Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: "Where were you on D-Day?" For baby boomers, the questions are: "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "What were you doing when Nixon resigned?"

Every generation has its defining moment. For Generation X, it could be: "When did your parents get divorced?" Susan Gregory Thomas, author of the memoir "In Spite of Everything," explains what she sees as its long-term effects on marriage and parenting.

For much of my generation—Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980—there is only one question: "When did your parents get divorced?" Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.

When my dad left in the spring of 1981 and moved five states away with his executive assistant and her four kids, the world as I had known it came to an end. In my 12-year-old eyes, my mother, formerly a regal, erudite figure, was transformed into a phantom in a sweaty nightgown and matted hair, howling on the floor of our gray-carpeted playroom. My brother, a sweet, goofy boy, grew into a sad, glowering giant, barricaded in his room with dark graphic novels and computer games.

I spent the rest of middle and high school getting into trouble in suburban Philadelphia: chain-smoking, doing drugs, getting kicked out of schools, spending a good part of my senior year in a psychiatric ward. Whenever I saw my father, which was rarely, he grew more and more to embody Darth Vader: a brutal machine encasing raw human guts.

Growing up, my brother and I were often left to our own devices, members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and '80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers' houses during the week to their fathers' apartments every other weekend.

The divorced parents of a boy I knew in high school installed him in his own apartment because neither of them wanted him at home. Naturally, we all descended on his place after school—sometimes during school—to drink and do drugs. He was always wasted, no matter what time we arrived. A few years ago, a friend told me that she had learned that he had drunk himself to death by age 30.

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"Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced." Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s—in other words, our parents' marriages.

Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950 was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for women.

Before we get married, we like to know what our daily relationship with a partner will be like. Are we good roommates? A 2007 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that, among those entering first marriages in the early 2000s, nearly 60% had previously cohabited with their future spouses. According to the U.S. government's 2002 National Survey of Fertility Growth, 34% of couples who move in together have announced publicly that marriage is in the future; 36% felt "almost certain" that they'd get hitched, while 46% said there was "a pretty good chance" or "a 50-50 chance."

I believed that I had married my best friend as fervently as I believed that I'd never get divorced. No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. And I wasn't the only one with strong personal reasons to make this commitment. According to a 2004 marketing study about generational differences, my age cohort "went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history." Census data show that almost half of us come from split families; 40% were latch-key kids.

People my parents' age say things like: "Of course you'd feel devastated by divorce, honey—it was a horrible, disorienting time for you as a child! Of course you wouldn't want it for yourself and your family, but sometimes it's better for everyone that parents part ways; everyone is happier."

Such sentiments bring to mind a set of statistics in "Generations" by William Strauss and Neil Howe that has stuck with me: In 1962, half of all adult women believed that parents in bad marriages should stay together for the children's sake; by 1980, only one in five felt that way. "Four-fifths of [those] divorced adults profess to being happier afterward," the authors write, "but a majority of their children feel otherwise."

20th Century Fox Many Generation X parents are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of their parents, and today, 'friendly divorces' are increasingly common. Here, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in 1989's 'The War of the Roses.'

But a majority of their children feel otherwise. There is something intolerable about that clause. I can't help feeling that every divorce, in its way, is a re-enactment of "Medea": the wailing, murderously bereft mother; the cold father protecting his pristine, new family; the children: dead.

When I had my first child at 32, I went into therapy for a while to sort through, among other things, just why the world—as open and wonderful as it had become with my child's presence—had also become more treacherous than I ever could have imagined. It wasn't until my daughter was a few months old that it dawned on me that when the pediatricians and child-care books referred to "separation anxiety," they were referring to the baby's psyche, not to mine.

The thought of placing her in someone else's care sent waves of pure, white fear whipping up my spine. It occurred to me that perhaps my own origins had something to do with what a freak show I was. After hearing about my background for some time, my distinguished therapist made an announcement: "You," she said, "are a war orphan."

Orphans as parents—that's not a bad way to understand Generation X parents. Having grown up without stable homes, we pour everything that we have into giving our children just that, no matter how many sacrifices it involves. Indeed, Gen-X's quest for perfect nests drove us to take out more home equity loans and to spend more on remodeling, per capita, than any generation before it, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Marketing surveys reveal that Generation X mothers don't seek parenting advice from their own moms. Why would we take counsel from the very people who, in our view, flubbed it all up? Instead, says the research, we depend on the people who actually raised us, albeit wolf-pack style: our friends.

To allow our own marriages to end in divorce is to live out our worst childhood fears. More horrifying, it is to inflict the unthinkable on what we most love and want to protect: our children. It is like slashing open our own wounds and turning the knife on our babies. To consider it is unbearable.

