Host: Sam Beamer … Samctuary@aol.com … Mission Statement: … Love of My Life

Fact or Myth:  If Some Men would go through a Change of Life, most Women and Children wouldn’t have to.  After all, if pigs can be intelligent and elephants can remember, how difficult can it be for a human being to abstain from lying, stealing, cheating & killing.

No religious or secular scholar can deny that men have been in charge ever since the beginning of civilization and continue to do so to this day.  With all growing pains behind us, one would think that the good life should be the staple for majority of our families.  Everything seems in our favor:  the rich legacy of our forefathers, our own accomplishments and miraculous achievements within all realms of our lives.  When one factors in state-of-the-art rights, personal & social stability should be more of a norm than an exception.  Except, that’s not the case.  One can’t help but wonder if infamous male chauvinist pigs are to be blamed for the new mutation of Female Chauvinist Pigs—Women and the Rise of Raunch (Author, Ariel Levy).  Although modern lifestyles continue to enjoy great popularity, some women still champion ethical equality while others opt for alternative vulgarity—most do so with great speed, power, vengeance or intolerance.  By NOW, liberal, traditional deception is blatant, arrogant & confident—because it’s only transparent to those it rendered powerless, rights to equal destruction continue.  Fact or Myth: If Some Women would go through a Change of Life, most Men and Children wouldn’t have to.

By now, our code of honor is as tipsy as our scales of justice.  After all, what is the difference between a male or a female gig when they both lip-sync.  ”This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” Mt: 15:8-9 … Is it time for REAL Change & Protection for our Children?  ”Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Mt. 7:6      

Needless to say, even after years of social brainwashing, in the end, ”defilement comes not from what enters the mouth but from the evil thoughts and deeds that rise from within, from the heart.” (Instructions in the Catholic Faith)  For those without a Catholic Converter, good old-fashioned common sense will do.  As if, it doesn’t take a “Mensa Brain” to know that self-love and self-abuse are not one and the same. In fact, if Mensans were “da brains of the world,” they would have stopped fathers of our country from turning their backs on our children years ago—had they done the bright thing, instead of gloom and calamity, sonshine & stability would already be a reality.    

In all fairness, genuine leaders or “experts” have been trying to end our Crisis for decades.  Nonetheless, due to liberal, illogical & legal powers of the sick & famous, even the best of efforts continue to be extinguished.  Because objections to main causes of our Crisis date back to their roots, so do facts, myths & lies.  In fact, the Top Ten Secrets offer indisputable proof that in lieu of speedy justice, most leaders continue to endorse progressive negligence.  To date, although intellectual & technological advancements could make resolutions relatively easy, it will only happen when pigs fly or through ”encouraged” cooperation. 

For too long, our only options have been to fight, dream, read, write or beg for our rights instead of enjoying them!  Even today, with our Crisis in our face daily, most leaders or experts still treat it as our nation’s Top Secret! 

Top Secret #10

Top Secret #9

Top Secret #8

Top Secret #7

Top Secret #6

Top Secret #5

Top Secret #4

Top Secret #3

Top Secret #2

Top Secret #1 …

It’s Time to Trump the Trump! … Sam Beamer … “Let your love of justice be exceeded only by your love of mercy.”  

Family Research Council

THE BENEFITS of MARRIAGE

by Bridget E. Maher

February 18, 2005

“Dear Papa … As much as I have tried, I do not have a template to understand myself or this world, and, at times, the knowledge that I have spent all these years without knowing you overwhelms me. … It is so basic, to want to feel loved. I have not felt that.” Lisa, a 28-year-old child of divorce who had not seen or spoken to her father in nineteen years, wrote these words a few months after attempting to commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. As she lay in her hospital bed, she said, “I felt my father’s absence with a sharpness I hadn’t known before.”[1]

Lisa is a casualty of the decline of the institution of marriage, as indicated by the following statistics:

Low marriage rate: In 2002, the U.S. marriage rate was the lowest it has ever been, with only 43.4 marriages per thousand unmarried women in that year.[2]

Delayed marriage: Men and women are marrying later. In 2003, the median age at first marriage was 26.9 for men, compared to 23.2 in 1970. For women, it was 25.3 in 2002 versus 20.8 in 1970.[3]

Divorce: The divorce rate has almost doubled since 1960. Based on projections of current divorce rates, between 40 and 50 percent of marriages today are likely to end in divorce or separation.[4]

Cohabitation: The number of cohabiting couples has increased dramatically during the past 30 years. In 2002, there were 4.9 million cohabiting couples, compared to just over half a million in 1970.[5]

Out-of-wedlock childbearing: Today, one-third of all births are out of wedlock.[6] The unwed birthrate is highest among women between the ages of 20 and 24.[7]

Lisa’s story reveals the emotional pain that children from broken homes experience. Not having married parents deprives children of the love, security, and attention they need. Marriage provides the optimal environment for rearing children, the future of society. Children raised by their biological married parents receive numerous social, health, and economic benefits, and these gifts benefit the whole of society. Conversely, it is through the breakdown of marriage that children and society are harmed.

Marriage also benefits adults by allowing them to overcome feelings of loneliness and incompleteness by forming a complementary union. Also, it allows them to promise to give each other mutual care, respect, and protection and to raise a family together. But the primary reason marriage is a vital institution is that it serves public purposes, namely, procreation and the benefit of children and society.

Marriage Benefits Children

There is a wealth of evidence that children raised by their biological, married parents have the best chance of becoming happy, healthy, and morally upright citizens in the future.

Complementary Parental Roles: Marriage ensures that children have access to a mother and a father. Mothers and fathers have unique and complementary roles in children’s development. For example, children’s emotional bond with their mothers helps them develop their conscience, capacities for both intimacy and empathy, and a sense of self-worth.[8] One study found that adults who perceived their mothers as available and devoted to them in childhood were less likely to suffer from depression and low self-esteem as adults and more likely to be resilient in dealing with life events.[9]

Involved fathers produce children who have better emotional health, do better academically, and attain higher job status as adults.[10] Also, fathers teach their children empathy as well as assertiveness and independence.[11] But most importantly, fathers are role models for both their sons and daughters. Fathers teach their sons how to be a man, how to take on male responsibilities, and how to relate to women. Girls learn from their fathers that they are loveable; they also learn to appreciate their femininity and how to relate to men.[12]

Less Risky Behavior: Some of the most important benefits children receive from married parents are love and attention. This makes them less likely to engage in behaviors such as premarital sex, substance abuse, delinquency, and suicide. A Swedish study of almost a million children found that children raised by single parents are more than twice as likely as those raised in two-parent homes to suffer from a serious psychiatric disorder, to commit or attempt suicide, or to develop an alcohol addiction.[13] A 2000 study of U.S. data found that adolescents from single-parent families were more likely to have had sexual intercourse than those living with both parents.[14]

Template for Future Marriage: Children with married parents receive a model for their future marriage. Children living in intact homes learn that it is possible to entrust oneself to another person wholly for a lifetime. Also, they learn what marriage looks like. By their example, parents teach children about the sacrifices marriage entails and how husbands and wives should treat each other. Children learn from their parents that marriage is filled with many joys as well as sorrows, but that it’s possible to work through hardships with charity, forgiveness, patience, and perseverance.

While their parents’ relationship with each other is pivotal in children’s confidence and ability to form their own marriage, it doesn’t have to be a perfect marriage. Judith Wallerstein, who studied 131 children of divorce over 25 years, found that children are usually “reasonably content” in an unhappy or failing marriage.[15] Children of divorce have a shattered template for marriage, causing them to distrust marriage and to avoid it for fear of divorce. Studies have found that these children are twice as likely to cohabit before marriage and to divorce.[16]

Safety Benefits: Compared to children living with single parents, children conceived by married parents are safer; they are less likely to be aborted[17] and less likely to be abused or neglected. A 1998 study found that children in single-parent families are more than twice as likely to be physically abused than children living with both biological parents.[18]

Better Health: Children with married parents have better emotional and physical health than those raised by single parents. A 2000 study from the journal Pediatrics found that children from single-parent homes are twice as likely to have emotional and behavioral problems as are children living with both parents.[19]

Economic Benefits: Children with married parents fare better economically. In the United States, poverty rates among children living with single mothers are five times higher than those of children living with married parents (35.5 percent versus 7 percent).[20] Also, children from intact families are likely to have higher-paying jobs as adults.[21]

Higher Academic Scores: A 2003 study of eleven industrialized countries found that children living in single-parent families have lower math and science scores than children in two-parent families. The correlation between single parenthood and low test scores was strongest among children in the United States and New Zealand.[22] Better Parent-Child Relationships: A study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that children living with their married biological parents spend more time with their fathers and receive more affection and warmth from them than those living with a step- or single father or a cohabiting father figure.[23]

Marriage Benefits Adults

Adults, too, are able to enjoy the health, social, and economic benefits of marriage. Marriage allows men and women to form a union and raise a family, as most adults desire to marry and have children.[24]

