The Prop 8 saga continues!

Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held (PDF) that a lower court abused its discretion in ordering the unsealing of tapes of the Prop 8 trial.

I’m not happy with the decision, but I agree with it. Here’s why:

If you remember, the legal defenders of Prop 8 opposed plans to broadcast the trial live. In a pre-trial brief, they claimed:

“The record is already replete with evidence showing that any publicizing of support for Prop 8 has inevitably led to harassment, economic reprisal, threats, and even physical violence. In this atmosphere, witnesses are understandably quite distressed at the prospect of their testimony being broadcast worldwide on YouTube.”

The issue of broadcasting the trial went all the way to the Supreme Court. There, without explanation, the Court disallowed the trial to be broadcast.

The judge in the Prop 8 trial, Judge Walker, then continued to allow the trial to be recorded because, as the 9th Circuit opinion cites, Judge Walker asserted that the recordings would only be used for purposes of helping him reach a decision and would not be publicly broadcast. Later, “a different federal judge ordered that the recordings be unsealed because “no compelling reason” existed for keeping them from the public.

And so we come to the 9th Circuit opinion.

Let’s talk here about what the opinion is definitely not saying. What this opinion says, if you read it, is not that the recordings must remain sealed because the witnesses in support of Prop 8 are so very scared of same-sex marriage supporters.

Indeed, as key Prop 8 witness David Blankenhorn admitted to me in conversation at Family Scholars Blog, he “never felt physically threatened” because of his testimony and he didn’t even seem to be aware that the Prop 8 legal team was putting forth the narrative that witnesses like him were Too Scared To Testify. (Fun Fact: Check out Page 18 of The American Foundation for Equal Rights’ brief! (PDF) I love that part of a blog conversation that I provoked is part of the official Prop 8 record! #bragging).

What the 9th Circuit opinion says, if you read it, is that Judge Walker said that he was only going to use the recordings in his own chambers and that he should therefore be held to that. To not hold Judge Walker to his assurance would, in fact, harm the integrity of the judiciary.

What do I think?

I think the tapes should have never been sealed in the first place, and that the US Supreme Court erred in saying that the trial could not be broadcast live, because I strongly question the accuracy and truthfulness of the claim that the broadcast had to be hidden from the public in order to somehow protect the Prop 8 witnesses, who were already relatively-public figures in the anti-SSM movement. I also think many professional opponents of same-sex marriage are petrified of the recordings going viral, mostly because their arguments, witnesses, and substantive points were pretty well walloped by the pro-equality attorneys and experts.

However, given that Judge Walker stated that the recordings would only be used in his chambers, and would not be broadcast to the public, I also think the 9th Circuit makes a compelling argument that it would harm the integrity of the judiciary to not hold Walker to his word regarding the release of the recordings.

The 9th Circuit will soon be issuing a ruling on the merits of the Prop 8 decision. I’m far more interested in that outcome, quite honestly.

I always end up reading far fewer novellas than I do things of any other category. This year, I read 13. In addition to the sources I used for the other short fiction, I went to the SFWA forums and pulled down anything with an interesting title. I would have pulled down all of the novellas in the forums, but my husband is on the point of threatening divorce if I don’t wrap this up.

MY HARD PICKS:

“With Unclean Hands” by Adam Troy-Castro (Analog) – A far-future story in which aliens offer an unbelievably good trade–amazing technology that humans want in exchange for a single human. The main character, who is expected to merely rubber-stamp the transaction, must instead figure out why the aliens are making such a bizarre trade and whether it’s in human interest to agree. I really liked this; I thought it was smart and well-plotted. The main character is a jaded woman who, as a little girl, was on a colony that was exposed to a virus that made everyone genocidal; she was the sole survivor, and lives with knowing she murdered friends and family. As the innocent child who committed genocide, Andrea Cort is an analog for Orson Scott’s Ender, but I find her contrition, bitterness, and self-flagellating quite a bit more compelling and realistic than Ender’s.

“Ice Owl” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) – A little girl who’s spent her life traveling from colony to colony has lived more than a hundred linear years, even though she’s only been aware for (approximately) 12 of them. The political situation on the world where she’s living now has just gotten tricky; a revolution is in the offing. When her school is bombed, the little girl seeks tutelage from an art dealer who knows secrets about the past that the girl slept through. This is my favorite piece by Gilman that I’ve read so far. I’ve sometimes felt held at a bit of a remove from Gilman’s stories, which isn’t to say I didn’t still enjoy them, but this one allowed me to go deeper emotionally. The main character was very interesting, and the world around her was incredibly rich with soap opera details. The descriptions of the art and art history were wonderful. Like both of the other novellas I’ve selected as “hard picks,” this one also deals with genocide; I’m not sure whether that says something about my taste (probably) or something about what was in the inspirational ether this year (also, I think, probable). While the Liu is my pick, this was really, really good; it’s about as good as space opera gets.

