DY – I suggest that describing what is clear from even the multiple names on this thread going back years, as well as the repeated plagiarizing from frumteens without attribution that Joseph has engaged is not only not ad hominem, it is essential to understand who it is who is making assertions that divorce is criminal.
I don’t share Joseph’s view of the gedolim. Nor do I disdain them as a group, or (with one or two exceptions that I can think of, based only on their actions and statements) individuals, but I have been critical of some actions and strategies that seem to cry out for explanation, because they haven’t worked or aren’t working out so well.
I am very critical of the notion that Gedolim are infallible and can’t be questioned. They aren’t popes, and we aren’t Catholics.
I have been at pains to describe that I do not think Divorce is a first option, even a second. I don’t wish my experience on anyone, and there are worse situations than mine. Counseling on both a professional and rabbinic level was done. Reconciliation after separation was worked on for many months. The road with the kids has been long and challenging.
Nothing Joseph asserts can approach or match the pain of a marriage that can’t be saved. But I can say unequivocally that I am a better man, a better father, and a better soon to be married choson for having made the decisions and done the hard work and taken the responsibility for my part in the pain that I did. And I believe the large majority of divorced couples, frum or otherwise, are not the simplistic, selfish oafs the examples Joseph brought make them out to be.
If you can’t see the simple wrongness of the assertion that 95% of divorce is criminal, then I hope and pray you never are put in a position to render help or counsel to someone who is going through a marriage breakup. With that perspective, you will have nothing to offer them but more pain.