Tag Archives: Divorce

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Wendy Davis divorced her second husband one day after he paid off her student loans

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Wendy Davis: Feminist champion and independent woman
Wendy Davis: Feminist champion and independent woman

So, it turns out that Wendy Davis has been misleading or even lying about her background for political ends.

Here are the facts from the Dallas Morning News. (H/T Letitia)

Excerpt:

Wendy Davis has made her personal story of struggle and success a centerpiece of her campaign to become the first Democrat elected governor of Texas in almost a quarter-century.

While her state Senate filibuster last year captured national attention, it is her biography — a divorced teenage mother living in a trailer who earned her way to Harvard and political achievement — that her team is using to attract voters and boost fundraising.

Was she a divorced teenaged mother? Not quite:

She was 17 and still in high school when she moved in with her boyfriend, a construction worker named Frank Underwood. She got pregnant, married and “some time between [age] 19 and 20 was when Frank and I separated,” she said.

Davis remained in the mobile home a few months, then moved in with her mother before getting her own apartment. She got custody of her daughter, Amber, and Underwood was ordered to pay child support.

Under terms of the divorce, he got a boat, the mobile home and the responsibility for the mortgage on it. She got a 3-year-old Pontiac Grand Prix, a 1972 Firebird and a 1967 Chevy pickup. Davis was 21.

I don’t think that moving in with a construction worker at that age shows good judgment – it puts possible children at risk of divorce.

More:

A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter.

[…]After they married, when she was 24, they moved into a historic home in the Mistletoe Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth.

[…]When she was accepted to Harvard Law School, Jeff Davis cashed in his 401(k) account and eventually took out a loan to pay for her final year there.

[…]The daughters, then 8 and 2, remained with Jeff Davis in Fort Worth while Wendy Davis was at Harvard.

[…]Jeff Davis said that was right around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. “It was ironic,” he said. “I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.”

[…]In his initial divorce filing, Jeff Davis said the marriage had failed, citing adultery on her part and conflicts that the couple could not overcome. The final court decree makes no mention of infidelity, granting the divorce solely “on the ground of insupportability.”

[…]A former colleague and political supporter who worked closely with Davis when she was on the council said the body’s work was very time-consuming.

“Wendy is tremendously ambitious,” he said, speaking only on condition of anonymity in order to give what he called an honest assessment. “She’s not going to let family or raising children or anything else get in her way.”

The Daily Caller says that she “relinquished custody” of the children after the divorce.

So, she had a man 13 years her senior pay for half her undergraduate degree, and her time at Harvard Law School, and then when the last student loan payment was made, she divorced him and abandoned her own children. You definitely don’t want to elect a person whose desire to be perceived in a positive way by others causes her to lie about herself, to make herself appear as a victim when the truth is that she was a gold-digger and a bad mother. Truth-telling is important, and especially important for a governor.

So here is my point about all of this. What did people expect from this woman? Do people really think that someone who stands up and advocates the outright murder/infanticide of unborn children after 20 weeks could be relied on to tell the truth? Would she be a good wife? Would she be a good mother? Or are people so taken in by her attractive appearance that they invent in their minds a completely fictional world where pink running shoes and blonde hair are all that matter in assessing a person’s character?

Abortion is a way of killing people you created by your own decisions. These people are weaker than you. They are depending on you to take responsibility for what you did, and to choose who you have sex with wisely. But you are killing them anyway, in order to stop them from taking your money and time. It’s possible for someone like Wendy Davis to look glamorous and pretty on the outside and be evil and selfish on the inside. That doesn’t mean that she is irredeemable, but it does mean that she would make a lousy governor.

Good leaders should care about other people, and especially children, and even more so their own children who were created because of their choice of man and choice of activity with that man. Good leaders take responsibility for what they do, and they honor moral obligations to others. Caring for others requires good decision-making and planning. You can’t break all the moral rules and choose men poorly, and then expect your children to get what they need. Life isn’t that unpredictable – there is a need for humility and wisdom. Ambition doesn’t cure selfishness, it just masks it. 

Wendy Davis responds

Wendy Davis has responded to these revelations by melting down on Twitter, which reflects poorly on her leadership ability, and then criticizing her opponent because he hasn’t “walked a day in her shoes”, which is some sort of back-handed attack on his disability – he is a paraplegic. She also implied that he doesn’t know what it is to struggle with difficulties in life. The man is paralyzed, for God’s sake.

Additionally, the Houston Chronicle reports that her campaign is trying to hush up her ex-husband from telling more about what really happened. (H/T Legal Insurrection via Letitia)

Excerpt:

“They’ve asked me not to talk to reporters,” Jeff said. He is anyway, because: “If she runs, the scrutiny on her will be extraordinary. She needs to deal with it in a constructive way. She needs to take control of the message. … My goal in all this, I think, is just try and protect the kids as much as I can.”