“The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” by Ken Liu (PANVERSE 3) – This hands-down my top pick for novella, and I really did enjoy the other two quite a bit. In a format reminiscent of Ted Chiang’s “Do You Like What You See?” (which appears to have been deliberate; Liu credits the Chiang story as part of his inspiration), the story is told (largely) as if it’s the script of a documentary discussing the pros and cons of the historical development of a new technology: in this case, the ability to send an eye-witness back to observe historical events. The take on time travel is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, both technologically, but especially sociologically. The time travel itself focuses on the Japanese equivalent of a death camp in China and the writing about it was so skillfully vivid that I had to take breaks to remind myself how to breathe. I was viscerally involved in this story, sick in my gut, furious in my bones. The intellectual considerations (which include the physics of the thing, but are more about international politics and–especially interesting for me–an actual consideration of history as a subject people practice) dominate the story, but Liu is able to use the framework to create several detailed, emotionally interesting characters. I feel like this length gives Liu the space to work more stably with both the intellectual and emotional threads of his story than he always manages with the shorter fiction (for instance, while I thought the balance in “Simulacrum” was quite good, the balance in his “Tying Knots” is–imo–significantly too heavily toward the intellectual, leaving the characters vitiated). I would be interested to see what he could do with even more space to develop both ideas and characters.

MY SOFT PICKS:

“Martian Chronicles” by Cory Doctorow (LIFE ON MARS) – A second wave of immigrants is on its way to Mars, a significant time after the first wave of colonists established themselves. The story takes place on the journey, from the perspective of a teenager who’s being brought along by his family. The kids all play a VR game that models life on Mars and the story is about contrasting that game with what happens on the actual Mars–with twists. The politics in this story are unsubtle in a way that I felt like I should have annoyed me (I don’t object to blatant politics in stories as a rule, but there was something… simplistic? predictable? about the presentation here that might have been because the story was intended as YA), but really they didn’t; mostly I was just going along with the characters and having fun. The world was fun to inhabit and the descriptions VR game kept my gamer-brain entertained.

“Rampion” by Alexandra Duncan (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) – A retelling of Rapunzel, during a period in history when the Moors and the Christians were fighting for dominance over European land. The details in this were really great, and I liked the gentle way it interacted with the Rapunzel fairy tale, letting the parallels happen without forcing them to be too significant or too close to the original story, so that it felt like part of the novella’s natural flow.

OF NOTE:

“The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johsnon (Asimov’s, first half online here) – So, I adore Kij Johnson’s work like crazy, and then I was reading this novella and I was like “oh my god I’m so bored” and there was that really weird, spooky thing that happens when there’s an author you love and you’re like “nope, this time, no.” It’s clear, however, that this novella is actually good; Strahan loves it, for instance. And there were things about it I really liked: the story takes place on the banks of a river filled with sinister mist in which ancient, creepy fish-like creatures swim. I *loved* the passages about the mist and the fish. I also found the way it examined themes about advancing technology and its gains and losses really interesting. I didn’t object to the characters, and other different circumstances I might have connected with them, but there was just something that really got between me and the story. For the first 40% especially, I think I kept waiting for a dramatic plot. For me, it was kind of like “OK, all this is happening, but why am I reading about it?” There wasn’t any plot tension (for me) and while I’m often okay with that, in this case the details of the characters’ lives didn’t pull me through either. Again, I’m sure this is a quite striking novella when it’s being read by someone who isn’t me, and even if you are me, there were things about it to like. I always find it weird when I fall so far away from a consensus opinion I’m sure is basically accurate (like Mieville, I just don’t get into his work, and I know it’s my fault). I just didn’t “impress” on this story; I never found the point where I became immersed as a reader.

“Long Time Waiting” by Carrie Vaughn (KITTY’S GREATEST HITS) – I was reading this story and then I went “hey, some of the stuff in this is familiar” and then I went “Oh! It’s from the perspective of a character from one of Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty the Werewolf novels, telling a set of events we don’t get a clear view on during the text.” I enjoyed it from the perspective of someone who enjoys the novels. I particularly like the character of the grumpy ghost from the early 1900s.

