Here's a video and an article from John Whitehead on
marriage. He hits the nail on the head when he says that the church has
put greater emphasis on politics than it has on marriage and the family.
Thus the church has been a leader in the breakdown of God honoring
marriages and God honoring families.
The Marriage Meltdown: Gay Unions, Divorce and the Dysfunctional Family
By John W. Whitehead
8/9/2010
“The week of the decision on Proposition 8 was also
the week of the decision on ‘The Bachelorette.’ Ali Fedotowsky said yes
to Roberto Martinez, one out of 25 who competed for the chance...There
could be no more perfect metaphor for the state of modern marriage this
week. In the U.S., a couple who barely know each other can marry in a
publicly validated media spectacle with a sound track, soft lighting,
promotional deals and a cash prize, as long as they are a man and a
woman. So far, since the show’s inception in 2003, Trista Rehn is the
only one of the annual contestants to still be married. Yet a couple who
quietly have been together for 15 years and married twice, in
California, each time it became legal, have had to see their
relationship invalidated twice by the courts, by people claiming their
marriage was threatening traditional marriage.”—Alexander Chee, “You
Call This Marriage?”
Despite the political firestorm
surrounding the federal court decision that overturned California’s
Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, little has been said about the real
issues that are contributing to the dysfunctional American family. The
disintegration of traditional marriage and the family, once the glue
that kept society together, has set in motion a domino effect that, as
it ripples outward, is relegating children to lives of poverty and
servitude and destroying the foundations of freedom.
Contrary to
what critics might say, same-sex marriage, while it may be a symptom of a
cultural shift away from traditional marriage and all it has
historically entailed, is not responsible for the collapse of marriage
as a long-revered institution in this country. That blame rests squarely
on the shoulders of heterosexuals for whom marriage—and the family unit
that arises from it—has become a temporary arrangement at best, with
divorce now seen as an immediate cure-all and cohabitation a happy, less
permanent, alternative.
Even among professed evangelical
Christians who tout traditional marriage, divorce rates are comparable
to those of non-Christians. And while the decline in divorce in recent
years has been hailed as good news (it now stands at 40%, down from a
high of nearly 60% in the 1980s), it is a false positive that is offset
by falling marriage rates and surging cohabitations. As researcher
George Barna observes, “There no longer seems to be much of a stigma
attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage.
Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial
marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that
possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving
toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets
married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase
of their adult life.”
That said, divorce is not solely to blame
for the collapse of the institution of marriage. Marriage generally
seems to be falling out of favor everywhere except in the realm of
reality TV. For the first time in American history, unmarried households
now make up the majority of all U.S. households. Younger generations
are also more inclined to live together.
Where once the
institution of marriage gave legitimacy to sexual relations and
children, it no longer serves as much of a gatekeeper. This can largely
be attributed to the sexual revolution, which paved the way for sex
outside of marriage; the feminist movement, which pushed to legalize
abortion, thereby making pregnancy a woman’s “problem” to deal with as
she sees fit; and the decreased role of religion in American life.
Consequently, nearly 40% of all U.S. children are now born out of
wedlock. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the
number of unmarried-couple households with children has risen to more
than 1.7 million—up from under 200,000 in 1970. Moreover, there are 9.8
million single mothers versus 1.8 million single fathers.
The
ramifications of the breakdown of marriage and the subsequent rise in
single-parent households are far-reaching and alarming. For example,
children living with a single mother are six times more likely to live
in poverty than are children whose parents are married. The same study
found that children in stepfamilies and single-parent families are
almost three times more likely to drop out of school than children in
intact families. And living in a single-parent home can cause a
disconnect among children between family and marriage. Moreover, as W.
Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the
University of Virginia, notes in “The Evolution of Divorce”:
Since
1974, about 1 million children per year have seen their parents
divorce—and children who are exposed to divorce are two to three times
more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious
social or psychological pathologies. In their book Growing Up with a
Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, sociologists Sara McLanahan and
Gary Sandefur found that 31% of adolescents with divorced parents
dropped out of high school, compared to 13% of children from intact
families. They also concluded that 33% of adolescent girls whose parents
divorced became teen mothers, compared to 11% of girls from
continuously married families. And McLanahan and her colleagues have
found that 11% of boys who come from divorced families end up spending
time in prison before the age of 32, compared to 5% of boys who come
from intact homes.... Sociologist Paul Amato estimates that if the
United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did
in 1960, the nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades,
1.2 million fewer school suspensions, approximately 500,000 fewer acts
of teenage delinquency, about 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, and
approximately 70,000 fewer suicides every year.
These
statistics tell some painful truths about America at the dawn of the new
millennium. They show that our priorities have clearly shifted. Despite
the billions we spend on childcare, toys, clothes, private lessons,
etc., a concern for our children no longer seems to be a prime factor in
how we live our lives. What are the consequences of all this?
First,
the loss of the traditional family structure has led to a
destabilization in society of “mediating structures”—neighborhoods,
families, churches, schools and voluntary associations. When they
function as they should, mediating structures limit the growth of the
government. But when these structures break down, society—that is,
people—look to mega-structures, such as the state, for help. According
to Wilcox, the public costs of family breakdown among working-class and
poor communities exceed $112 billion a year “as federal, state, and
local governments spend more money on police, prisons, welfare, and
court costs, trying to pick up the pieces of broken families.”
Second,
major religious institutions have virtually little to no moral or
spiritual impact on American society—apart from politics, that is. The
Christian church is a prime example. Intensely political, many Christian
organizations today work feverishly to enact such anti-gay measures as
same-sex marriage amendments while doing little to impact the
traditional family positively. Indeed, despite all the money ($40
million and counting), politicking, fundraising and energy that
conservative Christian groups put into defeating gay marriage in
California, nothing was accomplished in terms of shoring up the
traditional family structure.
Third, the data supports the
premise that the decline in the family leads to a decline in our
democratic form of government. Indeed, the family—not schools—is where
children should learn self-government, basic moral values and the
beliefs that determine the future of democratic institutions. Thus, it
stands to reason that without stable families, we can have no hope of
producing self-reliant, responsible citizens.
Finally,
traditional marriage plays a critical role in the structure of free
societies by interposing a significant legal entity between the
individual and the state. None other than D. H. Lawrence, author of Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, once recognized: “The marriage bond is the
fundamental connecting link in Christian society. Break it, and you will
have to go back to the overwhelming dominance of the State, which
existed before the Christian era. The Roman State was all-powerful, the
Roman father represented the State, the Roman family was the father’s
estate, held more or less in fee for the State itself. Now the question
is, do we want to go back, or forward, to any of these forms of State
control?”
Lawrence continued:
It is marriage,
perhaps, which has given man the best of his freedom, given him his
little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the State, given him
his foothold of independence on which to stand and resist an unjust
State. Man and wife, a king and queen with one or two subjects, and a
few square yards of territory of their own: this, really, is marriage.
It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfillment, for man, woman,
and children.
There can be no easy fix for these problems.
Certainly, there are no legislative or governmental solutions, and
fighting gay marriage isn’t going to do it. Morality and the decline of
the family have become convenient platforms for those on both sides of
the political aisle. Having reduced the very real problems plaguing
America’s families to soundbites bandied about in the quest for
political dominance, today’s politicians, gay rights activists and
traditional marriage activists are not providing a lasting solution to
the marriage meltdown.
The solution, if there is one, is to be
found where the problems start: with each man, woman and child taking
responsibility for keeping their family together. So let’s forget about
politics. Forget about the debates over who gets to marry whom. Instead,
let’s look around at what’s left of our neighborhoods, our communities
and our families, and put our children first.
