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  1. Marriage

Helping to Break the Cycle of Family Instability

Can people in bad, poor areas break out of the cycle of family instability that puts children at risk academically, economically, socially, and emotionally—a cycle currently working its way through the working class? As we describe in our 2014 report for the National Marriage Project, “Facilitating Forever,” community organizations receiving federal funding approved by both Democrat and Republican administrations have attempted to foster stable marriages and families in at-risk populations for over a decade. The voluntary educational programs are multi-pronged: They promote wiser relationship and marriage choices among less-educated youth, help engaged couples approach marriage realistically, assist married couples overcome the vicissitudes of life together, and work with cohabitating couples aspiring to marriage to achieve that goal. Continue Reading »

Time to Challenge No-Fault Divorce

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage. Continue Reading »

The Good-Enough Marriage

I have a good marriage. Is it a great marriage? I don’t know. Do we squabble? Plenty. Do either of us feel shortchanged? With regularity. Might we be happier had we married other people twenty-one years ago? It’s certainly possible. Should I reconsider my marriage? Heavens no. Continue Reading »

Government Marriage

A constitutional right for men to marry men and women to marry women is a done deal. That’s how I read the ­Supreme Court’s decision not to hear cases in which lower courts ruled that marriage laws in various states that recognize unions only of a man and a woman are unconstitutional. . . . . Continue Reading »

Not Yet

With the legal affirmation of same-sex marriage in some states, should churches, synagogues, and mosques stop performing civil marriages? No, not yet. Marriage is, of course, more than a matter of statecraft.  Continue Reading »

A Legal Perspective on the Marriage Pledge

Many of the responses to the Marriage Pledge from both sides of the divide on same-sex marriage have reflected substantial confusion over the distinction between Christian and civil marriage and what the role of the clergy is in the marriage ceremony. My purpose here is to clarify that distinction and then to evaluate criticisms of the Pledge when the distinction between the two types of marriage is properly understood. Continue Reading »

Marriage Pledge is Not an Imperative of Conscience

Last week, I wrote in favor of the Marriage Pledge and suggested that signing a government-provided document designating Spouse A and Spouse B is contrary to conscience. Ed Peters has rightly criticized me. There is nothing intrinsically evil about politically correct euphemisms in government documents, including ones pertaining to marriage. And thus there’s no complicity with evil when a pastor, priest, or laymen sign such documents.  Continue Reading »

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