AWOL at the Altar
Breger, Marshall
AWOL at the Altar President Bush s marriage initiative takes a page from Judaism. Why aren't Jewish agencies supporting it? Marshall Breger PRESIDENT BUSH'S NEW MARRIAGE INITIAtive is an...
...In fact, the classic sources tell us that even the study of Torah can be postponed to help bring about a marriage...
...Oklahoma, which had the second highest divorce rate in the nation, has spent $100 million in marriage promotion workshops and videos...
...But it's not an either/or proposition...
...Marriage promotion programs are not panaceas...
...Thus it is passing strange that our Jewish defense agencies have not stepped up to the plate to support Bush's recent marriage initiative...
...What do you want, the network executives say, I Love Lucy} Despite Hollywood's position, few social institutions are more important in Judaism than marriage...
...If Judaism has anything to say about public policy, it should not b e to invoke yet another PC mantra, but to encourage government to actively support marriage...
...Census statistics make it clear that poverty correlates more strongly with marital status than race...
...As Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal has noted, "marriage is displacing both income and race as the great divide of the new century...
...By 1994 out-of-wedlock babies had rocketed to one in three newborns...
...Job training and education are indispensable...
...Perhaps for the government to offer marriage counseling is to "privilege" marriage, thus using the government to promote certain lifestyle options over others...
...However for many single women, counseling, mentoring, and even plain old home economics can do a great deal...
...As it turns out, the opposition to marriage promotion has become for some an evocation of the culture wars, not a dispute over social policy...
...But far more extensive is the view that marriage is a private institution of no concern to the state...
...However, the Bush administration proposal uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to restate what most Americans think to be obvious—that marriage is a preferred state and not merely a private matter of no consequence to society...
...Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas have passed "covenant marriage" laws in which parties voluntarily agree to undergo an onerous divorce process...
...Many women's groups accede on this point, but argue that single women need job training and money, not marriage...
...Opponents of these marriage initiatives take two tacks...
...Government must be engaged with the effects of marriage and marriage breakdown if only because it spends money through welfare and other means to manage the fallout from the breakdown of the family...
...and second, that it is a positive benefit to society which the state should actively encourage...
...This does not mean that the government should intrude on the privacy of the marriage relationship...
...And not to be outdone, Florida cuts the marriage license fee in half for couples who have taken a marriage preparation course...
...The marriage movement is broader than the federal government...
...In any number of sitcoms, TV glorifies every kind of living arrangement other than marriage...
...The Bush initiative directs $300 million of the federal welfare budget to state projects that promote marriage in lowincome families...
...True, to buy in you first have to take two leaps not found in most videos of Sex in the City: First, that marriage is more than a temporary choice for couples besotted with each other...
...But it is foolish to reject government assistance to civil society in promoting what, in the aggregate, is clearly a social good...
...Some decry that the available money is being siphoned from welfare programs for the needy...
...Strengthening that institution should be every American's goal...
...And some 80 percent of child poverty occurs among youth from broken families or unwed parents...
...As one might expect, as America focuses on marriage, Hollywood is peddling just the opposite...
...Even from a purely economic point of view, the focus on marriage for poor people is sensible...
...This position is clearly wrong...
...Marshall Breger PRESIDENT BUSH'S NEW MARRIAGE INITIAtive is an exciting effort to promote oldtime values of fidelity and commitment in marriage...
...Some relationships are so abusive or the participants so immature that the union ought not survive...
Vol. 27 • August 2002 • No. 4