Now this should be the end of her campaign, but seriously, I wonder whether all of this crap is just going to cause her supporters to double down on voting for her “victimhood”. I would not be surprised, because we re-elected Obama. Every criticism of his policies (like this study by a Duke U. researcher) was dismissed as “racism”, and people actually believed that.

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann

I just want to remind everyone how two conservative women, who are decidely pro-life and NON-VICTIMS, were mercilessly attacked by the left-wing media. I mean Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the latter of whom was my top candidate for President in 2012. I wrote about 50 posts about Michele starting from before she even announced her candidacy for President to when she dropped out of the 2012 race. If you are going to pick someone to lead, pick someone with a good marriage and 24 foster kids. Someone who also quit her job to homeschool her kids when they were struggling in school.

I’m sure that Michele and her husband had stresses and strains in their marriage, but they never divorced, either. Women can be great leaders, if they are trustworthy and moral. Michele Bachmann would be a fine President. Palin also seemed to have this calm, responsible demeanor. She took a lot of hits, and never melted down like Hillary Clinton and Wendy Davis have. That’s what you’re looking for in a leader. But the mainstream press wanted nothing to do with those women leaders, because they were pro-life, and that was the difference.

Commentary

Do atheists have a lower divorce rate than Christians?

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In the comments, an atheist was arguing that atheists have a lower divorce rate than Christians, so I thought I would re-post this USA Today article from 2011 about that.

Excerpt:

It’s been proclaimed from pulpits and blogs for years — Christians divorce as much as everyone else in America.

But some scholars and family activists are questioning the oft-cited statistics, saying Christians who attend church regularly are more likely to remain wed.

“It’s a useful myth,” said Bradley Wright, a University of Connecticut sociologist who recently wrote “Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You’ve Been Told.”

“Because if a pastor wants to preach about how Christians should take their marriages more seriously, he or she can trot out this statistic to get them to listen to him or her.”

The various findings on religion and divorce hinge on what kind of Christians are being discussed.

Wright combed through the General Social Survey, a vast demographic study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and found that Christians, like adherents of other religions, have a divorce rate of about 42%. The rate among religiously unaffiliated Americans is 50%.

When Wright examined the statistics on evangelicals, he found worship attendance has a big influence on the numbers. Six in 10 evangelicals who never attend had been divorced or separated, compared to just 38% of weekly attendees.

[…]Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, agrees there’s been some confusion.

“You do hear, both in Christian and non-Christian circles, that Christians are no different from anyone else when it comes to divorce and that is not true if you are focusing on Christians who are regular church attendees,” he said.

Wilcox’s analysis of the National Survey of Families and Households has found that Americans who attend religious services several times a month were about 35% less likely to divorce than those with no religious affiliation.

Nominal conservative Protestants, on the other hand, were 20% more likely to divorce than the religiously unaffiliated.

“There’s something about being a nominal ‘Christian’ that is linked to a lot of negative outcomes when it comes to family life,” Wilcox said.

Here’s a quote from an Oklahoma State University study that confirms the Wright and Wilcox conclusions:

History of Divorce and Religious Involvement

Those who say they are more religious are less likely, not more, to have already experienced divorce. Likewise, those who report more frequent attendance at religious services were significantly less likely to have been divorced. This pattern of findings held using various analytic techniques that test which variables differentiate persons who have been divorced from persons who have not been divorced, while controlling for other variables that might affect the interpretation of the data, such as age, age of first marriage, income, and gender. When both the global rating of religiousness and the item assessing fiequency of attendance at religious services are entered into the same analysis, the attendance item remains significantly associated with divorce history but the global religiousness item does not. This suggests that a key aspect of how religious faith affects marital relationships may be through involvement with a community of faith.

So, please do bookmark this information for the next time you hear an atheist make this argument. Obviously, you can’t expect people who are not serious about their religion to be bound by the moral duties imposed by that religion. People who attend church regularly are probably more serious about their religion, and also probably more informed about what their holy book says. If their holy book is the Bible, then there are few options for divorce.

An article from Focus on the Family by Amy Tracy explains when divorce is allowed according to the Bible.

God is very clear, however, that He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). He also says, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6). According to the New Testament, there are two justifications for divorce: infidelity (Matthew 5:32) and desertion (1 Corinthians 7:15).

So divorce is not something a Bible believing Christian can do for frivolous reasons, unless he wants to be in rebellion against God.

Commentary

Can a Christian woman divorce her husband if she is really, really unhappy?

98 Comments

So, the topic for this post is whether it’s OK to get divorced.

