At first, I wasn’t sure what it was that troubled me about Louisiana’s new “covenant marriage” law.
I wanted to support it. I wanted to go along with the popular view, which is to support anything that has nice feel-good words like “marriage” or “family” on it.
This one also has the extra feel-good word “covenant” attached to it. That’s a master stroke of propaganda since, by definition, all marriages are covenant.
But, by making the covenant marriage sound special, the bill’s author, Rep. Tony Perkins, a Baton Rouge Republican, makes it sound holier than most. It also implies that any other kind of marriage is somehow cheap and flighty, perhaps even a bit tawdry and trashy.
Behind the euphemisms, that’s the agenda of this law’s backers. Like most Americans, they are disturbed by the fact that almost half of the nation’s marriages end in divorce, a particularly tragic statistic when young children are involved.
The law’s backers also feel, largely without much scientific evidence, that a big reason for the nation’s high divorce rate is that Americans have made divorce too easy since the 1970s with “no-fault” divorce laws in almost every state.
It’s a popular view. As a result, many states are considering taking steps to make either marriage or divorce or both harder to get. Louisiana surged in front of the pack with a covenant marriage law that went into effect in mid-August. It offers couples a choice. They can have what you might call the “easy-out” marriage license. That’s the standard marriage license with which a couple can get a no-fault divorce after a six-month separation.
Or they can have the “We really, really mean it” marriage license, the covenant license under which the couple would have to be separated for two years or prove that one spouse was an adulterer, felon or abuser or something similarly awful to get a divorce.
It also requires that couples seeking a covenant marriage receive counseling to give them a better understanding of what they’re getting into.
That, to me, is the best part of the bill. There are many reasons why prospective brides and grooms should be encouraged to think twice before taking the giant step into married life. But making divorce harder puts the emphasis on the wrong end of the bargain–the back end–when they ought to be putting it up front.
Hardly anyone who is getting married thinks very seriously about the possiblity that things won’t work out, especially if they are young and otherwise inexperienced with life and its mysteries. It is unfortunate but true that quite a few of the young blissed-out couples who choose a covenant marriage today are quite likely going to find out the hard way how bad a marriage can get and why no-fault divorce became so popular in the first place.
I have more faith in the legislation that states like Missouri, Michigan, Arizona and Florida have been considering that would deal with problem marriages before they begin. Each is debating bills that would require some sort of pre-marital counseling before couples could receive a marriage license.
There also appears to be a popular national consensus favoring such moves. A recent Time/CNN survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners Inc., found some ambivalence about what the government’s role should be. Only 37 percent wanted “the government” to make it harder for people to get a divorce, even though 50 percent believed “it should be harder” to get a divorce than it is now and 61 percent believed it should be harder for couples with young children to get a divorce.
The biggest group, 64 percent, felt “people should be required to take a marriage-education course before they get a marriage license.”
By requiring counseling only for the “covenant” marriages, not the “regular” kind, the counseling requirement is likely to miss many of the very people covenant marriage backers should be the most concerned about, prospective brides and grooms who have not thought enough about what they’re getting into before they get into it.
Actually, for all the fevered political furor that is being raised about the nation’s high divorce rate, the problem may be quietly policing itself. The divorce rate actually has leveled off in recent years and voluntary premarital counseling is booming. More couples appear to be realizing, quite sensibly, that a wise counsel is best sought when a couple is still getting to know each other, not after each has begun to take the other for granted.
Requiring counseling before issuing marriage licenses won’t stop divorce any more than requiring driver’s education classes before issuing drivers licenses has brought an end to traffic accidents. But, a little extra knowledge is always a helpful thing.
