The same folks in Virginia that pushed—successfully pushed—the most draconian anti-gay laws in the country have a new target: heterosexuals. From today’s Washington Post:

After its victory in last year’s fight over a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Virginia, the Family Foundation of Virginia announced Thursday that it will push to change the state’s divorce laws to make it more difficult for parents to end their marriage.

The Family Foundation, which opposes abortion and promotes socially conservative values, said it will lobby the General Assembly this year to amend the state’s long-standing no-fault divorce law, which essentially allows a husband or wife to terminate a marriage without cause.

The foundation is advocating “mutual consent divorce” for couples with children, which would require a husband and wife to agree to divorce before a marriage can be legally terminated, except in certain instances, such as abuse or cruelty. The proposed legislation would not affect childless couples.

Efforts to enact discriminatory measures and constitutional amendments targeting gay couples have largely been successful because, hey, we’re only talking about gay couples, right? The majority in Virginia was asked to vote on the rights of a minority—preemptively banning unsecured ones like marriage, repealing secured/assumed rights like the ability to leave your property to a same-sex partner—and the majority of Virginians gleefully stripped same-sex couples of all legal protections. Including that carpet-munching-sodomite/mom-to-be Mary Cheney.

Efforts to make divorce more difficult for all straight couples might prove more difficult. Which is why this proposed measure targets just a tiny percentage of married couples—just unhappily married couples with children, and then only couples that aren’t in agreement about divorcing. This law may be a bit more difficult to pass than an anti-gay law, needless to say, but only a bit. Because, again, backers of this proposed law aren’t talking about limiting the rights of all heterosexuals. (Yet.) They’re merely talking about preventing people with kids from getting out of bad marriages.

If the Family Foundation gets this on the ballot it passes it will be for the same reason anti-gay laws measures were passed by Virginia voters. The majority of voters in Virginia are not in bad marriages and many would welcome a chance to vote on limiting the rights of other heterosexuals—particularly if the doing so allows allow the happily married, the hopefully single, and currently childless couples to express their moral superiority while telling themselves they’re just doing it for the kiddies. Think of the children!

And after this passes—if it passes—the Family Foundation isn’t going to shut down and return the abbreviation “FF” to the fist fuckers. Nope, they’re going to keep right on “advocating” new laws and constitutional amendments. They’ll move on to their next moral crusade—banning birth control for single people? banning the sale of sex toys? banning cohabitation by unmarried persons?—and each new measure will be designed to target the rights of a small number of straights. Sexually active singles, sleazy sex-toy users, immoral shacker-uppers. The plan is to chip, chip, chip away at the rights of straights.

Because now that gays and lesbians have been stripped of all legal rights in Virginia, straight sex and straight relationships present the only target-rich environment for the assfucks at the Family Foundation. It was, however, their intention to go after straights and straights all along. The war on gay people, sex, and couples was never about homosexuality. It was about sexuality, period.

UPDATE: This law, if it passes, will be welcomed by abusive spouses. Abusive spouses seek to trap their mates in marriages they can’t easily escape; even with no fault divorce, kids is a good way to trap someone in a marriage. Add economic dependance and isolation from family and friends and a marriage is a prison. A law that gives an abusive spouse—one who hasn’t been convicted of abuse—the ability to deny his terrified wife a divorce? Virginia’s wife beaters have to be salivating over this.

FF says the law won’t deny divorce to mothers with abusive husbands but I don’t see how the burden of proof fall won’t fall on the woman. What if a wife claims she’s been abused and a husband denies the charge and refuses to “consent” to being divorced? Does the wife have to go back to him, get some nifty bruises, take some pictures, and then re-file for divorce?

Virginia is for lovers—abusive ones.