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  • Oh, God, society it going to crumble

  • People will eat each other.

  • We're gonna have to celebrate two Christmases.

  • Murph, calm down.

  • Divorce isn't scary.

  • In fact, it's a good thing.

  • Are you serious, dude?!

  • Half of all marriages end in divorce.

  • Oh, yeah, that's what everyone says.

  • But it's not actually true.

  • (crowd cheering)

  • Oh, hey, a dance circle.

  • (chuckles)

  • ♪♪

  • Properly calculated, divorce rates in the U.S. have never exceeded 41%.

  • And after peaking in the late '70s and early '80s,

  • since then, the divorce rate has actually gone down.

  • (crowd cheering, music stops)

  • So what? Divorce is still awful.

  • Why do you think that?

  • Because it means a happy marriage is over.

  • No, it means a bad marriage is over.

  • And before access to divorce improved in the '70s,

  • people were trapped in those awful relationships.

  • (Adam) In the old days,

  • to get a divorce,

  • you often needed both spouses present.

  • My husband is trying to kill me.

  • And where is this husband?

  • Knife shopping.

  • No dice!

  • (Adam) You also needed to establish fault,

  • so if you wanted a boring old amicable divorce,

  • you were forced to lie to a judge.

  • Who was cruel or inhumane to whom?

  • Damn. It-- it was me.

  • I, uh, attacked him with scissors?

  • Ah, yes, dice.

  • Divorce horse, do your thing.

  • (neighing) Let's go!

  • (neighing)

  • And this was particularly bad for women

  • because, in many states, domestic violence

  • wasn't considered grounds for divorce.

  • So they could become trapped in abusive marriages.

  • (Adam) But all that changed in 1969

  • thanks to Ronald Reagan.

  • As governor of California, I introduced no-fault divorce,

  • a revolutionary innovation that made it far easier for folks to separate.

  • Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this marriage!

  • (chuckling)

  • The concept soon spread to other states

  • and by some estimates,

  • reduced cases of female suicide by 20%.

  • Wow.

  • That's why divorce rates rose in the '70s.

  • Not because society was crumbling,

  • but because divorce was finally available to the people who really needed it.

Oh, God, society it going to crumble

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