Repeating the notes from my previous post: this year, I read about 260 short stories and novelettes. I compiled my list using a combination of reading magazines and anthologies, querying authors about their yearly work, asking for recommendations from critics and editors, and referencing the year’s best anthologies. As always, I enjoyed more novelettes. than I’m listing here.

Some of the pieces listed as novelettes may actually be short stories. I double-checked the ones I’m voting on, but for the rest of my reading, where it wasn’t immediately obvious what category the work belonged to, I guessed.

On a largely unrelated note, I’m running for SFWA vice president. My candidacy statement is in the forums, but I wanted to drop some notes around the internet for SFWAns who don’t often hop over there.

Back to the novelettes!

MY HARD PICKS:

I haven’t entirely decided on my ballot yet, but I’m absolutely sure these two will be on it.

“The Way Station” by Nathan Ballingsrud (Naked City) – A man, haunted by the city of New Orleans, navigates the world in which he is part streets and levies and the wreckage from floods. Haunting imagery and setting details build an eerie, well-fleshed character and tone. This is the kind of story that shows the power of surrealism in illuminating emotional truths. It exposes the heart of grief.

“What We Found” by Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) – The protagonist of this story has discovered that stress levels affect subsequent generations through the male line, meaning that the tragedies of the past are literally passed down into the bodies of the present and future. Now considering his own marriage and the prospect of passing on the stresses his line has endured, the narrator relates his experience of growing up. It’s intense, often sad, but also brilliant in the way that it delineates character and setting detail. This story does what I’ve noticed I seem to want from fiction–it brings both literary tools and genre tools to bear in a way that sharpens both.

SOFT PICKS

3 of these 6 will be on my ballot, but I’m not yet sure which three. I wish I could nominate all of them.

“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com) – Two precognitives meet and fall in love. Their relationship is fraught by the fact that one of the precognitives is a determinist (seeing the future as a single stream) and the other believes in free will (and sees possibilities branching from most moments). The philosophical contrast and science fictional premise provide an intriguing philosophical flavor to the human romance; the two work exquisitely in synchrony.

“Gap Year” by Christopher Barzak (Teeth) – Like Kelly Link at her best, this story of a girl who discovers herself to be an emotional vampire not only deploys surreal, disconcerting imagery in service of emotional truth–but also does so in a satisfying, story-shaped structure.

“The Summer People” by Kelly Link (Steampunk!) – Kelly Link has a genius for characters and beautiful, strange imagery. Both are here. The character is strange and immediately compelling, her situation likewise. Strange events unfold in a way that’s both disorienting and completely intuitive; she has an amazing talent for calling for the suspense of disbelief, for welcoming the reader into strageness. Unfortunately, I sometimes feel that Link’s stories are structurally weak, although this makes the ones that aren’t (“The Constable of Abal,” “Magic for Beginners,” etc.) even more striking. This one manages a compelling plot through to the abbreviated end. It’s still striking and wonderful, but I’m left with an unresolved hollowness that disconnects me emotionally from the rest of the story. (Endings are of course controversial, and I’m a big fan of endings that leave you at the perfect moment, even if that moment is an unresolved chord–Tim Pratt’s “Cup and Table” oh my God–but this one missed for me.)

“Slice of Life” by Lucius Shepherd (Teeth) – Another story that reminded me of Kelly Link. (I don’t know what to say. I love her writing. Maybe Kelly Link is one of the paradigms in my brain against which All Others Will Be Judged.) The vampire in this story is unusual and compelling, but the most striking thing about this story is the non-magical protagonist, whose self-resolve–and sometimes bitterness–rise off the page to make her a fully fleshed, compelling figure.

“The Migratory Patterns of Dancers” by Katie Sparrow (Giganotosaurus) – In a future without birds, men ride through the country, wearing wings and dancing, doing the dangerous work of sustaining memory. Near-future science fiction with an unusual premise and absolutely gorgeous imagery and voice.