Better Health: Married people have better emotional and physical health than unmarried people. A 2004 report from the National Center for Health Statistics found that married people are happier and healthier than widowed, divorced, separated, cohabiting or never-married people, regardless of race, age, sex, education, nationality, or income.[25] Compared to people of other marital statuses, the study found that married people have the least limitations in normal daily activities, including work, getting dressed, remembering, and walking. They also experience the lowest amount of serious psychological distress, and drink and smoke less.[26]

Similarly, a 2000 study found that married persons have the lowest incidences of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.[27]

Longer Life Span, Less Suicide: Married people live longer and are less likely to commit suicide than those who are not married. [28] A 2000 study found that divorced and separated men and women are more than twice as likely as married persons to commit suicide.[29]

Greater Wealth, Higher Incomes: Married people enjoy greater wealth than unmarried people–and the longer they stay married, the more their wealth accumulates.[30] Marriage particularly benefits men’s earning capacities. One study found that married men earn about 22 percent more than men who have never cohabited and never married.[31] Another study confirmed that marriage itself is what leads to men’s higher incomes; the possibility that men with higher earning potential are more likely to marry has little impact on the “marriage premium.”[32]

Safety Benefits: Marriage is the safest relationship for women. A 2002 study found that cohabiting couples reported rates of physical aggression in their relationships three times higher than those reported by married couples.[33] A Department of Justice report found that married and widowed women had the lowest rates of violent abuse by a spouse, while divorced and separated women had the highest rates of violence by their spouse, ex-spouse, or boyfriend.[34]

Marriage Benefits Society

The social, health, and economic gifts of marriage lead to stronger communities and society.

Less Abortion: Marriage protects human life, as married women are less likely to abort their children than unmarried women. With fewer abortions, human life is more likely to be respected at all stages–from tiny, defenseless embryos to frail, disabled elderly persons.

Safer Homes: Marriage helps make homes safer places to live, because it curbs social problems such as domestic violence and child abuse.

Safer Communities: Communities with more married-parent families will be safer and better places to live because they are less likely to by plagued by substance abuse and crimes committed by young people.

Less Premarital Sex: Marriage also helps to prevent premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births, and sexually transmitted diseases, because young people raised by married parents are less likely to have sex before marriage.

Less Poverty, More Wealth: The economic benefits of marriage for society include less poverty and welfare dependence, because married-parent families are less likely to live in poverty than single-parent families. With fewer people on welfare, governments would have a broader tax base. Along with reducing poverty and welfare dependence, marriage generates more revenue in the economy since married people have higher incomes and greater wealth.

Healthier Society: The main health benefit of marriage is a healthier society. This is because married people have better health than unmarried people and children with married parents are healthier than those with single, cohabiting, or step parents. If people are healthier, health care costs will be lower.

More Marriage, Less Divorce: Married-parent homes are more likely to produce young adults who view marriage positively and maintain lifelong marriages. Divorce, on the other hand, is likely to breed more divorce and often leads young people to have negative attitudes toward marriage and to cohabit before marriage.[35]

Less Government, Lower Taxes: With more strong marriages, fewer programs such as child support enforcement, foster care, and welfare would be needed to alleviate the effects of broken homes, lessening taxpayers’ burdens. According to a recent study, divorce costs the United States $33.3 billion per year.[36] Teen childbearing costs U.S. taxpayers about $7 billion annually for increased welfare, incarceration, and foster care costs as well as lost tax revenue due to government dependency.[37]

More Engaged Citizens: Married people are more likely than unmarried people to vote, volunteer in social service projects, and get involved in their churches and schools.[38]

Strengthening Marriage

The institution of marriage can be strengthened in a variety of ways, including enacting laws to implement pro-family tax reform, no-fault divorce reform, welfare reform, abstinence-until-marriage programs, and premarital education. Community initiatives such as Marriage Savers have also been effective in strengthening marriage and reducing divorce.

Tax Reform: Our tax system should encourage marriage, childbearing, and adoption. The marriage penalty, under which married couples pay higher taxes than single people or cohabiting couples, should be eliminated. Legislation passed by Congress in 2001 that provided for a gradual phase-out of this penalty will expire in 2011; it should be made permanent. This same tax bill, combined with later revisions, also provided for a phased-in doubling of the per-child tax credit, from $500 to $1,000, and a doubling of the adoption tax credit, from $5,000 to $10,000. These reforms also need to be made permanent.

Divorce Reform: It should become more difficult to obtain a divorce. The unrestricted access to no-fault divorce has contributed to our high divorce rate. Today, nearly all states have no-fault divorce laws, which allow a spouse to file for or obtain a divorce for any reason without obtaining the consent of the other spouse, thus making the divorce process unilateral and rendering powerless the spouse who wants to preserve the marriage. Several states have tried to restrict divorce by proposing legislation or passing laws which require mutual consent, longer waiting periods, or classes for divorcing parents before a divorce can be obtained. In addition, three states have passed covenant marriage laws, which give couples a choice between a standard marriage license, which allows no-fault divorce for any reason, and a covenant marriage license, which requires premarital counseling and longer waiting periods or proof of fault before divorce.[39]

The Louisiana Model: Louisiana’s Covenant Marriage Act went into effect in 1997. The bill was authored by then-state representative and current FRC President Tony Perkins. Similar covenant marriage laws have been instituted in Arkansas and Arizona, and legislation has been introduced in Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Louisiana’s covenant marriage law requires premarital counseling and places restrictions on no-fault divorce. The counseling covers the seriousness of cove-nant marriage, reinforces the notion that marriage is a lifelong commitment, and requires the couple to commit to seek marital counseling for problems that arise.

Under Louisiana law, divorce or separation may be obtained in a covenant marriage only after a couple that has not obtained a legal separation has lived apart for two years. Couples without children who have obtained a legal separation must wait one year before divorcing; separated couples with children are required to wait 18 months.

Grounds for divorce or separation include proof of adultery, conviction of a felony with a sentencing to death or imprisonment at hard labor, abandonment by either spouse for one year, physical or sexual abuse of a spouse or child of one of the spouses, or (for purposes of legal separation only) cruel treatment or habitual intemperance.[40]

More work needs to be done to encourage young couples to choose covenant marriage. A preliminary study found that covenant marriages comprise only about two percent of new marriages in Louisiana.[41] It has been reported that parish clerks of court are discouraging couples from choosing covenant marriage.[42]

Many couples may also be unaware of the covenant marriage option. According to one study, 40 to 50 percent of spouses who chose the standard marriage option had never heard of covenant marriage, and only 16 percent had discussed the option.[43] Those couples who chose covenant marriage have lower divorce rates in the first five years of marriage due to more premarital counseling, lower rates of premarital cohabitation, and wives’ strong religious beliefs.”[44]

Welfare Reform: The breakdown of marriage is a root cause of poverty, as most welfare recipients are never-married or divorced mothers. When the federal government sought to reform the welfare system in 1996, three of its stated goals were to strengthen marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing, and encourage the formation of two-parent families. Some states, such as Oklahoma, Utah, Arizona, Michigan, and Virginia, have used welfare money for pro-marriage efforts. However, other states have not acted decisively to promote marriage. In 2000, less than one percent of combined state and federal welfare costs were spent on these goals.[45] To remedy this, President Bush has proposed earmarking $300 million in welfare money for pro-marriage programs such as premarital education classes and marriage mentoring. State and local governments as well as private organizations can apply for the money to develop marriage programs.

Abstinence-Until-Marriage Education: The United States government should adequately fund abstinence-until-marriage programs, because abstinence is the only 100-percent-effective way to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

There are more than 1,000 abstinence-until-marriage programs, which are very effective in teaching young people how to save sex for marriage. They teach young people the benefits of saving sex for marriage, how to have healthy relationships, and how to set goals and make good decisions. Abstinence is presented not merely as a solution to the problems of unwed pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases but also as a “pathway leading to respect for one’s self and others, to healthier relationships, and, eventually, to love and happiness in marriage,” in the words of Heritage Foundation experts.[46]

The federal government has provided some abstinence-until-marriage funding in recent years, but comprehensive sex education and contraception programs, which assume that young people will engage in premarital sex and which promote contraception, receive vastly more funding in comparison. In 2002, abstinence-until-marriage programs received $144.1 million in government funding, while comprehensive sex-ed programs received $1.73 billion. In other words government spent $12 to promote contraception for every dollar spent on abstinence education.[47]

Premarital Education: Several states have passed premarital education laws. Florida’s 1998 Marriage Preservation Act was the first requiring high school students to receive marriage skills education. Additionally, the law gives a discount to couples applying for a marriage license who attend a minimum of four hours of marriage preparation, allowing them to waive the three-day waiting period before the marriage can take place. In 1999, Oklahoma passed similar legislation–reducing the marriage license fee for those who receive premarital education–followed by Maryland and Minnesota in 2001 and Tennessee in 2002. Several other states have proposed similar bills.

Premarital education is also promoted by such organizations as Marriage Savers, which has implemented community marriage policies in 183 cities in 40 states. Community marriage policies are signed by clergy and judges who agree to require engaged couples to undergo at least four months of marriage preparation.

