I just sat in on a thought-provoking lecture by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse presented by the Federalist Society and others here in Columbus.
It wasn’t a central part of the remarks she was asked to give today, nevertheless, Dr. Morse neatly summed up a common ground for conservatives concerning the social policy of divorce in Ohio and the country:
Presented to the public as a great expansion of personal liberty, no-fault divorce has led to an increase in the power of the government over individual private lives. This is because no-fault divorce frequently means unilateral divorce: one party wants a divorce against the wishes of the other, who wants to stay married. Therefore, the divorce has to be enforced. The coercive machinery of the state is wheeled into action to separate the reluctantly divorced party from the joint assets of the marriage, typically the home and the children.
At that point, the family courts become involved in the most intimate details of the family’s life. Family courts tell fathers how much money they have to spend on their children, and how much time they get to spend with them. Courts tell mothers whether they can move away from their children’s father. Courts rule on whether the father’s attendance at a Little League game, a public event that anyone can attend, counts toward his visitation time. Courts rule on which parent gets to spend Christmas Day with the children, down to and including the precise time of day they must turn the child over to the other parent.
There is no other agent of the government that we permit to intervene in people’s private business, so intimately, so frequently, so routinely. Involving the family court in the minutiae of family life amounts to an unprecedented blurring of the boundaries between public and private life. People under the jurisdiction of the family courts can have virtually all of their private lives subject to its scrutiny. If the courts are influenced by an ideology, whether it be radical feminism, fifties gender roles or anything in between, that ideology reaches into every bedroom and kitchen in America.
Parents, kids and the principle of freedom won a victory in the Ohio Senate today, although by a narrow margin. The vote on SB 57, the Special Needs Scholarship was 17 to 15 in favor. All Democrats voted against the bill, along with Republican Senators Stivers, Schuring and Grendell. Now SB 57 moves to the Ohio House.