“Work, with Occasional Molemen” by Jeremiah Tolbert (Giganotosaurus) – Although there’s a joke at the center of the piece that I’m not fond of; ignoring that, this is a visceral, emotionally intense piece with scarily good characterization and setting. It’s dark, almost hopeless, but not in a sci-fi dystopia-way, but in an emotionally unflinching way like Dorothy Allison. It’s a very unusual combination of voice and genre; it’s distinctly itself in a striking way. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything else like it.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

“The Silver Wind” by Nina Allan (Interzone) – So, I read this novelette in the context of a linked short story collection, in which it was story #2 or #3, so I have trouble separating it entirely from the rest of the collection in my mind. Allan is a strikingly talented writer with a facility for taking complex ideas (time travel, alienation, exploration) and using extremely detailed characterization to reveal their emotional truths. The characters and premises in the collection are interesting and the read is often surprising and gratifying, but as a whole, I thought it was overwritten. Pruning back some of the contemplations and repetitions would have given the emotional moments and character revelations more of a chance to stand out. The novelette itself is the most highly structured piece of the collection and it’s odd and compelling while also providing intellectual fodder.

“The House of Aunts” by Zen Cho (Giganotosaurus) – The story of a girl who is a variety of vampire from a non-western mythology and her first experiences with love. The relationships between the main character and her titular aunts manage to be tender, compelling, and creepy all at once. The main character, likewise, is easy to invest in, and yet has an edge of the gruesome. The story as a whole maintains this balance well, mixing the familiar and the revolting, in a way that I think most vampire stories fail to. Perhaps it’s because the main characters aren’t vampires in the traditional sense that allows their methods of killing and eating to feel freshly frightening in a way that blood-sucking doesn’t. This story was very good, but I felt like it flinched away from the ending rather than facing the emotional complexity it had set up.

“Anticopernicus” by Adam Roberts (Amazon e-book at .99) – I didn’t get very emotionally involved with this story, although I liked the cynical main character. However, the ideas and the action were pretty cool. It’s somewhere between near- and far-future SF, and takes place at the time of first contact with aliens.

“The Skinny Girl” by Lucius Shepherd (Naked City) – Although i didn’t think this piece held together very well structurally (particularly at the end; endings are so slippery), the strangeness and eeriness of it were very compelling. A photographer, obsessed with death, meets death’s avatar. Their spine-shivering of their interaction–particularly when it’s erotic–is skillfully crafted.

“Flying” by Delia Sherman (Teeth) – An aerialist who has been forbidden to practice her trade since she began dying of leukemia runs off to join a strange, timeless circus. There’s an eeriness to circuses, of course, which gives all writing about them a boost when it comes to evoking the odd, but I especially liked the descriptions of this circus and its acts. I was compelled by the main character’s hardened resolve. Sherman’s voice is, as ever, exceptionally sharp.

RECOMMENDED:

“Slow as a Bullet” by Andy Duncan (Eclipse 4) – Nothing too deep, but a really entertaining tall tale in a characteristically entertaining Andy Duncan voice.

“Afterbirth” by Kameron Hurley (Amazon e-book at .99) – A tie-in with Hurley’s GOD’S WAR.

OF NOTE:

“A Small Price to pay for Birdsong” by K.J. Parker (Subterranean Magazine) – Amadeus v. Salieri, fantasy style.

“Sauerkraut Station” by Ferret Steinmetz (Giganotosaurus) – While the voice of the protagonist–a young girl–rings false in places, this is fun, traditional space opera.

This year, I read about 260 short stories and novelettes. I compiled my list using a combination of reading magazines and anthologies, querying authors about their yearly work, asking for recommendations from critics and editors, and referencing the year’s best anthologies. As always, I enjoyed more stories than I’m listing here.

Some of the pieces listed as short stories may actually be novelettes. I double-checked the ones I’m voting on, but for the rest of my reading, where it wasn’t immediately obvious what category the work belonged to, I guessed.

MY BALLOT:

“Her Husband’s Hands” by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed) – A war widow receives bad news from the front–that her husband is dead–however, they’ve managed to save his hands and only his hands. This is pretty much the height of metaphor-as-story. In that, it’s not dissimilar from last year’s “Arvies” in which Troy-Castro created a physicalized metaphor about abortion, but in my opinion, this piece does a much better job of pulling it off. It’s dark, intensely written, and intimately and compassionately characterized. I was seriously awed.

“Old Habits” by Nalo Hopkinson (Eclipse 4) – Ghosts relive their deaths in a mall. The concept of ghosts reliving their deaths isn’t unusual, of course, but Hopkinson brings unusual storytelling to the ensemble cast. Her characters are generously and sensitively portrayed, their stories interesting, and the plot pitch-perfect in terms of pulling the reader forward without sacrificing characterization or tone.