Married couples trained as mentors administer the marriage preparation, which includes a premarital inventory test to identify a couple’s strengths and weaknesses. They continue meeting with couples after the wedding and also help couples in troubled marriages. A recent study found that community marriage policies are very effective in reducing divorce rates.[48]

Restoring a Culture of Strong Marriages

Marriage confers many social and economic benefits on children, adults, and society, but it has been severely weakened by feminism, the sexual revolution, and the population-control campaign. The breakdown of marriage over the past four decades has resulted in low rates of marriage, high rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and cohabitation.

America needs to restore a culture in which monogamous, lifelong marriages are the norm and marriage between and a man and a woman is treasured as the safest and best haven for children. Then we will have fewer children like Lisa crying out for their father’s love. Fortunately, Lisa and her father are slowly trying to patch up their relationship. Lisa’s father called her on her birthday–for the first time in nineteen years, and she was elated. Their restored relationship is indeed a blessing, but think how much she would have been spared if her parents hadn’t divorced. That’s why need to protect marriage. Pro-marriage policies–as well as community and church marriage-strengthening efforts–will help ensure that all children are nurtured and loved by two married parents.
END NOTES

1. Lisa Singh, “The Father Land,” The Washington Post Magazine, June 6, 2004, W17.

2. The National Marriage Project, “The State of Our Unions 2004: The Social Health of Marriage in America,” June 2004, Figure 1.

3. Jason Fields, “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2003,” Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau (November 2004), Figure 5.

4. Bridget Maher, ed., The Family Portrait: A Compilation of Data, Research and Public Opinion on the Family, Family Research Council, 2004, 102.

5. U.S. Census Bureau, “Unmarried-Couple Households, by Presence of Children: 1960 to Present,” Table UC-1, June 12, 2003.

6. Joyce A. Martin, et al., Births: Final Data for 2002, National Vital Statistics Reports 52, December 17, 2003, 10.

7. Ibid, Table 18.

8. Brenda Hunter, Ph.D., The Power of Mother Love (Waterbrook Press: Colorado Springs, 1997) 104.

9. Mohammadreza Hojat, “Satisfaction with Early Relationships with Parents and Psychosocial Attributes in Adulthood: Which Parent Contributes More?” The Journal of Genetic Psychology 159 (1998): 203-220, as cited in The Family in America New Research, The Howard Center (October 1998).

10. Jay Teachman, et al., “Sibling Resemblance in Behavioral Cognitive Outcomes: The Role of Father Presence,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 60 (November 1998): 835-848. Also, Timothy J. Biblarz and Greg Gottainer, “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (May 2000:) 533-548.

11. David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1996) 143-149.

12. Popenoe, 142-143.

13. Gunilla Ringback Weitoft, et al., “Mortality, Severe Morbidity and Injury in Children Living with Single Parents in Sweden:A Population-based Study,” The Lancet 361 (January 25, 2003):289-295.

14. John S. Santelli, et al., “The Association of Sexual Behaviors with Socioeconomic Status, Family Structure, and Race/Ethnicity Among U.S. Adolescents,” American Journal of Public Health 90 (October 2000): 1582-1588

15. Judith Wallerstein, et al., The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study, (New York: Hyperion, 2000) 31-35.

16. Jay D. Teachman, “The Childhood Living Arrangements of Children and the Characteristics of Their Marriages,” Journal of Family Issues 25 (January 2004): 86-111. Also, Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, “The Transmission of Marital Instability across Generations:Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (November 2001): 1038-1051.

17. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, “Induced Abortion,” Facts in Brief, 2003.

18. Joceylyn Brown, et al., “A Longitudinal Analysis of Risk Factors for Child Maltreatment: Findings of a 17-Year Prospective Study of Officially Recorded and Self-Reported Child Abuse and Neglect,” Child Abuse and Neglect 22 (1998): 1065-1078.

19. Kelly J. Kelleher, et al., “Increasing Identification of Psychosocial Problems:1979-1996,” Pediatrics 105 (June 2000): 1313-1321.

20. U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables,” Table 4, available at www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov4.html.

21. Timothy J. Biblarz and Greg Gottainer, “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families.”

22. Suet-Ling Pong, et al., “Family Policies and Children’s School Achievement in Single- Versus Two-Parent Families,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (August 2003) 681-699.

23. Sandra L. Hofferth and Kermyt G. Anderson, “Are All Dads Equal? Biology versus Marriage as a Basis for Paternal Investment,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (February 2003): 213-232.

24. Money and the American Family Survey, American Association of Retired Persons, January 23-February 21, 2000 and Gallup Poll, July 18-20, 2003.

25. Charlotte A. Schoenborn, “Marital Status and Health: United States, 1999-2002,” Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Number 351, December 15, 2004).

26. Schoenborn, ibid.

27. Amy Mehraban Pienta, “Health Consequences of Marriage for the Retirement Years,” Journal of Family Issues 21 (July 2000):559-586.

28. Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially (New York:Doubleday, 2000) 50-52.

29. Augustine J. Kposowa, “Marital Status and Suicide in the National Longitudinal Mortality Study,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 54 (April 2000): 254-261.

30. Waite and Gallagher, 97-123.

31. Leslie S. Stratton, “Examining the Wage Differential for Married and Cohabiting Men,” Economic Inquiry 40 (April 2002):199-212.

32. Donna K. Ginther and Madeline Zavodny, “Is the Male Marriage Premium Due to Selection? The Effect of Shotgun Weddings on the Return to Marriage,” Journal of Population Economics 14 (2001): 313-328.v

33. Sonia Miner Salari and Bret M. Baldwin, “Verbal, Physical and Injurious Aggression among Intimate Couples Over Time,” Journal of Family Issues 23 (May 2002): 523-550.

34. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence, National Crime Victimization Survey, U.S. Department of Justice, May 2000, 4-5, 11.

35. Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, “The Transmission of Marital Instability across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (November 2001): 1038-1051; Also, Carole Mulder and Marjorie Lindner Gunnnoe, “College Students’ Attitudes toward Divorce Based on Gender, Parental Divorce, and Parental Relationships,” Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 31 (1999): 179-188; Also, Teachman, “The Childhood Living Arrangements of Children and the Characteristics of their Marriages.”

36. David G. Schramm, “What Could Divorce Be Costing Your State? The Costly Consequences of Divorce in Utah: The Impact on Couples, Communities, and Government,” A Preliminary Report, June 25, 2003, Publication in Process, Department of Family, Consumer, and Human Development, Utah State University.

37. Rebecca Maynard, ed. Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing, The Robin Hood Foundation, New York, (1996) 19.

38. Corey L.M. Keyes, “Social Civility in the United States,” Sociological Inquiry 72 (2002): 393-408, as cited in The Family in America New Research, November 2002. Also, Carl L. Bankston III and Min Zhou, “Social Capital as Process: The Meaning and Problems of a Theoretical Metaphor,” Sociological Inquiry 72 (2002): 285-317, as cited in The Family in America New Research, December 2002.

39. Bridget Maher, “Deterring Divorce,” Family Research Council, 2004.

40. 1997 Louisiana Public Act 1380.

41. Laura Sanchez and Steven Nock, et al., “Social and Demographic Factors Associated with Couples Choice between Covenant and Standard Marriage in Louisiana,” available at http://www.bgsu.edu/organizations/cfdr/research/pdf/2002/2002_6.pdf

42. See Laura A. Sanchez, Steven L. Nock, and James D. Wright, “The Implementation of Covenant Marriage in Louisiana,” Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 9 (December, 2000): 192-223.

43. Sanchez and Nock, et al, “Social and Demographic Factors Associated with Couples Choice between Covenant and Standard Marriage in Louisiana.”

44. Laura A. Sanchez, Steven L. Nock, et al, “Can Covenant Marriage Foster Marital Stability among Lower Income, Fragile Newlyweds?” Paper read at the National Conference on Marriage and Family Formation among Low Income Couples (Georgetown University; Washington DC, September 4-5, 2003).

45. 2001 TANF Annual Report to Congress, April 2002.

46. Shannon Martin, Robert Rector and Melissa G. Pardue, “Comprehensive Sex Education vs. Authentic Abstinence: A Study of Competing Curricula,” The Heritage Foundation, 2004.

47. Melissa G. Pardue, Robert E. Rector and Shannan Martin, “Government Spends $12 on Safe Sex and Contraceptives for Every $1 Spent on Abstinence,” The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder No. 1718, January 14, 2004.

48. Paul James Birch and Stan Weed, et al., “Assessing the Impact of Community Marriage Policies on the U.S. County Divorce Rates,” Executive Summary, The Institute for Research and Evaluation, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 5, 2004.

INSTRUCTIONS in the CATHOLIC FAITH by Parish Priests … (Excerpts) Fare, Inc., Des Plaines, IL 60016 . Copyright 1976 – Revised 1986

God Made Marriage … “Marriage honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.” Heb 13:4

The Sins Against Marriage … Divorce and Remarriage

There is no such thing as a divorce.  It is very clear in the Bible that God does not recognize divorce.

Divorce and remarriage is a mortal sin because it is clearly against the law of God.  A divorced person is not even permitted to keep company with another … Here we are speaking only of valid marriages, not invalid marriages.  But do not judge whether your marriage is valid or not; talk to the priest who is giving you instructions.  Remember that no law court can break a valid marriage … “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” … When you seek a divorce, you are wasting your money because God has never given anyone authority to break a marriage.

