[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
Anyone today who has a moral or religious conviction that marriage is permanent approaches marriage much more carefully, because divorce isn't an option. You make your bed, you lie in it. At the least, you'll spend more time finding out what a potential spouse is really like.

Then again, I also know people who got married mainly because their moral/religious advisors all but forced them into it (using financial and emotional leverage). And ended up with physically abusive spouses. At least one of them (my cousin) refused to get a divorce (because of those convictions about marriage being permanent) until she got hospitalized, at which point the state police stepped in & arrested the man - fortunately, that state had laws where the state could press charges of abuse without requiring the battered wife to make a statement (and, obviously, risk further abuse). Also fortunately, that prompted my cousin's church to recommend divorce, for the safety of my cousin & her daughter.

And, as Gryphin points out, how long is long enough to decide what a potential spouse is like? And how do you propose doing that without living together for at least some period of time? After all, that's when you really figure out what someone is like. But most people who have religious convictions against divorce also have religious convictions against living together.

Originally posted by Krsqk:
First, those behaviors were much less common in past times. While social stigma could make people hide their behavior, it would also be a deterrent to adopting those behaviors. Second, quite apart from their rightness or wrongness, divorce and teenage pregnancy haven't exactly brought us happiness. Young girls lose their freedom (while young men get off pretty much free); parents and children (and step-parents and step-children and step-step-parents and step-step-children) are split up and doled out in complex "time-sharing" agreements that look like something by Enron. Not much happiness there.

I think there are many cases where divorce has ended some rather unhappy marriages. Teenage pregnancy in and of itself hasn't brought happiness, but the fact that the person isn't completely ostracized from the community for it reduces the unhappiness. "Time-sharing" children isn't happy, but neither is growing up in a household where the parents fight constantly, to the point where they have trouble expressing love for their children. Or worse, grow to resent those children as a root cause for keeping the marriage together. As for social stigma as a deterrent for preferring an "alternate lifestyle", that's just wrong. The social stigma leads to hiding the person's true nature, causing no end of psychological problems.

Oh - mlmbd - I agree hate Groups are still around; that's why I said they were "more active" in the past.