“Hero-Mother” by Vylar Kaftan (Giganotosaurus) – Kaftan’s story of the alien physiology of sex is reminiscent of Tiptree’s “Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death,” in the way it confronts the viscerally physical. Unlike Tiptree’s story, however, “Hero-Mother” is also a story about love, sacrifice and limitation.

“Simulacrum” by Ken Liu (Lightspeed) – A father and daughter, unable to relate to each other in the real world, find their relationship (voluntarily and involuntarily) mitigated by computerized simulacra. This story is told in sharp, sweet flashes that are vivid in detail and characterization. The science fictional concept in the story provides an excellent means for Liu to explore lost connections and alienation between parent and child.

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld) – Sometimes people manage to pull off surrealism and whimsy in a way that feels like they’ve discarded narrative conventions and, damn it, are just going to wander wherever they feel like it. It doesn’t usually work, but sometimes it does. Cartographer fucking wasps and anarchist fucking bees.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

“Three Damnations: A Fugue” by James Alan Gardner (Fantasy Magazine) – Three characters are stuck in a loop, dancing around each other, making each other miserable. Each of the characters and stories is interesting, and there’s an admirable flesh on the story, giving it more depth than the (clever) idea alone. There are also some striking, unusual images.

“The Axiom of Choice” by David Goldman (New Haven Review) – This is the best reinterpretation of choose your own adventure stories I’ve seen so far. The story brings up philosophical and mathematical issues that provide intellectual interest, but also creates an emotionally compelling story.

“Story Kit” by Kij Johnson (Eclipse 4) – As Always, Kij Johnson has an amazing ability to tell stories, not only with an author’s usual tools, but using the structure of the story itself to fascinate and move her audience. This meta-fictional story about love and loss is, in many ways, brilliant, and certainly noteable for its energy and ideas. However, I think the story doesn’t quite come together–at one point, the narrator wonders whether what she’s talking about is so personal that she can’t even endure talking about it at one remove. It seems as if the whole story is a remove away from its subject matter, as if it’s being held at arm’s length. Each of the metaphorical threads in the story has its brilliance, but I didn’t feel they all came together to make the story what it could have been.

“The Bricks of Gelecek” by Matt Kressel (Naked City) – One of the spirits of destruction falls in love with a human girl. Kressel creates absolutely stunning imagery in this story. It has the scope and breadth of an epic story in a way that really worked for me. Descriptions of ancient, fallen cities are gorgeous. Kressel has a talent, I think, in depicting the weight of history, even in short form. The ending faltered for me, but in some ways, the events and characters weren’t my primary concern to begin with; this story is a delight in setting and cinematography.

“Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link (Subterranean Online) – Kelly Link does her usual thing, weaving together several disparate but striking concepts. They come together here in a far-future story with unusual ideas and striking imagery. I didn’t find this piece particularly emotionally involving, but it was beautiful and interesting to read.

“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) – This story does a really interesting job of relaying the second-generation immigrant experience, creating discomfort and alienation through specific, suburban details. It reaches its pinnacle when the main character reads a letter left by his deceased mother. Unfortunately, the denouement doesn’t sustain the emotional climax; the main character’s emotions read as assumed, rather than fully realized on the page. This prevents the story from being outstanding rather than very good.

“Defenders” by Will McIntosh (Lightspeed) – McIntosh’s story poses an ambiguous relationship between humans and aliens in a post-apocalyptic world. The way that the text deals with the ambiguities around power, alliances, violence, redemption, sacrifice, and yearning for connection remind me very much of the way Octavia Butler handled these themes, particularly in one of her later published stories, “Amnesty.”

RECCOMMENDED:

“Smoke City” by Christopher Barzak (Asimov’s) – Beautiful, surrealist imagery, in a story that doesn’t fit easily in genre categories.

“In the Gardens of the Night” by Siobhan Carroll (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) – Immersive fantasy with an interesting character and tone and genuinely well-created tension.

“Selling Home” by Tina Connolly (Bull Spec) – An emotionally evocative story in a far-future dystopia.

“Staying Behind” by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld) – An upload story from the perspective of those who stay behind that includes some striking, unusual images, such as kids bicycling in their evening dresses through the post-apocalyptic world to prom.

“Houses” by Mark Pantoja (Lightspeed) – A clever, well-structured far-future story.

“Long Enough and Just So Long” by Cat Rambo (Lightspeed) – A wistful far-future.

