The Arc of the Covenant Marriage

...Feminists and civil libertarians worry aloud that any stiffening of divorce requirements will keep women in abusive relationships—particularly those involving "mental abuse," which is not among the recognized grounds for "fault" divorce...

...What I don't like about it is the inclusion of fault grounds...

...But their underlying gripe is that the covenant-marriage movement strengthens the hand of anti-feminist elements in the religious Right...

...Even the most ardent family-values advocates have seldom cited insufficient state policing as the primary cause of the current rotten record of marital permanence...

...No-fault divorce is available only after a two-year separation, as against six months under existing state law...

...Whether the work of constructive bullying, or "tough love," can be done by a bunch of counselors and bureaucrats in some Department of Happy Marriages in the state capital 180 miles away is open to question...

...Back when marriage was well policed, it was policed—and not always prettily—by gossips and priests and violent older brothers...

...Today, that kind of minding of other people's business has not only been discredited but even made illegal...

...We're offering a choice, and they're rejecting it...

...Divorce can be granted sooner for the traditional "fault" grounds, which the new law revives—adultery, abandonment, physical or sexual abuse, and conviction of a capital crime...

...The Louisiana covenant-marriage law is bound to face modifications and legal challenges...

...Just look on the Internet," says Louisiana NOW president Terry O'Neill...

...The state's covenant-marriage act—which went into effect in mid-August after being passed 98-0 in the Louisiana House and 37-1 in the Senate—allows couples to choose a "high-test" version of marriage...

...The result is a reversal of roles that ought to be heartening to the GOP For once, it's Republicans who are arguing on behalf of "common sense" solutions for those who work hard and play by the rules...

...Tom Finney, spokesman for the Catholic diocese of New Orleans, says, "The covenant-marriage idea is certainly closer to the Catholic idea of marriage"— although he adds the church will seek assurances that the "counselors" who intervene in a crisis will not be biased in favor of divorce...

...There is a distinctly non-sectarian side to the covenant-marriage movement, one best expressed by strong supporter Amitai Etzioni, founder and director of the Washington-based Communitarian Network, who says, "One can be deeply concerned with strengthening the commitment of marriage without favoring traditional or hierarchical forms of marriages or denying women full equal standing...

...And there will surely be litigation on privacy and illegal-contract grounds—although as Kevin Hasson, an attorney who is president of the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, puts it, "It will be an uphill struggle to say that what marriage has always been until recently has always been unconstitutional...

...No matter what the outcome, something very significant has happened in Louisiana: the first Republican defeat of Clintonism on Clintonite turf...

...So Louisiana's covenant marriage does not, as some of its detractors have claimed, put an end to no-fault divorce...

...critics charging that covenant marriage represents a secret offensive by the religious Right, and some optimists predicting that the rollback of America's divorce culture is underway...

...Democrats, meanwhile, repair to abstract, destroy-the-De-partment-of-Education-style libertarianism of the sort that has proved a consistent loser in the politics of the last three years...

...And you stand on the sidelines and see the havoc divorce wreaks on kids and you want to wring these people's scrawny necks...

...I'd be concerned that young people, teenagers, might fall in love, get into a covenant situation, and not be able to get out of it," she says...

...But the couples know that, and it tears them apart...

...One of the best indicators is the announced willingness of clergymen to use the state law as a test of the seriousness of affianced couples...

...Brinig, who has consulted with legislators from Michigan, Iowa, and Virginia who hope to draft their own marriage-strengthening legislation, has similar worries...

...Let's try something other than hellfire and brimstone...

...Both focus more on reinforcing the solemnity of marital vows than on eliminating no-fault divorce...

...Yet he and the Louisiana lawmakers who voted with him—and more so the supporters of the movement outside of politics—can-not be dismissed as Bible-thumpers...

...He's absolutely right, I absolutely agree...

...For all its conservative associations, it's not certain that the Louisiana statute serves an idea of marriage that conservatives will want to claim as their own...

...Though few couples have yet said "I do" under the new dispensation, friends and foes of Louisiana's innovation believe it is portentous...

...If you want to get married in Louisiana the very same way you could six months ago, no problem...

...That leaves detractors like O'Neill of Louisiana NOW hard-pressed to specify just what it is that so irks them...

...How can they say they're not anti-marriage now...

