Tbogg

One of the first bloggers I ever read was Tbogg, whose philosophy is best summed up by himself thus,

The way I look at it: when life gives you lemons, throw them at the heads of people you don't like and then run like hell. It's all snark fodder to me.

I find his attitude refreshing, and tend to turn to him when my outrage capacity is maxed out.

Who better, then, to quote on what the republicans really mean when they talk about the sanctity of marriage?

"When you talk about protecting marriage, you need to talk about divorce," said Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University professor who writes frequently about family issues.

While Christensen doesn't oppose the campaign to enact state and federal bans on gay marriage, he worries it's distracting from immediate threats to marriage's place in society.

"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile," he said. "If they're isolated - if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness - then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside."

Tbogg takes issue (as, needless to say, do I) with all these issues, but he finds the focus on "deliberate childlessness" particularly chilling, in a post titled Republicans: Humping for a cause...

I hope that you are prepared for this. I especially like the idea that they are going to address deliberate childlessness in marriage. What would addressing that entail? Requiring fertility checks of couples who have not reproduced within some reasonable period of time? Or banning all contraception? The latter is more likely. The plan would also have to address women's economic independence as that makes divorce easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was emphasis on the need to reinstall a male-dominated family structure even among nonbelievers. After all, it is the institution of traditional marriage that is to be saved here.