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It'll make you think twice

Louisiana's conservative new "covenant marriage"
law ain't more than half bad.

get this: Lazy ol' Louisiana, my home state, has raced to the forefront of a new social movement. It's not exactly the most progressive of social movements, mind you -- the Christian Coalition's misguided masses are behind this thing all the way. But there's something to be said for Louisiana being out front in something other than humidity and corruption. It also happens to be that Louisiana's movement makes some sense.
The movement I refer to is an attempt to strengthen the ties of matrimony. Last week, the Louisiana House and Senate voted overwhelmingly -- there was only one opponent in the two houses -- to create a new form of marriage that will be much harder to wriggle out of than the standard no-fault marriage available throughout the rest of the nation. The new bond is called a "covenant marriage," and its name has religious overtones for a reason: The grounds for divorce look much more biblical than they used to.
To get a divorce today in Louisiana, all you need to show is that you and your spouse have lived apart for six months. Under the new law, a couple could get a divorce only if one partner commits adultery, abandons the family for a year, physically or sexually abuses the other spouse or a child, gets sent to prison for a felony, or if the couple has been informally separated for two years or legally separated for a year (18 months if they have a kid). The goal, of course, is to make people think twice or three times before they tie the knot.
When the bill goes into effect, on Aug. 15, covenant marriages will not be mandatory. Couples will have a choice between a covenant marriage and a no-fault marriage. At least in theory. Mary and I got hitched in Louisiana. I can just imagine what would have happened if, after my year of stalling, I finally asked Mary to be my wife but then told her I wanted to go with Marriage Option B -- the quickie kind. Or worse yet: What if I asked Mary to be my wife and she only wanted Option B?! You see what I mean? I suspect that legions of young Louisiana lovers will avoid the so-called choice altogether by hopping in the Chevy and heading for Las Vegas.
That being said, I think the Louisiana Legislature has got it partially right. Bringing attention to the issue of divorce is an admirable idea. More than half of all marriages end in divorce, and that's just way too high for any society to bear. I doubt that no-fault marriages are the cause of the divorce epidemic, but they sure haven't done much to help, either. Louisiana is right to try a new approach.
But here's where they went wrong: They made almost no distinction between marriages with children and without. The way I look at it, unless we're talking about a case of abuse, the state's got very little business meddling in a marriage that hasn't produced any kids. But when there are kids, especially young ones, that's a whole different story. Far too many kids are growing up in single-parent families. Far too many of those single-parent kids are growing up with lasting scars.
It used to be possible -- hell, it was downright fashionable -- to say that kids could do just fine with one parent. Not anymore. The weight of evidence -- from scholars associated with both the left and the right -- is overwhelming: There ain't no substitute for a stable, two-parent family. I suppose we could choose to ignore this consensus and pretend that family break-up has no social consequences, but at this point in the debate, we might as well claim that smoking doesn't cause cancer. Sure, plenty of kids from single-parent families turn out just fine. And some smokers run marathons and live to be 90 years old. But does that mean that growing up without a daddy or smoking a pack a day isn't harmful to most people? Of course not. The cause-and-effect relationships here are simply beyond dispute. Even the live-and-let-live liberals have gotten that message loud and clear.
If I were writing Louisiana's covenant marriage bill, I would have done it very differently. In fact, some might say my version would be even more dramatic than theirs. I say, forget this voluntary crap. I think every marriage ought to become a covenant marriage ... the moment the couple has any kids. That's the point when the state begins to have a compelling interest in making it difficult for a couple to simply call it quits. That's when a stricter definition of marriage is justifiable. That's when a state could make a real social difference.
This issue ain't going away any time soon. I suspect that we'll see several other states -- most of them Southern -- adopt versions of the Louisiana law over the course of the next year. I'd like to think Democrats will get actively involved in shaping these efforts. As for me, any honest bill that makes couples with children think longer and harder about getting divorced will have my eager support.
June 30, 1997
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