When discussing the halacha regarding divorce people are generally influenced by their understanding of what marriage is. Someone who sees marriage primarily in terms of its being a lifelong commitment will understand that the halacha does not make it easy to get out of it. Someone who sees marriage as a statement of love will never understand why a marriage should continue after the love is gone.
Most of the people on the pro-divorce side see marriage and divorce as formalities. Marriage does not actually create a commitment to live together. It is simply a statement of intent. However hopeful the couple is for the future, the fact that they married cannot actually commit them to each other at a future time. If the women wants a divorce she should not be prevented from marrying someone else after she has walked out of the marriage.
With this view of marriage, how can one make sense of the halacha that the man must divorce willingly? Divorce is merely a formal statement that the love declared at the marriage is gone. How can this simple acknowledgement be dependent on the husband's willingness to make the formal declaration? It is clear there is no love anymore and the marriage is dead, and that is why the wife is asking for a divorce.
If marriage is simply a formal statement of love and divorce simply a formal acknowledgement that the love is gone, then the halacha that the divorce depends on the husband is likewise a formality. It presumably has symbolic value, but no practical relevance, and should not be allowed to stand in the way of the woman's hypergamy.
On pesach we may not have chametz in the house. This is a symbolic law, and we freely respect the symbolic and formal aspects of the law while avoiding the simple practical implications by selling chametz. The chametz is still in our house and will belong to us after pesach, but we have fulfilled the symbolic instruction to remove it from our possession. On succos we must own our lulav, and getting one as a matana al minas lehachzir is completely acceptable. The transaction in both these cases is completely valid, but if we saw the laws as practical instructions we would not freely use these work-arounds. We would rather do our best to respect the spirit of the law and destroy our chametz and buy our own lulav. The reason we have no problem with these halachic workaround is because the mitzva is only symbolic and the symbolism is satisfied as long as it is formally satisfied.
The pro-divorce advocates see marriage and divorce as no different than owning your lulav and disowning your chametz. They see no reason to give any practical credence to the law that the husband must divorce willingly aside from the absolute minimum required to satisfy this purely formal requirement. Even discussing the issue is very disturbing to them - the point is to minimize the formalities, not to make them the primary issue in divorce, and definitely not to try to understand why this is the halacha.
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