Let’s consider the case of a very good wife and mother. She has many children. She has a drunken husband who beats her, runs around with other women perhaps and does not support the family. Suppose that she meets a fine man who would be a wonderful husband and father; yet not even in this case does God make an exception. Even if your partner is in an insane asylum, or if he marries again—you cannot marry again unless the Church declares your marriage null.

The Condition of Marriage Today

Now marriage is almost as it was before the coming of Jesus. Divorce is accepted as normal. Marry as often as you want; there is no shame to it—but really it is legalized adultery.  From divorce come thousands of broken homes.  People want the pleasure of sex, but not children.  Too many children are too much trouble, too expensive; children cause a population burst. 

Some people prefer costly vacation, apartments, fur coats, liquor and so forth, to children.  They want to be free from care and responsibility. Consider today the large number of abortions. Abortion is cold-blooded murder even when performed by a surgeon. 

ABORTION … Abortion is willfully causing the death of an unborn baby in any way.  It is always a mortal sin.  The unborn baby is a human being and has the right to life … Excommunication from the Church is the penalty for the Catholic who knowingly and willingly causes or helps cause an abortion. Excommunication means that he (she) cannot receive the Sacraments; cannot have a Catholic funeral, but can get back into the Church if truly sorry for his (her) crime.

BIRTH CONTROL … “Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman.  Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible.”

UNREPENTED SINS OF IMPURITY (UNCHASTITY OR SEX SINS) MEAN HELL … THE GRAVITY OF SINS OF SEX … Only married partners have the right to full use of their sexual powers, the sacred powers of creation given by God.  All acts or thoughts used deliberately to arouse the sex passion outside of marriage are mortal sins.  In the twentieth century people have many erroneous ideas about chastity. We shall treat of sins against chastity as well as acts and thoughts that are a danger to Christian chastity.  Our Lord said that even sexual desires deliberately entertained are mortal sins … Young men and young women who are keeping company have absolutely no sexual right to each other until they are married … Choose the right partner and your marriage will be a happy one.  Choose a partner who is a good Catholic, one who is regular at Mass, Communion and Confession.  He (she) must be really serious about having children and founding a home.  Catholic law is not in favor of mixed marriages even though for serious reasons dispensations from the law are easily obtained. Mixed marriage can be a source of loss of the Catholic faith, or even loss of Catholic moral practice in many instances.  Any great difference between a couple (age, education, wealth) can cause problems. Differences in a most serious part of life—religion—frequently cause problems.   

“Whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in this heart.” Mt 5:28 … ADULTERY, FORNICATION, SEXUAL THOUGHTS AND DESIRES, MODERN DRESS, IMPURE TALK or  MASTURBATION … SINS AGAINST NATURE - they are called sexual perversions. They are always mortal sins unless the victim is a mental case or has not developed a Christian moral sense. They are committed with another person of the same sex, or the opposite sex, or with animals. Homosexuals are not sinners if they do not act out their sexual preferences … Is it possible to lead a pure life?  Not only is it possible, but it is absolutely necessary to lead a pure life if you are to save your immortal soul.  Chastity gives great joy to living. Only the chaste are carefree and joyful in life. The world will become a world of reason and of beauty if men are chaste; the world and life itself will become undesirable if men are impure.

Please note:  The above are only “short highlights” of the more controversial issues within today’s society.  To ensure proper understanding of these and other issues within their intended context, it is necessary to examine the original text.

CATHOLIC DIVORCE MILLS

Is there such thing as Catholic divorce mills? An article by Tom Barbarie published in San Diego News Notes.

How is it possible, some might wonder, that entertainer Frank Sinatra — who divorced first wife Nancy to marry Ava Gardner and, after a brief stopover as Mia Farrow’s spouse, took Barbara Marx as wife number four — could die a Catholic? Why was Henry VIII treated so differently by a church whose official teaching is that marriage is indissoluble, and which furthermore insists that time does not alter its stance on matters of morals?

Is the answer simply that Sinatra had the good fortune to be alive in 20th century America, where kinder, gentler ecclesiastical tribunals are the rule? It was one of those tribunals that cleared Sinatra’s path to a valid fourth marriage by agreeing with his claim that his first three marriages were null.

That annulment and the scores of thousands like it granted each year in the U.S. are seen by some as the compassionate workings of a Church whose sensibilities are catching up with the times. Others see them as the product of thinly veiled American Catholic divorce mills.

In a November 1996 article in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, the San Diego diocese’s director of canonical affairs, Dr. Edward Peters, defended Church tribunals in this country, where annulments have soared from about 600 per year in 1968 to well over 60,000 in some recent years. (The article, slightly modified, was reprinted as chapter XII of Peters’s book, 100 Answers to Your Questions on Annulments, Simon & Schuster/Basilica Press, 1997).

According to Peters, who is a judge on the diocesan tribunal, the increase can be attributed not to a relaxation of the Church’s teachings on the permanence of marriage, but to other factors, among them that heterodox, pro-contraceptive marriage preparation courses are “legion” and that psychological factors render large numbers of people truly incapable of contracting valid marriages. With many spouses ignorant of the fact that marriage is ordered to the procreation of children, true matrimonial consent cannot be present, and the granting of later decrees of nullity for such marriages is a slam dunk for a church tribunal.

Peters defended the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1095), which declares incapable of entering a true marriage: “1) those who lack sufficient use of reason; 2) those who suffer from a grave lack of discretionary judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and obligations to be mutually given and accepted; and 3) those who, because of causes of a psychological nature, are unable to assume the essential obligations of marriage.”

This canon is “the best tool for addressing cases in which drug and alcohol abuse, physical or sexual abuse, psychological and psychiatric anomalies, and a variety of other mental and emotional conditions have seriously impacted parties prior to marriage,” wrote Peters.

He called citing the fact that Americans, who compose only five percent of the world’s Catholics, are granted 80 percent of the world’s annulments the “shallowest of all tribunal criticisms. Americans make up 6% of the world’s population, but they account for 100% of the men on the moon. So what? America functions. Much of the rest of the world does not.”

Peters’ arguments drew a strong rebuttal from Robert H. Vasoli, retired professor of sociology at Notre Dame University. Vasoli was himself the respondent in an annulment suit granted by an American tribunal and later overturned by the Roman Rota, the Catholic Church’s highest court, which handles appeals.

“My argument in a nutshell is: they’re granting too damn many annulments,” Vasoli told News Notes.

Taking issue with Peters in his own article in Homiletic & Pastoral Review (April 1998), Vasoli noted the distinction between “documentary” process cases and “ordinary” process cases. The former, he said, which deal with such things as marriages contracted outside the Church by Catholics, are cut-and-dried.

It is in the ordinary process cases, in which Canon 1095 is called into play, and where attempts are made to determine a person’s state of mind years ago, that “canonical legerdemain” is used to release people from their vows, he argued.

“John Paul II, in his 1987 and 1988 allocutions to the Rota, significantly clarified and narrowed the reach of the canon’s [1095's] second and third sections,” said Vasoli. “He specified that both grounds are predicated on the existence of a serious psychopathology….

“In 1995, the most recent year for which figures are available “there were 39,419 ordinary process annulments granted by United States tribunals, and for the world the figure was 49,445. In other words, the United States granted 79 percent of all the world’s (ordinary process) annulments,” he wrote. “It is simply beyond dispute that the U.S. tribunals have used spurious findings of defective consent to annul tens of thousands of marriages.”

Following Vatican II, new rules termed the American Procedural Norms were rolled out in 1970 to streamline the annulment process. But Vasoli maintained, “One of their latent functions was to act as canonical proving grounds for measures that would sustain a high rate of annulments.” If that contention is true, the norms, used until the latest Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1983, were wildly successful. “About 90 percent of ordinary process petitions accepted result in affirmative decisions,” Vasoli said.

In his own article, Peters put that figure at 95 percent. But, he suspected, this is in part because petitioners with weak cases are dissuaded from pursuing their claims at the earliest stages, that is, in interviews with their pastors or later when the potential petition is first forwarded to tribunal personnel.

Even if this can be conceded as true of documentary process cases, Vasoli said, “separating the wheat from the chaff in the selection or ordinary process petitions is much more complicated.” Harking back to the Pope’s clarification of “serious psychopathology,” the retired Notre Dame professor argued that the people — often “lower-level helping professionals, such as social workers and counselors” — who must ascertain the states of mind of petitioners at the time of their marriage are sorely underqualified to do so.

Vasoli urged the unconvinced to read his book, What God has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism, released in March by Oxford University Press. “It blows the lid off the whole corrupt system,” Vasoli said of his book. “I’m going to get crucified for that book by the canon law establishment.”

The overturned declaration of nullity in the Vasoli case has a good deal of company in Rome, the retired professor told News Notes.

“I’d like Peters to explain why over 90 percent of the American cases that go to the Rota are reversed,” he said, noting that as a comparison only four out of every thousand cases are reversed by U.S. civil appellate tribunals.

