Ralph Reed: Making divorce harder for women is a ‘better solution’ than food stamps

[DonViejo]

By David Edwards
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 9:28 EDT

Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed on Tuesday said that it was becoming too easy for women with children to get a divorce from their husbands.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe to push his latest book, Reed asserted that the national debt was connected to the decline in the nation’s morality.

Host Mika Brzezinski wondered why Reed had compared divorce to drug use, human trafficking and legalized gambling to prove the country was in decline.

“I personally think the no-fault divorce revolution in the 60s and 70s has not been good for society,” Reed explained. “Certainly, I recognize that couples are not going to be able to stay together. That’s been true throughout society, but do we really want to make it easier for a man to discard the wife of his youth than it is for him to fire his secretary, for him to basically go in and say goodbye when 40 percent of all child support is never paid?”

“And when we know, 40 percent of the women and children that are thus cast aside end up in poverty,” he added. “A woman is far more likely to end up in poverty. A man’s income goes up. So, a lot of the poverty problem in America is a problem of women and children abandoned by the husbands and fathers.”

MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle pointed out that Reed should support more federal programs like food stamps if he was concerned about poor women and children.

Reed, however, argued that making divorce more difficult was a “better solution” than food stamps.

“Set aside the partisan politics, that if you have a society where children are born out of wedlock, end up in poverty, and end up as agents and wards of the state, that’s not a healthy society,” he opined.

Watch the video below from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast March 18, 2014.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/18/ralph-reed-making-divorce-harder-for-women-is-a-better-solution-than-food-stamps/

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Full article posted with permission

[KG]

1. piss on ralph reed

[lancer78]

2. Well he does have a kind of a point

American society has become the "throw-away" society.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. Yeah, he has a point

and it's on top of his head. Even though 'throw-away society' offends your tender sensibilities, does the fact that such a proposal would make it exponentially harder for women to escape abusive spouses do anything for ya?

[jsr]

8. Is there anything about Ralph Reed that you don't like?

[LanternWaste]

12. Except no one is disposed of (e.g., "thrown away") in a divorce

Except no one is disposed of (e.g., "thrown away&quot in a divorce-- as both parties continue to exist and lead lives. So I don't really see a valid point as such...

[RainDog]

19. you should visit a battered women's shelter sometime

personally, I would like to fling shit at every conservative who tries to pretend that forcing women to stay married to abusers makes a better society.

this subject makes me ill.

I detest Reed. He is one of the most repulsive people in this nation and I will be happy when I hear the news of his timely departure.

[LiberalAndProud]

3. I hope many many people get to hear this wonderful and compassionate philosophy.

Because there's nothing better for the conservative brand than this sort of nonsense.

[font size="1"]/ sarcasm. [/font]

[hamsterjill]

4. Oh sure, forced marriage is the answer to everything!

I've always been told, and have always believed, that a good divorce is a helluva lot better than a bad marriage. Women should not be forced to stay in a marriage, especially not abusive ones.

These idiots like Reed need to get their heads out of "la la" land where everything is perfect and peachy, and they need to spend some time in the real world where real life plays out.

[calimary]

18. My late mom's best friend - who couldn't wait to get out of the house every day

and leave her four younger kids to her oldest (her daughter, who was a close friend of mine at the time), once told that daughter - "there are a lot worse things than being single." And funny enough, that's how my friend is to this day. I was always uncomfortable about that mom, though. If you had five kids, and you're the mom, shouldn't YOU be home with them, taking care of them, since your husband makes a very good living and you don't have to work to help support the family? So your oldest kid can be a kid, herself, for a little while longer and not have to shoulder the responsibilities of child-raising?

My friend found herself doing the cooking, the laundry, the grocery shopping, housekeeping, and some of the driving for her younger sibs once she was old enough to get her driver's license. She was the one who took the littlest sister (whose arrival was - um - not planned) shopping every time she needed new clothes.

