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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 51, 20 December 1948, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
When a married couple decides that their love for each other has gone and they can no longer live happily together, it would seem that no fair-minded person could challenge their right to a divorce, whether by mutual agreement or the wish of either one. Yet this basic human right is not recognized in the marriage laws of the 48 states. In fact, most laws are designed to compel married people to continue living together whether they like it or not.
Public interest in this question is high at present in New York because of District Attorney Frank S. Hogan’s current investigation into some 22,000 New York County divorce proceedings. In this state only “adultery” is recognized as legal grounds for divorce. Consequently people who decide to part are forced to prove that one of them is guilty of adultery if they wish to make the divorce legal.
Rich people, of course, go to Reno or some other place where the requirements are not so reactionary. The poor just separate without benefit of the law. In betwen these groups are many who cannot leave New York and yet wish a legal divorce.
These people get around the law by outright perjury or by staging a fake scene of adultery that can be presented to the court as evidence. So widespread is this practice that about 90 percent of unchallenged divorces in New York are estimated to be fraudulent.
When a professional ring of lawyers and detectives, who arrange adulterous scenes was recently exposed, New York’s scandalous divorce laws made headlines, and Hogan started his probe into the divorce proceedings of the past five years.
The liberals have taken the occasion to press for reform of New York’s divorce laws. They point to the evil effects of universal hypocrisy and the collusion of the courts in getting around unworkable legislation. They decry the sordidness of forcing honest people to bear the stigma of adultery. They point put that the law does not lessen divorce or save marriages. They propose widening the grounds for divorce.
None of them, however, suggest recognizing the fundamental right of a person to a divorce on the grounds of personal desire.
The Catholic hierarchy has thrown its weight into the controversy. Msgr. Robert E McCormick, presiding judge of the Archdiocesan Tribunal of New York issued a blast Dec. 11, demanding that the legislature “correct the present sad condition by banning divorce entirely.”
It is solely in deference to this ultra-reactionary view that the divorce laws of New York still remain among the most backward in the country.
The Stalinist reaction to the current public interest in this important social question is a curious one. At first they tried to link the detective involved in the divorce mill with the detective accused of making an illegal entry into the home of Stalinist State Chairman Robert Thomson. It appears that the two detectives had offices only a few doors apart in the crowded New York skyscraper area.
Later, The Worker printed a perfunctory article that hoped the scandal might stimulate a demand to transform the New York divorce law “from the most backward to the most advanced in the 48 states.” But the Stalinists did not say what kind of law they considered the “most advanced.” Perhaps this is because they are vulnerable on the question.
When the Soviet Union was founded, the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky re-wrote Russian marriage, legislation. Here’s a sample clause: “The mutual consent of the husband and wife or the desire of either of them to obtain a divorce shall be considered a ground for divorce.”
All the legislation on marriage was written in this spirit. Two big objectives were in mind: to protect the children and to safeguard the right of people to happiness in their personal lives.
The Bolsheviks did not consider these laws the final word. They held that these laws were only transitional in character, and that they contained concessions, necessary at the time, to capitalist marriage institutions. Eventually, the Bolsheviks hoped, marriage and divorce would become completely voluntary with no. interference from the state.
The marriage laws have changed in the Soviet Union since then, but in precisely the opposite direction from that hoped by the Bolsheviks. Under Stalin, the general degeneration affected this sphere too, so that it is now far more difficult for a poor person to obtain a divorce than in the days of Lenin and Trotsky. Instead of going forward, legislation in this field retrogressed. That is why the Stalinists cannot point to Soviet law today as a model.
In America the marriage laws no longer reflect the real status of relationships among the mass of people. In 1890 the divorce rate was one to every 13 marriages. In 1920 it was one to six. Today it is one to three. It is clear that the people themselves are working toward a new pattern of family life.
What that pattern will finally be, particularly after America goes socialist, cannot yet be foretold, although it is certain that married life will become far happier in general than is the case with most marriages today.
Socialism will guarantee that economic security and freedom from worry which is essential to joy in married life. On this foundation the promise foreshadowed in the early soviet legislation of no government interference in private affairs can be fully realized.
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