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Divorcing Reality

By Kellyn Brown

There is a time for relevant debate of cultural issues. And there are merits to arguments when actual laws that affect abortion, guns or privacy are on a ballot or being considered by elected officials. Then there’s this:

Rep. Tom McGillvray, a Billings Republican, has proposed that an interim committee made up of lawmakers study marriage laws and the problems of divorce in an attempt to stem the trend of increasing annulments. While these interim committees occasionally lead to findings that result in real legislation, they more often fizzle out. And in this so-called conservative state, should lawmakers really be meddling with this aspect of its citizens’ lives at all, or spending money on this kind of meaningless research?

When the proposal was up for discussion, our Republican and Democratic lawmakers took it upon themselves to debate who make better spouses, as if political affiliation dictates whether a husband and wife are good to each other. They did this on the floor of the Montana House no less.

Rep. Brady Wiseman, a Bozeman Democrat, used his allotted time to not only oppose the resolution, but to squarely, and oddly, place the blame for poverty and failed marriages on Republicans’ shoulders.

He referenced the “Shining City on the Hill,” a phrase used by President Ronald Reagan to describe America, and changed it to “mount Shinola,” which is apparently a brand of shoe polish. Then, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, he said this:

“Your whole social order is laid out there, and the Shinola runs down that hill, and at the bottom is just a teeming huddled mass of the ultimate victims of this, single mothers and their kids.”

Wiseman added something in regard to mothers feeding “Shinola sandwiches to their kids” before being called out of order for straying too far off the topic. Worse than the confusing analogy is that our legislative body was discussing this issue at all.

The cultural war is making a real comeback nationwide, but for every meaningful debate over gun control and gay marriage, which matter because laws effecting them could potentially change, there are meaningless wedge issues trotted out, such as divorce in Montana or, now simmering in Washington, D.C., the make-believe battle over parental rights.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., recently proposed a bill that would amend the U.S. Constitution to ensure those rights. Seventy of his Republican colleagues supported the measure that, if passed, would change absolutely nothing. Hoekstra argues that the rights of parents are being slowly eroded and points to a 20-year-old treaty that was signed but never ratified in the U.S. that came out of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. He fears – or at least he’s pretending to – that if the Obama Administration does ratify this resolution, parents won’t be able to spank their kids, among other things, without those same kids asking for a governmental review.

First, when has a U.N. treaty prevented the U.S. from doing anything, much less dishing out a spanking? Why was this bill even introduced, except to stoke tensions between the two parties? That, and the divorce study group proposed in Montana, are simply examples of lawmakers looking for something with which to bait their ideological opposition. Unfortunately, politicians are too easily lured into the trap.

The Montana legislative session is long and grinding and lawmakers get a little loopy toward the end, especially as the weather turns nice. But that doesn’t excuse such pointless debate, especially in light of other more pressing issues, of which lawmakers actually possess some expertise. Instead of arguing the causes of divorce, Wiseman should have simply pointed out that the state budget was still in limbo while lawmakers moonlighted as marriage counselors.