As a diocesan employee, Peters is bound by policy not to speak with News Notes. But because the subject had nothing to do with diocesan business per se, the diocese was contacted and asked if Peters could speak in his own defense. The request was denied.

But Peters finds a defender in Father Peter Stravinskas, nationally renowned theologian and editor of The Catholic Answer, who told New Notes, “I agree absolutely with him.” Father Stravinskas referred to his letter published in the May 1998 Catholic World Report, in which he said, “Given the mess in which we have been living for so long now, I am amazed that there are so few annulments.”

Stravinskas’s letter asked, “Do cohabitation for years and absence from the Church’s sacramental life (sometimes for decades) make folks apt candidates for holy matrimony?” Grace builds on nature, wrote Stravinskas, but “when nature has been so warped by psychological, sociological and cultural forces inimical to Christian teaching and values — especially when that devastation is thoroughly integrated into a lifestyle — grace is not only obstructed, but even natural goods like the lifelong union of a man and a woman, find difficulty achieving their end.”

Father Stravinskas proposed as a solution “more rigorous screening processes and more demanding programs of marital preparation.”

Tuesday, 29 January, 2002, 03:41 GMT

POPE TELLS LAWYERS TO BOYCOTT DIVORCE
A marriage must be for life, the Pope says

Roman Catholic lawyers should refuse to handle divorce cases, Pope John Paul has said.

He said divorce was “spreading like a plague” through society, and lawyers should refuse to be part of the “evil”.

His comments came during an annual meeting with Vatican magistrates.

“Lawyers, who work freely, should always decline to use their professions for an end that is contrary to justice, like divorce,” the Pope said.

“Marriage is indissoluble… it doesn’t make any sense to talk about the ‘imposition’ of human law, because it should reflect and protect natural and divine law.”

‘Not a private choice’

The indissolubility of marriage was not a “simple private choice”, but one of the fundamentals of all society, he added.

The Pope said Catholic lawyers should not even try to help non-Catholics obtain a divorce.

And he said magistrates should also try to prevent divorce, although he acknowledged that this would be more difficult, as they could not be “conscientious objectors” refusing to hear cases.

“Those working in civil law cases should avoid being personally involved in what could be understood as co-operating in divorce… they should look for effective measures to favour marriage, above all mediating conciliation,” he said.

It is thought to be the first time the Pope has urged lawyers to wash their hands of divorce.

Lawyers and some politicians reacted with anger.

‘Freedom of choice’

“Lawyers should be free to work with the laws of the state,” UK family law specialist Denise Lester told BBC News Online, stressing that lawyers already worked to promote reconciliation where possible.

“This is a multi-ethnic society where divorce is legal, and lawyers, as servants of the community, should be able to able to carry out their work.

“The Pope’s comments could have an impact on freedom of choice for both lawyers and their clients.”

Italian divorce lawyer Cesare Rimini told Italy’s ANSA news agency: “The laws of the state do not interfere in the laws of the Church, so it would be right if the Church did not interfere in the realm of judges and lawyers.”

Italian right-winger Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, attacked the idea of saving marriage at all costs.

“Divorce, at times, is a salvation because it interrupts a spiral of hate and terror even for children,” she said.

Copyright 2002, 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Associated Press Archive – January 30, 2002

POPE JOHN PAUL’S ANTI-DIVORCE APPEAL TO ATTORNEY’S WON’T CHANGE LEGAL PROFESSION, ANALYSTS SAY … Richard N. Ostling – AP Religion Writer

The title of the article says it all … In addition, the following excerpts highlight our society’s plight. “Pope John Paul II is talking tough on divorce, urging lawyers and judges to oppose it and calling the end of marriage a ‘festering wound’ that is devastating society.”

“At the Vatican, Enrico Serafini, a lawyer for the annulment tribunal, said the pope did not say secular law should be changed — just that “divorce is a bad thing for all orders, and he who collaborates with something bad should have the right not to collaborate and therefore should not collaborate.”  Tragically, victims are the only ones without the option “not to collaborate”—professionals have more rights to shape victim’s lives than the victims—in addition, victims are not allowed to protect their or their children’s “consciences,” while majority of professionals can opt out of cases on moral grounds.  For professionals it’s only a job—even though for victims it’s all about their past, present and future, they have the least voice, choice and rights.

HOW THERAPY CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR MARITAL HEALTH
Smart Marriages … CONFERENCE, JULY 3, 1999
William J. Doherty, PhD
Family Social Science Department
University of Minnesota

I take no joy in being a whistle blower, but it’s time.

I am a committed marriage and family therapist, having practiced this form of therapy since 1977. I train marriage and family therapists. I believe that marriage therapy can be very helpful in the hands of therapists who committed to the profession and the practice. But there are a lot of problems out there with the practice of therapy – a lot of problems.

I used to think that the best thing we could do for couples to improve their relationship and/or solve their problems was to send them to a therapist, but since we didn’t have enough therapists, then we probably need some marriage educators. It’s like saying that anybody who has a concern about their heart should see a cardiologist, but there aren’t enough cardiologists so they should see a primary care physician. Well, I have come to believe that this is really the reverse of how it ought to be, that people first need support people, mentors, other couples in their lives, and then they need marriage educators and then they need therapists–in that order. But the fact is that most people in this country, if they do seek help for their marriage problems, turn to a professional counselor or therapist, or a pastoral counselor.

I think that there are many problems involved with all of these groups of counselors or helpers, so my critique here will not be only about people who work with couples, because that’s a small minority. Individual psychotherapists, many pastors and pastoral counselors also practice in the way that I’m going to be talking about today. In my view, there is nowhere that I know of, any category of counselor, that it’s safe to send a distressed married person to for therapy. It all depends on the particular counselor or therapist, many of whom are ill-prepared to help people with their marriage problems.

You’d be interested to know that, according to a national survey, 80 percent of all private practice therapists in the United States say they do marital therapy. And only 12% of them are in a profession that requires even one course or any supervised experience. Only marriage and family therapy as a profession requires any course work or supervised clinical experience in marital or couples therapy. So most people who say they’re doing this work picked it up on the side or not at all. The other thing I want to add, and as we go through this presentation today it is very important to keep in mind, is that most people who get any help from a counselor or therapist for their marital problems are seeing an individual counselor or therapist. That’s where most people go. If they are depressed, anxious, or having trouble with your life, most people go to an individual psychotherapist. And that’s where a lot of the damage to marriage goes on. The other aspect of the damage occurs when couples see a therapist together for marital therapy.

I’m going to be telling a lot of stories here, and I want to give a caveat up front. I was not in the room to hear what the therapist said in each case, and you cannot always assume a one to one connection between what somebody reports the therapist said and what the therapist actually said. However, when you hear these stories over and over from a lot of different people, including those who are not angry at the therapist, I think we can trust the gist of what we’re hearing people say that the therapist told them. And I have personally heard statements such as these from therapists in public presentations and case consultations. So, although I can’t stand behind the accuracy of behind every word in the stories, I do feel I can stand behind the patterns and the trends I will describe.

Let me begin with a story of Marsha and Paul. Soon after her wedding Marsha felt something was terribly wrong with her marriage. She and her husband Paul had moved across the country following a big church wedding in their home town. Marsha was obsessed with fears that she had made a big mistake in marrying Paul. She focused on Paul’s ambivalence about the Christian faith, his avoidance of personal topics of communication, and his tendency to criticize her when she expressed her worries and fears. Marsha sought help at the university student counseling center where she and Paul were graduate students. The counselor worked with her alone for a few sessions and then invited Paul in for marital therapy. Paul, who was frustrated and angry about how distant and fretful Marsha had become, was a reluctant participant in the counseling.

In addition to the marital problems, Marsha was suffering from clinical depression: she couldn’t sleep or concentrate, she felt sad all the time, and she felt like a failure. Medication began to relieve some of these symptoms, but she was still upset about the state of her marriage. After a highly charged session with this distressed wife and angry, reluctant husband, the counselor met with Marsha separately the next week. She told Marsha that she would not recover fully from her depression until she started to “trust her feelings” about the marriage. Following is how Marsha later recounted the conversation with the counselor:

Marsha: “What do you mean, trust my feelings?”
Counselor: “You know you are not happy in your marriage.”
Marsha: “Yes, that’s true.”
Counselor: “Perhaps that you need a separation in order to figure out whether you really want this marriage.”
Marsha: “But I love Paul and I am committed to him.”
Counselor: “The choice is yours, but I doubt that you will begin to feel better until you start to trust your feelings and pay attention to your unhappiness.”
Marsha: “Are you saying I should get a divorce?”
Counselor: “I’m just urging you to trust your feelings of unhappiness, and maybe a separation would help you sort things out.”

A stunned Marsha decided to not return to that counselor, a decision the counselor no doubt perceived as reflecting Marsha’s unwillingness to take responsibility for her own happiness.

It gets worse: Marsha talked to her priest during this crisis. The priest urged her to wait to see if her depression was causing the marital problem or if the marital problem was causing the depression–a prudent bit of advice. But a few minutes later, the priest said that, if it turned out that the marital problems were causing the depression, he would help Marsha get an annulment. Marsha was even more stunned than she had been by the therapist. The rest of the story is that they did find a good marital therapist who helped them straighten out their marriage, Marsha’s depression lifted, and they are currently doing well. They survived two efforts at what I call “therapist-induced marital suicide.”

