Karl Rove’s gotten his second divorce. That ought to be his private business, to be sure. Except, once again, here’s a person who has made it his public business to police every body else’s relationships. So, I welcome a thorough, detailed examination of every aspect of Rove’s private life. Starting with his hypocrisy. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald puts it well.
Rove obtained his divorce under Texas' "no-fault" divorce law, one of the most permissive in the nation. That law basically allows any married couple to simply end their marriage because they feel like it. Texas, needless to say, is one of the states which has constitutionally barred same-sex marriages, and has a Governor who explicitly cites Christian dogma as the reason to support that provision, yet the overwhelming majority of Texan citizens make sure that there's nothing in the law making their own marriages binding or permanent — i.e., traditional. They're willing to limit other people's marriage choices on moral grounds, but not their own, and thus have a law that lets them divorce whenever the mood strikes. That's the very permissive, untraditional and un-Christian law that Rove just exploited in order to obtain his divorce.
New Year’s resolution: I’m gonna stop sleeping on Greenwald; he’s consistently insightful and ahead of the curve. But back to Rove. Here’s what his family spokesperson said about the divorce: “After 24 years of marriage, many of which were spent under incredible stress and strain during the White House years, the Roves came to a mutual decision that they would end the marriage.” Great. So his obsessive effort to police other people’s marriages (among other evil he promoted “under incredible stress and strain during the White House years”) managed to help break his own.
As the gay marriage debate goes, I’m sort of agnostic: I’d much rather see us working toward family law that supports all forms of family, whatever it looks like. But we gotta call a hypocrite a hypocrite; I’m tired of gay people being the only ones with their relationships on public trial.