Crowder’s anti-divorce sentiment certainly seems personal in the context of what we know now. But it’s also a broader trend among conservatives, as documented by research from Media Matters for America last year, and at a time when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed interest in changing marriage laws. Over the last year, influencers and politicians ranging from Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) to the likes of Crowder, Matt Walsh, Tim Pool, and right-wing media outlets like the National Review and the Daily Wire have criticized no-fault divorce.

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No-fault divorce was first enacted in California in 1969 and has always been a feminist issue, because it allows domestic abuse victims to leave marriages without onerous barriers. Given the extent that marriage is tied to property and financial rights, no-fault divorce is also vital to escaping financial abuse.

Crowder and right-wingers have instead told themselves that no-fault divorce is a means for imagined gold-digging women to swindle men out of money. They’re afraid of women’s power over their own lives, so they want to take away that power and those rights by changing laws to entrap and hold women hostage in unwanted, possibly abusive marriages.

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On Crowder’s Tuesday podcast episode, he called his divorce his “deepest personal failure” and the greatest heartbreak of his life. He said he still loves Hilary “as the mother of my children,” and expressed frustration that “she wanted something else for her life.” I know Crowder’s expectation is that his right-wing audience will sympathize with him, but me? I’m just relieved for his wife. And I’m worried about this push from Crowder and his cronies demonizing no-fault divorce.