Now Paul was a very nice guy. But he was young for his age and he didn’t know much about feelings. I didn’t know about feelings at his age either, and he was just really befuddled that his new bride was depressed all the time. I had been to their wedding six months before this and was appalled at this turn of events in therapy. How did we get here? It’s not that therapists or pastoral counselors are out to hurt people and deliberately undermine marriage.

I want to give you my version of a cultural overview, to put this problem in perspective. It was in the 1950s that people really began to pay attention for the first time, in a systematic way, to marital problems. The field of marriage counseling got started then. As we look back at the 1950s from a current perspective we see a focus on traditional marriage, with traditional gender roles, a reluctance to allow women to be in the workforce. We see divorce being viewed as a personal failing. If you remember in those days a woman was a divorcée her entire life. If she was in an auto accident, the newspaper headline said “Divorcée in Auto Accident.” A tremendous amount of social stigma was attached to divorce. Therapists often saw divorce as a treatment failure, based on personality problems of an individual. As we look back we often see that the therapist supported certain gender arrangements that society revisited later on. And in the 1950s most people who were doing any work in the marriage area were oblivious to marital violence; it was only in the 70s we began to pay attention to that problem.

So, what we do in our country is, of course, swing from one kind of model to another. When the 60s and 70s came along, we had the rise of the culture of individualism, of marriage based not on duty anymore, but on personal happiness. The dark side of marriage now became apparent as we began to understand the amount of abuse that went on. The divorce rate skyrocketed, the no-fault divorce laws began to be passed in the early 1970s, and we had the cultural revolution in which we were liberating individuals from the traditional strictures of conventional morality. Therapists took two stances towards marriage during this era. The first stance was “neutrality” on the subject of marital commitment. In a short time therapists moved from an era in which a prominent psychiatrist in the 1950s said that he never supported a couple’s decision to get a divorce, to an era where the therapist was supposed to be neutral. A recent survey of clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy found that nearly two-thirds said that they are “neutral” on the subject and marriage and divorce. As a colleague said this in the press just a few years ago, “The good marriage, the good divorce, it matters not.” This was where neutrality has led us.

The other stance emerging during the 1970’s was beyond neutrality (because neutrality is not really possible anyway), to therapists seeing themselves as liberationists to help people out of unhappy marriages and other commitments in their lives. So we had the introduction of the idea of liberation from marriage, particularly when somebody sees an individual therapist. If you describe your marriage as painful for you, the therapist wants to liberate you from this toxic influence. This stance is still with us. If someone raises a concern about the fate of their children, many of us were trained to say that kids will do fine if their parents do what they need to do for themselves. What nonsense, but I used to say it.

The 1980s through the mid 1990s were a time when I believe that market values— the values of the marketplace–triumphed in American culture. Consumerism prevailed. If the 70s were the “I gotta take care of my own psychological needs” decade, the 1980s added the element of material greed. The business model invaded everywhere. I’m not against the business model in business, but look how it has invaded the professions with managed health care. And I believe that the business model, the market model, has also invaded the family and marriage in a very big way. We have less loyalty now, in all spheres of life, then we did 20 or 30 years ago. Employers are less loyal to their employees, employees are less loyal to their employers. People are less loyal to their particular church or faith community; they shop around for the best show, the best services. In a generation we have moved rapidly from being citizens to being primarily consumers. Can you imagine any politician now saying, without people laughing at him or her, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?” Give me a break. It would not be believed. We moved from that to Ronald Reagan asking, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

So we are now primarily customers. And customers are inherently disloyal. Marriage, I believe, has been strongly influenced by this combination of the individual fulfillment culture and the consumer culture. Marriage is becoming yet another consumer lifestyle. The traditional marriage vows in some parts of the country are changed to “as long as we both shall love,” instead of “as long as we both shall live.” I think people now are beginning to see themselves as “leasing” a marriage. A counselor who works in the military told me that a number of young adults that she counsels tell her that, if they’re not sure whether they should get married, “if it doesn’t work out, we can always get a divorce.” That’s like saying, “I’m not sure if this car will last long, so I’ll lease,” and then if it falls apart, it’s somebody else’s problem. I invite you to consider the influence of the consumer culture on the culture of marriage.

An example: Levi’s jeans is attempting to make a comeback after losing its trendiness. If you lose your trendiness in the consumer culture, you’re dead. Levi’s has an ad, a lavish ad across six magazine pages, featuring the ups and downs of dating couples whose relationships don’t last very long. The final page shows two female roommates, one consoling the other about a recent breakup. Just behind the two roommates, on the kitchen wall, is an art poster in Spanish that says, “My parents divorced.” The caption underneath the ad contains the take home message from Levi’s. “At least some things last forever–Levi’s. They go on.” You have to look at marketers to see what’s happening in the culture.

Another example: A New York Times journalist reported being at a wedding and hearing a woman at the wedding reception (apparently she was a relative of the groom) say in a loud voice about the bride: “She will make a nice first wife for Brian.” (Laughter.) You laugh, but is it not a pained laugh? Could you imagine if this was your daughter? This is like a first job, or a first house. When our daughter moved into a grubby basement apartment, with bugs, but one that she could afford, we said “It’ll make a nice first apartment.” Or, maybe we say “a nice first girlfriend,” when our son is a teenager–but a nice first wife?

Now therapists, like all of us, are far more absorbed in the culture than we are observing of the culture. Most of us like to think we’re counter cultural, but we’re not– we’re just swimming along in the mainstream. So I began to pay attention to the language I am hearing from therapists and in the self-help books that therapists write. This is the language that I hear from therapists now, in places like case consultation groups.
• “The marriage wasn’t working anymore.” This is saying your car not working anymore, and is it worth it after a period of time to put more money into repairs? If it’s not working, get another one.
• “It was time to move on.” That’s what we say about a job. I invested in the job, I’ve lost my creative edge, and it’s time to move on.

•”You deserve better.” This is a very consumerist saying, and friends, not just therapists, will say this to each other about a marriage. You complain about your marriage and your friend or your therapist says, “You deserve better.” That is a market-driven attitude. You put all this money into this vehicle, you deserve better.

• One well-known therapist, and social scientist, refers to “starter marriage.” Starter marriage? Now when you hear the word “starter” what do you think of… a starter home. A starter home ? a little home that you plan to leave. So you have a starter marriage.
I’m suggesting that this kind of language represents the invasion of a market, consumerist ethic into marriage, on top of the messages about individual fulfillment and satisfaction. This a powerful combination. I’m also saying that as therapists and marriage educators, if we do not counter this culture, we’re not going to have any influence at all. Which is why the 1990s version of marriage education has to be based on moral principles about commitment, not just based on ideas about just enriching your marriage. That’s where we were in the 70s, that we could enrich and improve our marriages, and that’s helpful, but it’s got to be based on moral notions now. Or it’s not going to withstand the notion that we move on to something else that’s even more enriching than our current marriage. Or if your marriage is not enrichable, then get out.

Here are some of my values about marriage and divorce. I do not believe we can or should go back to the 1950s or before. I believe that some divorces are necessary. And all major religions recognize that some people cannot live together. Not all religions say that you can get a divorce and remarry, but every major religion knows that some relationships break down. And that it is unwise for some people to continue to live together. Some marriages are dead on arrival at the therapist’s office. Some people just drop their spouse off at the therapist’s office and head out the door. I think divorce is a necessary safety valve for terminally ill marriages. I have a friend who discovered her husband and coparent was a pedophile, and he would not get help. The moral thing to do was to send him packing. So as much as I’m going to be talking about what we can do to save marriages, I think it’s important to understand that there is a dark, tragic side to marriage. But divorce ought to be the tragic exception, not the norm.

I view divorce as being like an amputation to be avoided if at all possible because it brings about permanent disability. But sometimes, an amputation is necessary. I also believe, and I think this is very important to say in response to critics of this movement (and I think that most of you, or all of you I hope, would agree with this): We can reduce the divorce rate substantially, without increasing the number of truly miserable conflicted marriages. I would not be thrilled if we reduced the divorce rate by one third and increased by one third the rate of truly miserable, highly conflicted couples. We can do both, we can reduce the divorce rate, and we can increase the percentage of people who are working out their marriages. We have to do both. This is not just a divorce prevention movement. Are you with me on this? (Applause.) I think both are important to say. And we need more data like the Australian and New Jersey studies that found that over 40% of divorced people regretted their divorce and thought it was preventable. We need to get that kind of data out.

Having stated my own values, my critique focuses on the unnecessary pain and unnecessary divorce created by incompetent therapists and by therapists who have hyper- individualistic approaches to marriage. In this view of marriage, marriage is a venue for personal fulfillment stripped of ethical obligations. And divorce is a strictly private, self-interested choice, with no important stakeholders other than the individual adult client. The result is, in my opinion, is that it is dangerous in America today, to talk about your marriage problems with a therapist. You don’t know what their attitude is. (Applause.) I don’t have any research on this, but I believe you may have a better than even chance of having your marriage harmed.