I noticed a lot of people getting divorced these days in the church, and trying to justify why they are allowed to divorce and why they should be allowed to pursue remarriage. So I’m first going to quote from an article from Focus on the Family by Amy Tracy.

She writes:

God is very clear, however, that He hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). He also says, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Matthew 19:6). According to the New Testament, there are two justifications for divorce: infidelity (Matthew 5:32) and desertion (1 Corinthians 7:15).

Now, I had always taken the rule of Dr. Laura for this. She says that you can get divorced for adultery and abandonment (as above), but she allows allows for physical abuse and drug addiction. But it looks like the Bible is more strict than Dr. Laura, even.

Now with that Biblical standard in mind, take a look at this post about a woman who professes to be a Christian who is divorcing her husband for unhappiness, which I found on Sunshine Mary’s blog.

Look:

So how are we to understand women like Jenny Erickson, and the many other Christian women like her, who claim that despite thousands of years of Christian and Jewish tradition, despite the clear commands in Scripture not to separate from one’s husband, despite the commandments against adultery, nevertheless the Lord God Himself has made a special exemption just for her?  Because He wants her to be happy, so if she needs to be a faithless woman who breaks her vows and becomes an adulteress, then hey it’s all good?

[…]After secretly filing for divorce from her husband, Mrs. Erickson’s pastor caught wind of the situation and attempted to discuss it with her.  When she refused, the pastor went to her husband about the situation.  Mrs. Erickson has since railed against her soon-to-be ex-husband and her now ex-Pastor because they actually had the nerve to call what she was doing a sin – which, according to the Bible, is is.  Let’s read through a few quotes from Mrs. Erickson:

Thankfully, my faith in God is stronger than my fear of men, and I feel like I’m finally getting right with Him again after years of wandering in the wilderness.

[…]Here are a few more things that Mrs. Erickson claims:

It’s odd and strangely freeing to not know exactly where I’m going to be a year from now. I’ve always been the girl with The Plan. The Plan has changed every now and then, because hey, life requires adaptation, but right now there is No Plan other than love my girls like crazy, work hard enough to pay the bills, and rely totally and fully on God.  I’m sure His Plan is better than My Plan anyway.

and

I needed a time-out for my marriage — possibly a permanent one. But every person that tells me I’m going against God’s will by separating from my husband drives me further away from wanting to reconcile with him.

Details aren’t needed. Leif is the father of my amazing children, and I want nothing more than to be his friend again someday, regardless of what happens in our marriage. But things have been very broken between us for a very long time, and it took every ounce of courage I had to take the step that went against everything my religious culture told me but somehow I knew God was telling me was right.

and

To be told that this beautiful, wonderful thing I have learned exists in my soul, this thing that gives me the strength to flip my life over when nothing else has worked, this thing that has made me braver than I thought possible, and made me rely on God more than I ever have in my entire life … to be told that this is a perversion of His plan for me?

These points must confuse a lot of women because I have heard these rationalizations used by many Christian women who are leaving or have left their husbands.  Therefore, allow me to clear up the confusion that seems to be rampant (but it really isn’t confusion, it is willful disobedience), lest any of my sisters in Christ are considering following Mrs. Erickson’s example.

God’s plan for you will never include violating anything written in the Bible.

If you hear a voice whispering in your ear, Here’s the plan; what I want you to do is... and the plan includes going against clear commandments in God’s Word, then it is not God who is speaking to you.  God’s plan for your life, sister, never includes you filing for divorce.  Not ever, not under any circumstances, no matter what your husband has or has not done, no matter what you want, no matter what would make you happy.

So, I think we need to be really careful with spousal candidates who claim to be Christian – we need to make sure that they really are comfortable with being led and with the authority of the Bible to overrule their feelings. In fact, you can check to see if a person takes their faith seriously just by trying to lead them to take the Bible seriously. You just have to read the Bible and think about how to live it out in a marriage, and then talk to your spousal candidate about what you’ve discovered. You want to present to them your plans and your reasons for those plans, and explain what you need them to do in order to make the plan work. This is a great way to see if they know what marriage is really about and how they feel about what’s expected of them if they marry YOU.

Sometimes, it’s really obvious that the person is not a good candidate for marriage. If you tell them your plans and then complain about arrogance, ego and how your questions would turn off any woman, then you are dealing with someone who is going to divorce you. And they might have already divorced someone else – like Erickson. The name calling in response to you trying to to make the Bible have authority over the roles that you each play in the marriage is a sure sign of impending divorce. Basically, you have to beware of anyone who is feelings-driven instead of Scripture-driven and detect them early. There are things to do in a marriage that need to be done whether anyone feels like it or not. You can’t be married to someone who responds to rational discussion about plans and duties with verbal abuse.