“Tethered” by Mercurio D. Rivera (Interzone–eligible only for the Hugo) – In a far-future story with aliens, Rivera explores the boundaries of love and physiology.

“The World Is Cruel, My Daughter” by Cory Skerry (Fantasy Magazine) – A surprisngly emotionally evocative retelling of Rapunzel.

“The Future When All’s Well” by Cat Valente (Teeth) – A clever way of talking about the experience of growing up in the ’8os (with Just say no! and after school specials), using vampires as a metaphor, that pulls off character and emotion as well.

“The Sandal-Bride” by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy Magazine) – A fantasy that feels much longer than it actually is, with evocative setting details and an interesting plot.

Of Note:

“Lessons from a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg (Fantasy Magazine)
“Needles” by Elizabeth Bear (Blood and Other Cravings)
“Sunbleached” by Nathan Ballingsrud (Teeth)
“Join” by Liz Coleman (Lightspeed)
“The Double of My Double Is Not My Double” by Jeffrey Ford (Eclipse 4)
“Younger Women” by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Magazine)
“Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks (Steampunk!)
“History” by Ellen Kushner (Teeth)
“And Neither Have I Wings to Fly” by Carrie Laben (Bewere the Night)
“This Strange Way of Dying” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Giganotosaurus)
“How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars (Marsmen Trad.)” by Lisa Nohealani Morton (Lightspeed)
“The House That Made the Sixteen Loops of Time” by Tamsyn Muir (Fantasy Magazine)
“All That Touches the Air” by An Owomoyela (Lightspeed)
“The Fish of Lijiang” by Chen Qiufan (Clarkesworld; may or may not be eligible as it’s a translation)
“Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know” by Cat Rambo (Clarkesworld)
“Woman Leaves Room” by Robert Reed (Lightspeed)
“The Landholders No Longer Carry Swords” by Patricia Russo (Giganotosaurus)
“The Panda Coin” by Jo Walton (Eclipse 4)
“All You Can Do Is Breathe” by Kaaron Warren (Blood and Other Cravings)

[Crossposted at Family Scholars Blog]

Marina Adshade, an economics professor with an interest in “sex and love,” writes:

Today we will take a few minutes to show a little appreciation for an important right in Western society – the right to divorce. [...]

Economists Justine Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson, in a 2006 paper, showed that these legal changes had significant impacts on the quality of life of women. Taking advantage of in state-by-state variations in the time in which these laws were put into place they found that freer access to divorce brought with it an 8 –16% decline in female suicide, a 30% decline in domestic violence and 10% decline in the murder rate of women.

You may argue that these benefits to unilateral divorce laws come at significant costs – hardship for children and female poverty, just to name two – but that would only be true if the change in divorce laws increased the rate of divorce and that has not been proven. In fact, the best evidence suggests a very small positive effect on divorce rates only in the ten years after divorces became easier to obtain. And even then, that effect was only among those who were married before the laws were put in place.

The explanation for why easier access to divorce has not increased divorce rates is simple – men and women enter into marriage more cautiously when they know that divorce is easier to obtain. This is because while the laws may have made divorce easier from a legal standpoint, they have not made marital dissolution emotionally or economically painless.

It is this fact that explains why women marry later in life when it is easier to divorce.

A second explanation, which also explains the fall in domestic violence and suicide in states that support unilateral divorce, is just knowing that your spouse can divorce you without your consent encourages married individuals to treat each other better.

In the article, Adshade also argue that the use of “covenant” marriage agreements doesn’t actually make people less likely to divorce, but they do make the divorces harder on the people involved (“Anecdotal evidence suggests that even when abuse has been proven judges strictly enforce separation periods of up to two years.”). Those costs fall disproportionately on women:

The purpose of a covenant marriage is to increase the cost of divorce, significantly, and as a result give parties an incentive to stay in a failing marriage. If women are lower wage earners than men, or are out of the workforce all together, then the imposition of these costs falls disproportionally on women making it difficult for them to leave a bad marriage. That part of the arrangement is significant since in the majority of divorces it is the wife who wants the marriage to end.

I pretty much agree with Adshade on all of this. Married life was not a paradise in the 1950s, and the people I know who got divorced did so only after a lot of anguish and thought. Contrary to what the marriage-rescuers seem to believe, most Americans take marriage very seriously; trying to make it even harder to divorce is punitive, it is anti-liberty, and it will not actually improve anything.