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Marriage tends to be trivialised in today's media. Discrimination in favour of marriage is, incredibly, now illegal. This paper by Bill Muehlenberg, BA, MA., is dedicated to the many young people today who do not realise that God instituted marriage - the public commitment of a man and a woman to each other for life - for the very real benefit of all concerned. Marriage is good for us! Marriage makes for better people, better families and better societies.
Since the Family Law Act was passed by federal parliament in 1975, divorce has been granted on only one ground: irretrievable breakdown of marriage, as evidenced by 12 months "separation". Far from taking the bitterness out of divorce, as was claimed during the parliamentary debate, the Act's immediate effect was a skyrocketing divorce rate. What are the effects of divorce on children? This paper addresses some of the consequences of easy divorce.
Our society is extraordinarily confused about the true purpose of marriage. This is apparent from the current, tragically high divorce rate. One of the biggest pressures towards divorce is the constant feminist attack on the normal family. Mary Pride, the author of the book The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality from which this paper comes, knows feminism from the inside. She was an active radical feminist before she became a Christian.
The three main speakers at a pro-marriage rally sponsored by Festival of Light in 1982 were the then Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr Keith Rayner, Senator John Martyr of Western Australia and Lutheran pastor Dr Daniel Overduin. This paper provides some thought-provoking ideas, still highly relevant today, from three people who closely followed the development of divorce law in Australia and its influence on marriage and family life.
During the public debate on the Family Law Bill 1974, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney condemned it as "a major piece of social legislation with grave and far-reaching consequences for Australian society." After two years of operation, a group of Family Court lawyers said: "No amendment can cure the defects of the Family Law Act. It is bad in principle. It should be repealed." This paper appraises a parliamentary review of the Act in 1980.
Divorce law deals with situations that arise from the failure of man to attain the Christian ideal of marriage as permanent. What laws should characterise divorce law? Professor Mitchell, of Oxford University, says: "The function of the law is not only to protect individuals from harm, but to protect the essential institutions of a society." This paper sets divorce law into its Australian context - from settlement to the passage of the Family Law Act in 1975.