Where was Mom during all this? Out running around with her girlfriends (other wives with too much free time and discretionary income, and handy nannies back at home), going shopping, out visiting other friends, long lunches, going away on day trips, and various other "play dates." That always just kinda seemed wrong to me. My friend never really had a teen's life.

They lived in a very ritzy part of town. Dad did VERY well financially. It wasn't as though they lived out on a farm somewhere and it was 1923 and there wasn't enough money to go around and everybody had to pitch in regardless, and each kid was actually little more than a hired farmhand you didn't actually have to pay. She was forced to grow up too soon and take charge of her four younger sibs while Mom was off somewhere, playing all day. I found myself resenting that on her behalf. She should have had the time the rest of us did to be a teenager. Focus on school, of course yes, BUT ALSO on other things teens did. When you're a teenager, seems to me, you need the time to BE A TEENAGER. NOT a surrogate mom. At least not yet. Seems to me those are the last years you have, in your whole life, to be a kid. And she was robbed of that because so much family responsibility was foisted on her - while Mom ran off and had her fun with her own girlfriends every day, and meanwhile, her daughter still had to keep up with her school work but also make sure everybody else did theirs, and got their dinner and their clean clothes and make sure they got picked up and ferried to and from Scouts or baseball practice or whatever it was after school. I kept wondering about that mom - why the hell did you have all those kids to begin with if you weren't willing (or able) to take responsibility for them? I felt bad for my friend. She just hunkered down and coped. But she shouldn't have had to mother her own littlest sister also! They both presumably had a mom in the picture who was supposed to be doing that. Seems to me, at least.

It was also interesting (sadly so) to observe the passive-aggressive love/hate relationship my friend had with her mother. Wasn't surprising to me at all when she left home on her own as quickly as she did. Moved out and never looked back. And we eventually lost touch. Guess I might have done the same thing, though, if I'd been in her shoes. I haven't heard from her in years, but last I did hear of her, she was still working and hadn't settled down with anybody.

[Brigid]

6. So he would be OK with women staying in abusive marriages?

Just as long as they don't get *gasp* food stamps?! This rates

[jsr]

7. There is no war on women?

Ralph Reed is vile and despicable scum.

[DetlefK]

9. "A man’s income goes up." If only there were a way to assure that for women.

[bullwinkle428]

10. In Reed's eyes, forced marriage and forced birth go together like

peanut butter & jelly, apparently.

[karynnj]

11. Ralph Reed actually said it was easier for a husband to divorce his wife than to fire his secretary

This does NOT defend his comment - which seems to be from the last century! - but it is important to attack what he actually said.

[calimary]

13. BASTARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GET YOUR NOSEY-ASS NOSE OUT OF OUR PRIVATE LIVES!!!!!!! Wants women as hostages to the altar.

[jwirr]

14. While they are at it maybe the can repeal the ban on poligamy. That way my ex can stay married to

both of us. I was not the one asking for a divorce. He wanted out of supporting the high medical cost that went along with our disabled daughter.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken

[alp227]

16. so the trade-off here would be less poverty but more domestic abuse and sadder families.

oh wait, theocratic authoritarians like Reed can't think this way. Families should be stable by their own choice not under the gun of government. Reed is trying to manufacture the image of a "pro-family" nation never mind what goes on behind closed doors. There was never a time in America when a Cleaver family was the norm...it was all manufactured by the mass media...Stephanie Coontz has done excellent scholarship on that matter.

[NickB79]

17. That's gonna cost him supporters

A lot of these holier-than-thou assholes are pure hypocrites, getting divorces at a HIGHER rate than the nation as a whole: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/divorce-study_n_4639430.html

'Red' States Have Higher Divorce Rates Than 'Blue' States, And Here's Why

It's like them saying we should ban porn because it's un-Godly; sounds like solid, moral argument, until they realize most of their supporters watch shitloads of it themselves.