A Wise Decision
Once again has the General Assembly of North Carolina
decided that divorces shall not be made easier by legislative enactment. Two or
three bills relating to the divorce question and destined to make that
instrument more easily obtained have been introduced and promptly rejected.
There is force in the suggestion that men should be required to observe the
same standard of morals that are demanded by society of the weaker sex. Both
should be measured by the same standard. At the same time there should be no
letting down of the bars of the divorce laws of the State and the present
General Assembly is showing wisdom in disapproving any further laxity in the
requirements touching marital relations and obligations.
The practice of letting down the bars for the benefit of
special cases started way back in 1899 and resulted in a goodly crop of
separations within a few years. Marriage became a mockery and the evil of
divorce thrived for a time. The double standard of morals will hardly be more
harmful than would letting down the bars for the purpose of making divorce easier.
The point advanced that men who insist—and rightly so—that their wives shall
“keep themselves unspotted form the world” should measure their own conduct by
the same yardstick. Only three states—Kentucky, New York and North
Carolina—make a distinction on this point and the Raleigh solons argued well
the point that changes in the present law contemplated by the proposed measure
might be used by immoral men to impose upon innocent women in the practice of
nefarious schemes against society was well taken. But the Legislature has
wisely concluded that divorce shall not be made easier in North Carolina at
this time. And the point is well taken.
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