issue by coming up with Marriage: Now With More Jesus!
The Iowa legislators seem to have made this more punitive than the 1997 version, given that they've dropped the "covenant" bit and want to impose this on everyone retroactively. I guess this is coming from that remade GOP I've heard so much about.