...Several Episcopal and Baptist ministers have already gone on record as saying they will grant church marriages only to those who are serious enough to undertake a covenant-marriage commitment...

...Think of Ulysses as a husband or wife, and divorce as the shoals...

...In the meantime, what Perkins and his allies have served up is a heady Clintonite cocktail, composed in equal parts of minor legislation, the rhetoric of choice, education (or counseling) as a pain-free means to social improvement, the protection of children as a first imperative, and all of it based on a proposition— that marriage is an institution that's worth defend-ing—with which no one could possibly disagree...

...There is indeed huge sympathy for the measure among the religious...

...Perkins, who ran the 1996 Senate campaign of Republican Woody Jenkins, says he would prefer an end to no-fault divorce "in an ideal world" and hopes that social pressures will eventually result in 50 to 60 percent of marriages being of the covenant type...

...the first employer who decides he wants only covenant-marrieds working in his plant will wind up on the losing end of a Supreme Court decision...

...Says Scott, "What I like about the Louisiana law is its required two-year separation, which is beneficial to a divorcing couple's ability to make a thoughtful decision...

...The intellectual roots of covenant marriage are prosaic by comparison: The concept has been elaborated in the academic work of certain law professors— most notably Elizabeth Scott of the University of Virginia and Margaret Brinig of George Mason Universi-ty—who have cast about for a legal framework to strengthen marriage...

...The Arc of the Covenant Marriage By Christopher Caldwell Supporters of Louisiana's new "covenant-marriage" law compare it to Ulysses' command that he be lashed to the mast of his ship to avoid being lured into the shoals by the singing of Sirens...

...It shows the true colors of some of these groups, the radicalism of their agenda...

...Acting on the belief that America's rate of marital shipwreck is causing special damage to children, and laying at least part of the blame on the ease with which a divorce can be obtained, Louisiana has just become the first state in the nation to offer newly-weds the option of strapping themselves to the conjugal mast...

...I have never seen a man or a woman who wasn't totally traumatized by divorce...

...This law is just a way of punishing them...

...This is not about eliminating divorce," says Tony Perkins, the 34-year-old Republican state legislator who sponsored Louisiana's new law...

...I'm on the same page with Perkins on some issues," she says...

...Indeed, similar legislation is pending in Indiana and California, not to mention bills in half a dozen other states (all of them thus far unsuccessful) to either restrict no-fault or add counseling requirements before marriage or divorce...

...Covenant' and 'covenant marriage' are terms with a very specific meaning in the Christian community...

...And extravagant claims abound on both sides, with Christopher Caldwell is senior writer of The Weekly Standard...

...While the opinion has not yet come down, Perkins expects it will mandate some kind of licensing for both secular and church counselors...

...Perkins meanwhile, is not above a little gloating...

...Perkins, in fact, far from seeing his legislation as an attempt to undo the legacy of feminism, notes that it actually expands the grounds for fault-based divorce, making Louisiana the only state outside of West Virginia that admits child abuse as a rationale...

...Just as it amazed onlookers to see the ease with which a masterful pol like Bill Clinton could turn traditionally "liberal" issues like gun control into "family values" issues, Perkins has stunned Louisiana's political establishment by courting feminists with hard evidence that traditional marriage favors even untraditional women...

...But the new law does send an unmistakable message that the state—one state at least—has an interest in intervening to shore up what it sees as an embattled institution...

...And against the complaints of NOW that a lengthened waiting period will keep women in abusive relationships, covenant-marriage partisans cite a 1991 Justice Department study showing that current husbands/fathers account for only 9 percent of abuse cases—the rest of the perpetrators being ex-husbands, boyfriends, and other nomadic partners of the divorce culture...

...Perkins, a father of two girls who is active in the Promise-Keepers movement, makes no bones about his own Christianity...

...If its intellectual originators are modest in their conception of what covenant marriage can accomplish, its political sponsors use similarly understated rhetoric...

...In an era of laws protecting, for instance, gays from housing or job discrimination, there is no real possibility of informal discrimination to enforce heterosexual fidelity...

...Justices of the peace, uncertain of whether they can provide one-stop pre-marital counseling as part of the covenant-marriage package, have asked for an opinion from the state attorney general...

...He says no-fault divorce has harmed women and created a 'trophy-wife' problem...

...The goal is to strengthen marriage...

...Couples who want a covenant marriage must receive counseling before marriage, and—knock wood— before seeking divorce...