This past week, I awoke one evening and in almost Wilberforce fashion, the Lord seemed to set before me this "one great object": the abolition of no-fault divorce. Weird! The fact is, this legal practice has wrought untold human suffering and injustice since its establishment in 1969. It is an evil that exists in active opposition to the principles of God's kingdom. As Christians, we are commissioned to oppose what is evil in the advance of Christ's kingdom (see Luke 19:13). So the abolition of a policy that has systematically undermined our society's commitment to the divine plan for the family seems perfectly consistent with the admonition to "seek first the kingdom."

Throughout history, Christians have fought against countless social evils from slavery to child labor and these battles inevitably began with a campaign of sustained public persuasion that exposed the hidden evils to a public largely unaware. Similarly, no-fault divorce has become so commonplace that its evil is either obscured or ignored. But the availability of no-fault divorce has served to increase family dissolution at a rate greater than ever before in history; furthermore, it undermines the institution of marriage itself, perhaps more so than any other single factor in history. We would not be standing on the brink of same-sex marriage were it not for the corrosive effect upon marriage-as-an-institution that followed the divorce revolution.

Constitutional and family law attorney J. Shelby Sharpe says, "No-fault is national catastrophe. Anything which overturns the order or systems of things whereby families are destroyed and the whole of society adversely affected is by definition a catastrophe."

You may be surprised to learn that the initial efforts to advance no-fault divorce legislation were underwritten by Hugh Hefner through the Playboy Foundation, which financed an army of young lawyers working to advance these antifamily policies. Let's see…America's largest pornographer working to rewrite public policy related to the family? There's something seriously wrong with this picture! Alfred Kinsey also played an instrumental role in reducing these legal protections by falsely reporting that adultery was commonplace in most marriages. This reduced the stigma associated with adultery and ultimately served as the basis for eliminating all laws against adultery. Hefner and Kinsey both saw marriage as the final barrier to sexual freedom and thus determined to remove its inhibiting influence upon unrestrained sexual activity.

No-fault divorce is much more than just divorce; it is a legal tyranny that denies the fundamental right of due process to a defendant. Prior to no-fault divorce, the party seeking divorce (plaintiff) was required, by law, to demonstrate cause on the part of the other party (defendant) prior to dissolving the marriage, dividing the family's assets, and destroying the two-parent structure essential for children. These measures provided strong legal protections—primarily to women and children who might otherwise find themselves abandoned by husbands and fathers who simply sought "greener pastures." (You might think me overly hard on men here. Granted, both men and women can be guilty of abandoning marriages; however, statistically speaking, women and children are most often the victims.)