Now I’m going to talk about the most common ways that therapists undermine marital commitment. And I want to underline again: I do this for a living. I train therapists, and I think that therapy can be enormously helpful in the right hands. There are four ways that therapists undermine marital commitment: incompetent therapists, neutral therapists, pathologizing therapists, and overtly undermining therapists.
———–
First, incompetent therapists. The biggest problem I see in this area is that most therapists are not trained to work with couples, and they see working with couples as an extension of individual psychotherapy. It is not. In individual therapy, depending on your model, you can be fairly laid back. You can be empathic and clarifying, you can even be fairly passive if you want. People will tell their story, they will feel heard, they will be helped to think through their concerns and their options. If you take that approach in marital therapy, you will fail. If you have a warring couple in your office, and you do not create a structure for that session, they will overwhelm you. They will repeat in the office that which they do at home. A lot of therapists end a stormy session with, “Well, we’ve clarified some of the issues, haven’t we?” (Laughter.) Which means they’ve put in psychological terms the stuff that the couple knew they were doing. Um, thank you for the clarification that we are at war with each other. And these therapists offer no direction, no structure, no guidelines–under the pretense that this is being helpful. This may be helpful to some individuals in therapy, but it is not helpful to couples.

Another thing that incompetent therapists do is to beat up on one of the partners. Although women sometimes get more than their fair of the therapist’s negative attention, an under-recognized problem is that men also get seriously disadvantaged in some couples therapy. Men often come to save their marriage, not primarily to seek insight into themselves. The light bulbs have gone on: I could lose this woman, I could lose these children. I gotta shape up. When they come to a therapist who is only used to dealing with individuals, they are in trouble. The therapist begins with “And how do you feel about being here, Joe?” And Joe says “Well, I’m just here to save my marriage.” “No, Joe, that’s not a feeling.” “Well, I think it’s important that we…” “No, no, that’s a thought, Joe, that’s not a feeling.” And so Joe is not a candidate for individual psychotherapy, which to the therapist means “he’s got big time problems.” The therapist and the wife decide that both she and he need a lot of individual help. And so you try to trot him off to an individual therapist, her to an individual therapist. He doesn’t go, because he’s there to save his marriage, not to understand his psyche–which proves that he is not serious about change. Another time that therapists turf couples off to individual therapists is when the therapist can’t handle the in-session conflict. The therapist can’t handle the hot conflict, feels overwhelmed by it. This work is not easy. Jay Haley, one of the founders of family therapy, says that marital therapy is the most difficult form of therapy. The pulls, the triangles, the hot conflict that is right in the room makes it very difficult. The problem isn’t that some therapists can’t handle it, the problem is they don’t know they can’t handle it, and they assume that there is a lot of individual pathology going on. So they turf the spouses off to their individual therapists, or keeps one of the spouses in individual therapy and sends the other to a colleagues. I have seen a lot of unnecessary divorces because of this scenario. The wife can lose out in this scenario if she is to say that she has “issues.” She’ll say that she’s depressed a lot, that she’s read a lot of self help books and knows she is co-dependent or something worse. So the therapist and the husband become co-therapists to help her with her problems. And it goes nowhere. The first problem in marital therapy, then, is incompetence, and therapists not knowing they’re not competent.

Second, neutral therapists. In the 1970s and 1980s, I was a neutral therapist on marriage and divorce. I helped people do a cost-benefit analysis–what does the individual gain and lose by staying married or getting divorced. This consumerist cost-benefit analysis disguises itself as neutral. The questions “What do you need to do for you?” and “What’s in it for you to stay, what’s in it for you to not stay?” are not neutral because they focus only what the individual sees as his or her own personal gain or loss. Neutrality when somebody has previously promised before their community, before their God, to be married to somebody until death do them part–neutrality on whether somebody can fulfill that commitment–is an undermining stance. It is not a neutral stance. And it often sides with the more self-oriented spouse. When somebody is seriously considering getting out of a marriage, listen to their language. They are often using the language of individual self-interest, not the language of moral commitment. You know, “I have needs”; “I have a right to happiness.” That’s the language. If the therapist’s language is the same, now you have an alliance between the reluctant, distancing spouse and the therapist, a collusion it undermines the marital relationship in ways that they therapist does not recognize.

An alternative to neutrality is that, except where there’s abuse and danger, to let the couple know that I will try to support the possibility that they can salvage their marriage. I am an advocate for their marriage. They can call me off but they’re going to have to look me in the eye and call me off. I’m going to try to support the possibility they can work this out, knowing that they must want it and that it is not always possible.

Third, therapists who pathologize. This is really an insidious one. You go to individual therapy, you criticize your spouse, and your therapist is likely to come up with a diagnosis for your spouse. I’m afraid you’re married to a narcissistic personality disorder. When you get a therapist giving you labels to pathologize your partner, it leads to hopelessness. Sometimes the therapist pathologizes the reason you got married. For any marriage in this room, we can get together and figure out what pathology led you to get married. This can lead to a sense of fatalism and hopelessness. You should never have bought that car to begin with.

Another version is pathologizing the current relationship, telling the couple that they have no assets, that this is a sick relationship, that you are of questionnable psychological health if you stay. Let’s say you see an individual therapist after your spouse has an affair, and you’re thinking of taking your spouse back, you can be pathologized for your very commitment to keep trying. What’s wrong with you that you are hanging in there? The therapist can highlight a one-sided sense of victimization. Now there is a lot of marital abuse out there, genuine abuse, but this word gets thrown around a lot. You can take ordinary unhappiness and conflict and transform them into the sense of being abused. You are a victim, and this then propels you out. A new form of pathology, by the way, is clients saying that they’re “bored” in their marriages. I’ve seen therapists get very exorcised about how awful it would be to be in a boring marriage. In a consumer culture, when we want stimulation and satisfaction all the time, boring is the new pathology.
—————–
Fourth, overt undermining. The most common form is provocative questions and challenges. “If you are not happy, why do you stay?” is a directly undermining question. It says “You are an idiot if you stay.” I have a student who had post-partum depressions after both of her children. She went to counselors to get help, in the process complaining about her husband for being insensitive to her emotional distress but not saying that she was doubting her commitment. Each time, at the end of the first session, the therapist said some version of this statement: “I can’t believe you’re still married.” This is an assertion of the therapist’s belief that the couple are fundamentally incompatible and that an intelligent client should run, not walk, out of the marriage. You’d be amazed at how many therapists say this kind of thing after a session or two. What they’re really saying is that the that couple are fundamentally incompatible but that “I am fundamentally unable to help you.” (Laughter.) That’s what that means. And this plays to the distancing spouse.

Then there is undermining by direct advice. It’s against the code of ethics of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy to directly tell people what they should do, either to stay married or divorced, but a lot of therapists do it. They have a different code of ethics. They say, “I think you should break up,” “I think you may need a separation,” or “For your own health you need to move out.” In one case, a woman with a husband and ten children relapsed from her alcoholism. Her individual therapist admitted telling her that she needed to move out and have no contact with her husband or kids, for the sake of her recovery. The family therapist I talked was trying to pick up the pieces with the husband and children.

Now let me show you a video from a public television series, Frontline. It was an exposé of abuses in therapy, and I’ve pulled out an excerpt on marriage. You’ll see Pat, one of the therapists, describe her approach to helping individuals who have marriage problems detach from their marriage. Then you’ll see one of her clients, followed by comments from a second therapist also named Pat. These therapists encourage cutoffs from family of origin, and also from spouses. This is a fringe group of therapists, but what you’re going to hear represents an element of mainstream psychotherapy carried to its logical conclusion of undermining marital commitment.

Frontline Tape.

Scary? Very scary. This group was shut down after this expose came out, but they are back in operation, I am told. But the language that you heard is out prevalent in the world of therapy.

What can be done to make therapy less hazardous to marriages?

1. We need a consumer awareness movement about the risks of sharing marriage problems with a therapist or counselor. Caveat emptor.

2. Licensing boards and professional associations should have training requirements for therapists who claim to practice marital therapy.

3. People considering therapy should learn to ask questions to learn about the therapist’s training and value orientation. They can ask a therapist on the phone or in the first session the following kinds of questions:

• “Can you describe your background and training in marital therapy?” If the therapist is self-taught or workshop-trained, and can’t point to a significant education in this work, then consider going elsewhere.
• “What is your attitude toward salvaging a trouble marriage versus helping couples break up?” If the therapist says he or she is “neutral,” or “I don’t try to save marriage, I try to help people” look elsewhere. (I’d also run if the therapist says he or she does not believe in divorce.)

• “What is your approach when one partner is seriously considering ending the marriage and the other wants to save it?” If the therapist responds by focusing only on helping each person clarify their personal feelings and decisions, consider looking elsewhere.

• “What percentage of your practice is marital therapy?” Avoid therapists who mostly do individual therapy.

