There is an interesting commentary at the CNN website by the former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court who is calling for the end to “disposable marriage.” She tells a heartbreaking story about the damage caused to her own family by divorce, and she (correctly) sees the ease in which a divorce can be obtained as extremely detrimental to our society:

No-fault divorce’s broad acceptance as an unquestioned social good helped usher in an era that fundamentally altered the seriousness with which marriage is viewed. It effectively ended marriage as a legal contract since either party can terminate it, with or without cause. This leaves many people struggling to remake their lives after painful divorces that they do not want. It also left many parents cut off from, or sidelined in, the lives of the children they love….

This may sound like heresy, but I believe the United States and a host of Western democracies are engaged in an unintended campaign to diminish the importance of marriage and fatherhood. By refusing to do everything we can to stem the rising rate of divorce and unwed childbearing, our country often isolates fathers (and sometimes mothers) from their children and their families.

There is a lot of controversy today about homosexual “marriage” and its possible harmful effects on marriage in our society. But my personal opinion is that the institution of marriage in our culture has already been fatally wounded by the unholy trinity of contraception, pornography and easy divorce.

The desire to normalize homosexual “marriages” is only the consequence of these other, previous, attacks on marriage. Contraception within marriage broke the inherent connection between marriage and child-bearing. Easy access to pornography lead to the objectification of other people for our own personal sexual desires. And easy divorce turned marriage into a contract instead of a covenant between a man and a woman. All of these factors radically changed what marriage is, so that the idea of a “marriage” between two men or two women is no longer seen as an abnormality, but instead as a matter of justice.

Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin, pray for us!

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