THE CENTRALITY OF MARRIAGE

• First, the state of marriage within our culture.  For the first time in history, less than half of US households are headed by married couples.  Further, on 29 September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that almost 36% of all births are the result of unmarried childbearing, the highest percentage ever recorded.  As Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, observes, “a family law that fails to encourage marriage ignores the fact that marriage has long been associated with an impressively broad array of positive outcomes for children and adults alike.  Experts who contend that we need to move ‘beyond marriage’ say they are only responding to the facts.  But here is one major fact:  High rates of family fragmentation hurt children.”  For example, studies have consistently shown that children raised outside marriage suffer disproportionately from physical and mental illness; are more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs or alcohol, and engage in violence or suffer it in their homes; and are less than likely to attend college.  As Sears argues, “Child Trend, a nonpartisan research organization, summed up the evidence in 2002:  ‘Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in step-families or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes.’”  For these reasons, several important legal organizations (e.g., the Institute for American Values, the Georgia Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law, and a new book entitled, Reconceiving the Family) are all advocating an important goal—to find ways to reduce unnecessary divorce and unmarried childbearing.  There must be a commitment within family law “to identify new ways to support marriage as a social institution so that each year more children are protected by being raised within the marital unions of their parents.”  Why is chief justice Sears of Georgia so concerned about the state of the family?  Cases involving fragmenting families are flooding the court dockets.  Domestic relations cases in Georgia, for example, now account for 65% of all cases in Georgia at the Superior Court level.  Sears writes that “last year more than 14,000 children were in the care of the Georgia Division of Family and Children services, and nearly 24,000 were admitted to a youth detention center.  One out of every four Georgia children under 18 has a case with the Office of Child Support Enforcement.”  The evidence is compelling and certain—and we do not need further study of the problem; we need action.  Our courts, our legislatures, and our Congress at the national level must wake up to the reality that we are self-destructing as a culture when we ignore this.  For no other reason than the betterment and well-being of our children, we can no longer ignore the facts that a healthy, two-parent family structure is best for children.  See chief justice Sears’ editorial in the Washington Post (30 October 2006).

• To show how short-sighted our nation is on this matter, one only need consider the recent New Jersey Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.  On 7 November across the nation eight states will consider ballot measures to ban same-sex marriages.  As Maggie Gallagher, the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, has written, the contrast between the political landscape when the Supreme Court acted in 1967 legitimizing interracial marriages (Perez v. Sharp), is marked:  “When the court moved to strike down the interracial marriage laws, the democratic process was in the process of getting rid of these laws.  What’s happening now is exactly the opposite: more and more states are moving to protect marriage.”  But, on 25 October 2006, New Jersey’s highest court ruled that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, but the court was split over whether to call such unions “marriage” or some other name.  It handed that issue off to the legislature.  The decision was typical of what has come down from courts on matters of the family and marriage of late:  It was filled with bold and sweeping pronouncements about equality and ordered the New Jersey legislature within 180 days to either expand existing laws or come up with new ones to provide gay couples benefits, including tuition assistance, survivors’ benefits under workers’ compensation laws, and spousal privilege in criminal trials.  Although the New Jersey court did not go as far as the Massachusetts court did in 2003, its actions are similar to the Vermont situation where same-sex civil unions are permitted.  Arguably, this was an astute political decision.  It argues exactly the same thing that the Massachusetts court did, but it does not mandate that New Jersey call such relationships “marriage.”  The court leaves that up to the legislature, albeit giving them 180 days to resolve this matter.  The disaster of the New Jersey decision is that the court refused to consider the idea that marriage has anything to do with procreation and paternity.  Is marriage just about protecting the legal rights of two people—now not only a man and a woman, but also same-sex partners?  Is that what marriage is?  Or is marriage about procreation, as the Bible clearly states, and about raising of children, about parenting?  Again, the Bible, in Deuteronomy 6 for example, makes clear that marriage is about training and equipping the next generation.  It is not merely the protection of the rights of two people.  The term “marriage” is not simply a label, or even a legal concept.  “Marriage” is a fundamental institution, a building block of society that is rooted in God’s revelation to the human race.  Humanity might seek to abandon what God has said about “marriage” but it will do so at its own peril.  Courts like the New Jersey Supreme Court may seek to protect the rights of two adults of same-sex unions, but they are fundamentally altering the definition of the most sacred institution God has created.  The consequences of that change will never be positive (see Romans 1:18-32).

See Adam Liptak, “Gay Marriage Through a Black-White Prism,” New York Times (29 October 2006) and David W. Chen, news report in the New York Times (26 October 2006).