• “Of the couples you treat, what percentage would you say work out enough of their problems to stay married with a reasonable amount of satisfaction with the relationship.” “What percentage break up while they are seeing you?” “What percentage do not improve?” “What do you think makes the differences in these results?” If someone says “100%” stay together, I would be concerned, and if they say that staying together is not a measure of success for them, I’d be concerned.
Let me say a few things in conclusion. In the late 90s the cultural tide is shifting. We’re shifting towards what I believe a better balance between individual satisfaction and moral commitment, and towards the creation of new opportunities for people to learn how to have lifelong, successful marriages. But I believe that most therapists are still behind the times. Like generals, they are still fighting the last war. The one that freed individuals to leave unhappy marriages. They still see themselves as liberation fighters, for individual fulfillment against oppressive moral codes and family structures. That’s how I started my career as a therapist. But in the meantime the culture has shifted. The old war has been largely won. Most of us are now free to walk away from our marital commitments more easily than from any other contract in our lives. We can always get a divorce. And we suffer relatively social stigma for doing so. But now we face the prospect of losing our ability to sustain any commitment at all. We have cut through our marital chains but ended up with Velcro. Easy to pull apart, but not strong enough to hold us together under pressure.

Speaking of pressure, I think of long-term marriage like I think about living in Minnesota, in Lake Wobegon, perhaps. You move into marriage in the springtime of hope, but eventually arrive at the Minnesota winter with its cold and darkness. Many of us are tempted to give up and move south at this point. We go to a therapist for help. Some therapists don’t know how to help us cope with winter, and we get frostbite in their care. Other therapists tell us that we are being personally victimized by winter, that we deserve better, that winter will never end, and that if we are true to ourselves we will leave our marriage and head south. The problem of course is that our next marriage will enter its own winter at some point. Do we just keep moving on, or do we make our stand now–with this person, in this season? That’s the moral, existential question. A good therapist, a brave therapist, will help us to cling together as a couple, warming each other against the cold of winter, and to seek out whatever sunlight is still available while we wrestle with our pain and disillusionment. A good therapist, a brave therapist will be the last one in the room to give up on our marriage, not the first one, knowing that the next springtime in Minnesota is all the more glorious for the winter that we endured together. Thank you.
___________________
Copyright CMFCE.

Dr. Ted Baehr

HE WHO CONTROLS THE MEDIA CONTROLS THE CULTURE

Movieguide®: Dr. Baehr is the Publisher of Movieguide®: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment. Released biweekly, Movieguide® offers in-depth analyses of current movies from a biblical perspective. Not only are issues of violence, sex and profanity directly addressed, Movieguide® digs deeply into the moral statements and worldviews of the films it reviews. Dr. Baehr also writes a syndicated column for 29 publications nationwide.

Posted Jan. 30, 2003

SUPREME COURT HAS BEEN CONTRIBUTING TO SOCIAL DECAY, JONES ARGUES

Since the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court has been issuing decisions contrary to the generally held values of Americans, imposing a “modish, untested philosophical notions and extreme libertarianism that would have left the [Constitution's] Framers aghast,” Edith Jones, a judge on the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told a packed room Jan. 28 in a speech sponsored by The Federalist Society.

This series of decisions has done “more to jeopardize than sustain” the future of American society, which she said stands “as the most successful and long-lived experiment in self-government and human freedom in history.”

She attributed that success to the framers’ principles of limited government and personal honor and virtue. The framers’ standards of personal conduct were based on the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule and, whatever the influences of Enlightenment thought might have been, the nation’s foundational values were Biblical.

Surveys show that “95 percent of Americans say they believe in God. People everywhere subscribe to the values of the Ten Commandments—don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t covet—however they are phrased,” she said.

The Court “got out in front of the self-governing society, overturning local authorities and self-governing groups and imposed these values on society,” Jones declared. “I love this country. I love the heritage on which it was built. I want my children to have that heritage. Once people lose self-control it results in the growth of repressive government. When you don’t have internal control, you have to have external ones.”

Jones outlined five areas in which decisions have had what she considers socially damaging consequences: crime and punishment, pornography, family relations, public order and youth and education. The Warren Court, she contended, “extravagantly assumed the power to dictate new ‘rights’ not expressly stated in the Constitution and in so doing foisted its philosophical vision on the United States with consequences far beyond the Court’s imagining.”

The Court has made good decisions over these years but the harmful ones have never been “wholly overruled, although the court has refrained from carrying out their implications to the fullest extent and, on occasion, has retreated.”

She does not think the decisions alone accounted for the cultural trend. “The Dred Scott case did not cause the Civil War. But Dred Scott proves that we cannot and should not ignore the social implications of the Supreme Court’s decisions.”

In the area of crime and punishment, she said that in the ’60s and ’70s crime was thought to be attributable to social problems such as racism and poverty and that criminal behavior was even posited as “a logical response to a repressive society.” Supreme Court decisions wanted society to “play fair in a legalistic sense with lawbreakers” and so “constitutionalized” criminal procedure. She ticked off a 20-item list of new rules that transformed the way investigations, prosecutions and incarcerations are handled and that turned justice into a matter of “gamesmanship between the accused and the state.

“The cat-and-mouse nature of the criminal justice system encourages a criminal to try to beat the odds and, if he is caught, to disdain guilt or responsibility. The present system inhibits the criminal from developing the contrition that is necessary to turn him away from bad behavior,” she said. The rulings have contributed to a more “brutish society.”

The court saw pornography as “being about free speech,” she said, ignoring “the ancient and consistent antecedents of the laws they were overturning.”

She drew a chuckle from the mostly male audience when she read from the majority opinion in Stanley v. Georgia that a man has a “right to satisfy his intellectual needs in the privacy of his home,” and asked if men are answering “intellectual” needs when they look at pornography. She likewise ridiculed another statement in the ruling in Ginsburg v. New York that said parents are not barred from buying magazines containing nudity for their children. “Who can imagine parents purchasing obscene magazines for their children—much less that the Supreme Court would appear to condone it?” she wondered.

Pornography exploits women and children and “puts sex on the level of a bodily function,” and is now hardly confined to the home, she pointed out. It is pervasive on the Internet, in movies and advertising and on television, she said, with the result that modesty has declined and “the rest of the world sees us as immoral.

“The explosion of pornography and the degradation of sex move us toward a society both brutish and solitary,” she lamented.

In a series of decisions bearing on family relations, the court ended the legal distinctions between legitimate and natural children with the result that the marriage has been destabilized as an institution, and children suffer as a result. “Society must erect legal support for the more difficult but ultimately more fulfilling commitments of marriage. There is no proof that a healthy society can exist or perpetuate itself without that institution,” she said.

In the area of public order she argued that the court transmogrified free speech into free expression so that “Shakespeare is on a par with Larry Flynt’s Hustler.” She said the gist of that trend has been to prove George Orwell was right when he said that when the quality of language is debased, the precision of thought suffers.

She also faulted the court for a “loss of order in schools” that she implied resulted in school environments in which shootings now happen. “School discipline is about the rule of the social compact,” she maintained, and one thing schools teach is respect for law. The authority of school boards and officials was “chilled” by decisions such as Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Goss v. Lopez, which she said gave a misplaced adult-like autonomy to children. She said that trend has since subsided.

“By devaluing personal responsibility for good conduct, the Court’s decisions have propelled society back toward a pre-social contract state of nature,” she said. “Only a very wealthy society can indulge such a large share of degradation as we have done.”

Although the court has retrenched on some of its rulings, the moral foundation of self-control is necessary to self-governance and must be fortified. “Laws can slow the decay of morals, but they cannot restore morals,” she said. “The Constitution is not a suicide compact. Judges should not issue decisions that are fatal to society.”

• Reported by M. Marshall

IS NO-FAULT DIVORCE UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

A Retired Judge’s Opinion

January 2002

To your characterization of no-fault divorce laws as both “ungodly” and “inhumane,” I would add “unconstitutional” as well. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution guarantee citizens the right to “due process” in respect to safeguards against violation of life, liberty, and property.

A plausible argument can be made that no-fault divorce laws violate a non-consenting spouse’s due process as well as Article I, Section 10’s prohibition that “no state shall … pass any … law impairing the obligation of contracts ….” The intent of this latter clause is to prevent state governments from passing laws that would release a party from an obligation to which his contract bound him.

America is paying a heavy price for its acquiescence in such error, as the data shows that divorce increases the national incidence of crime, abuse, addiction, decreases the capacity to learn, decreases graduation rates, lowers income and raises incidences of poverty, adult and juvenile suicide, and harmful mental and physical health effects.

Furthermore within family life divorce has the effect of increasing the incidence of weaker parent-child relationships; destructive ways of handling conflict within the family; diminished social competency with peers; a diminished sense of masculinity or femininity in adolescence; troubled courtships; increased premarital teenage sexual activity, number of sexual partners during adolescence, and out-of-wedlock childbirths; higher numbers of children leaving home earlier, as well as higher levels of cohabitation for these children; and- keeping the cycle expanding – higher rates of divorce for the children of divorced parents.

Let’s pray that right-thinking Americans will become energized to bring about needed reform. With the highest per capita church attendance in America, Louisiana would certainly appear to be a likely place to start. We would welcome co-laborers in this cause.

Judge Darrell White (retired)
CEO, Louisiana Family Forum
655 St. Ferdinand St.
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
(800) 606-6470
(225) 344-8533
http://lafamilyforum.org/