Indecent Proposals

A movement gaining momentum in the US, especially the South and other "Red State" areas, is the idea of covenant marriage, in which couples add extra legal strength to normal marriages by limiting divorce to cases of abuse, felony, or adultery, or at least 2 years of separation.

Relative to Irish laws, this is still pretty lax, and certainly seems a more honest "defence of marriage" than demonizing gays. I was surprised to see the normally reasoned TNR raise such a sophomoric objection against it.

Effectively, they argue that people will still find ways out of marriage. Well, true. Where's the insight? Undoubtedly, some of these marriages will end in divorce, and they allow for that explicitly. Any of the 3 big no-no's, or a 2 year separation, are enough to start the process. (Marriage councelling is also required, but that hardly seems an enduring barrier)

How many rocky marriages might be saved, though, if divorce couldn't happen on a whim? Not all, but some positive number. That's the point of the movement, as far as I can tell. There's no denying the "social realities" that some people don't want to stay married to each other, simply the admirable goal of attempting to repair some repairable marriages. And there's always the 2-year bail-out clause if councelling and reconciliation don't work.

The most interesting point is about how many divorces might be prevented if we don't allow certain people to get married in the first place:

"The reality is that too many people are getting married who shouldn't. In
Arkansas, for example, the divorce rate is more than 50 percent above the
national average. But the marriage rate is almost twice the national average. So
the real question isn't how to force people to stay married, but how to prevent
divorce candidates from getting married in the first place."

Younger and poorer people get divorced more often than older and wealther people, so maybe we should prevent that, they suggest. That's certainly a mathematical truth, but a very revealing argument. Sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it.

TNR even acknowledges that the covenant movement makes positive progress in this direction by requiring pre-marital counceling, and then decries them for not doing enough.

Is this perfect? Not by a long shot. But does it contain helpful ideas without introducing additional negative ones? I think so, and in that respect is worth studying rather than dismissing.