Tracy:

I share your underlying philosophy about the importance of marriage.
The question is: what do we do to promote this philosophy?

The fact that 50 percent of U.S. marriages end in divorce, and that a
huge number of social problems result from these breakdowns (as well as
from nonmarital births), is emphatically NOT accidental. It follows
from the existence of a wide range of people in the U.S. who order their
priorities in a way that destroys marriage. The people who do this (for
the most part) don't realize what they are doing. The Biblical verse
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" is applicable to
most such people. (But it's not applicable to all of them, because some
of them WANT to destroy marriage -- or, as they would say "traditional
marriage" -- and know very well what they are doing.)

The people who have destroyed marriage in the U.S. are the people who
have favored the rights of individuals over the rights of families and
children. In particular, the feminist movement in the U.S. and other
countries has focused all its attention on enlarging the range of
choices available to women, even when this enlargement takes place at
the expense of men and children, and of society generally. (I take no
satisfaction in saying this, but back in the late 1960s, about 40 years
ago, when the feminist movement was getting started, I KNEW what the
ultimately outcome would be. Even back then, there were people -- and I
was one of them -- who said: "But what about children?" They never got
any answer, and now, decades later, we know that there WAS no answer to
be given.)

This news group is about child support. So it is appropriate to
illustrate this point by reference to child support. Anyone who has
been involved in child support issues for any length of time, and who is
not blinded by the feminist mindset, soon recognizes that child support
in the U.S. is not about children and their needs. It is about ensuring
that the widest possible range of choices is available to women. It is
about ensuring that women are able to make the decision to establish
fatherless families, secure in the knowledge that the men involved will
be forced to subsidize these decisions.

What could be done to rebuild marriage and two-parent families? I
don't look on myself as a radical, but in this area I see no alternative
to a radical solution. Government must get out of the business of
intervening in families entirely. There must be no state or federal
laws about divorce, alimony, or "child support." Instead, couples
contemplating marriage must be told that they must enter into binding
prenuptial contracts that specify all the details, including the details
of what would happen if there were a divorce.

If marriage were privatized in this way, we would have an end to the
situation where, in the U.S., special interest groups are able to lobby
state legislatures for changes in the laws on divorce and "child
support," and then have those changes applied retroactively to existing
marriages, including those that have taken place years earlier, and not
even in the same jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. we are still a long way off recognizing the
underlying realities of the situation. Meantime, the special interest
groups who are destroying marriage and the family continue to make
steady headway. They are helped by all the politicians, bureaucrats,
and members of the judiciary who see short-term gains in pandering to
these groups.

My bumper sticker would be: "Privatize marriage!" Until that happens,
my alternative bumper sticker -- and I suspect that of many divorced men
-- is: "They'll never get me up in one of those things again."




Tracy wrote:

I arrived home around 12:30 pm today after spending the last 26 hours prior
to that time doing the following:

more than 11 hours driving
about 4 hours at a wedding
about 4 hours just "relaxing" at a hotel
about an hour eating breakfast this morning
and about 6 hours sleeping

During the drive home my mother and I had a chance to talk about marriage
overall. We seen a bumper sticker which read "I think therefore I'm not
married". I found this bumper sticker sad. As I sat in the church
witnessing my nephew get married to a wonderful young lady, I observed her
family. All were non-supportive in her choices of a husband. It brought
memories back to my mother of my sister & brother-in-law getting married,
and how his family was not supportive of their marriage. They just "knew"
their marriage wouldn't last, but my sister and brother-in-law recently
celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. So back to the bumper sticker
and why I found it sad. The bumper sticker shows how some are truly
non-supportive of marriages. It is sad, and wrong, that there are those who
are unable to practice what they preach (support choices). So why can't we,
as a society, support marriages? Don't these people realize we can
considerably decrease the divorce rate if we support other people's choices
of being married? If I could I would have held up a sign to the woman
driving the car with that bumper sticker that read "people like you is the
reason we have such a high divorce rate". In my opinion, she wouldn't have
gotten the point - because she isn't thinking. How can she, or anyone else
like her, expect others to support her choices when she isn't supporting
theirs? Marriage is the foundation to a strong family. Family is the
foundation to any society. It teaches us how to relate to others, how to
interact with each other, and how to get along with others. People who are
non-supportive of a marriage is shaking the foundation of that marriage. It
will cause a weaker family, and hence increase the chances of divorce -
heartache - and trouble with our kids. If only people understood what they
are causing by not being supportive. If only people could look beyond
themselves and see how they - themselves - could impact others.

I'm very happy for my sister. She has a successful marriage. Her marriage
will last. My nephew, who recently turned 22, has grown up considerably
since the last time I seen him. He views life differently now that he is
married, and yes - he is going to be a father by the middle of August. Him
and his wife wanted to be married last year, but her parents first tried to
talk her out of it. Then they kept postponing their marriage in hopes she
would leave him. They only agreed to participate due to her being
pregnant... oh, the medical community told my nephew's wife she could get
pregnant. She doesn't ovulate... obvious they were wrong. I'm very honored
to be an Aunt to my nephew. He is turning out to be one very responsible
and thoughtful young man. He reminds me of his father at his age. I wish
both of them well, and I'll be very supportive of their marriage.

Tracy
~~~~~~~
http://www.hornschuch.net/tracy/
"You can't solve problems with the same
type of thinking that created them."
Albert Einstein

*** spamguard in place! to email me: tracy at hornschuch dot net ***