My husband and I were as obvious as points on a graph in a Generation X marriage study. We were together for nearly eight years before we got married, and even though statistics show that divorce rates are 48% higher for those who have lived together previously, we paid no heed.

We also paid no heed to his Catholic parents, who comprised one of the rare reassuringly unified couples I'd ever met, when they warned us that we should wait until we were married to live together. As they put it, being pals and roommates is different from being husband and wife. How bizarrely old-fashioned and sexist! We didn't need anything so naïve or retro as "marriage." Please. We were best friends.

Sociologists, anthropologists and other cultural observers tell us that members of Generation X are more emotionally invested in our spouses than previous generations were. We are best friends; our marriages are genuine partnerships. Many studies have found that Generation X family men help around the house a good deal more than their forefathers. We depend on each other and work together.

Adultery is far more devastating for us than it was for our parents or grandparents. A 2003 study by the late psychologist Shirley Glass found that the mores of sexual infidelity are undergoing a profound change. The traditional standard for men—love is love and sex is sex—is dying out. Increasingly, men and women develop serious emotional attachments with their would-be lovers long before they commit adultery. As a result, she found, infidelity today is much more likely to lead to divorce.

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Everett Collection In 'Kramer vs. Kkramer' (1979) young Billy is caught in a custody battle.

 Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: "Kids come first" meant that we would not divorce.

But marriages do dissolve, even among those determined never to let it happen. After nine years, my husband and I had become wretched, passive-aggressive roommates. I had given up trying to do anything in the kitchen and had not washed a dish in a year. My husband had not been able to "find time" to read the book I had written. We rarely spoke, except about logistics. We hadn't slept in the same room for at least two years, a side effect of the nighttime musical bed routine that parents of so many young children play in semiconsciousness for years on end.

Yet I never considered divorce. It never even entered my mind. I was grateful that my babies had a perfect father, for our family meals, for the stability of our home, for neighborhood play dates.

But then, one evening, I found myself where I vowed I'd never be: miserable, in tears, telling my husband that we were like siblings who couldn't stand each other rather than a couple, and listening as my husband said he felt as though we had never really been a couple and regretted that we hadn't split up a decade earlier. "I'm done," he said. It was as if a cosmic force had been unleashed; the awful finality of it roared in like an enormous black cloud blotting out the sky, over every inch of the world. It was done.

That was four years ago. Even now, I still wonder every day if there was something that I—we—could have done differently. Like many of my cohort, the circumstances of my upbringing led me to believe that I had made exactly the right choices by doing everything differently from my parents.

I had married the kindest, most stable person I'd ever known to ensure that our children would never know anything of the void of my own childhood. I nursed, loved, read to and lolled about with my babies—restructured and re-imagined my career—so that they would be secure, happy, attended to. My husband and I made the happiest, most comfy nest possible. We worked as a team; we loved our kids; we did everything right, better than right. And yet divorce came. In spite of everything.

I don't know what makes a good marriage. I am inclined to think that Mark Twain was right when he wrote in an 1894 journal: "No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century." But I did know something about divorce, and I wanted—and my former husband wanted—to do it as "well" as possible.

Many of us do. The phrase "friendly divorce" may strike some as an oxymoron, but it is increasingly a trend and a real possibility. Relatively inexpensive and nonadversarial divorce mediation—rather than pricey, contentious litigation—is now more common than ever. Many of us are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of our parents, and we have no intention of putting our kids through it, too. According to a recent University of Virginia study, couples who decide to mediate their divorce are more likely than those who go to court to talk regularly about the children's needs and problems, to participate in school and special events, daily activities, holidays and vacations.

We may not make it in marriage, but we still want to make it as parents. In the '70s, only nine states permitted joint custody. Today, every state has adopted it. It was once typical for dads to recede from family life, or to drop out altogether, in the wake of a divorce. But dads are critical in helping kids to develop self-esteem and constructive habits of behavior. A 2009 study published in the journal Child Development found, for example, that teenagers with involved fathers are less likely to engage in risky sexual activities.

Joint custody also reduces family strife. According to a 2001 study, couples with such arrangements report less conflict with their former spouses than sole-custody parents—an important finding, since judges have worried, historically, that joint custody exposes children to ongoing parental fighting. Some divorced couples have even decided to continue living together in different parts of the home—or to "swap out" each week—in order to maintain some measure of stability for their kids.

I have yet to meet the divorced mother or father who feels like a good parent, who professes to being happier with how their children are now being raised. Many of us have ended up inflicting pain on our children, which we did everything to avoid.

But we have not had our parents' divorces either. We can only hope that in this, we have done it differently in the right way.

—Adapted from "In Spite of Everything: A Memoir" by Susan Gregory Thomas, to be published by Random House next week. Copyright © by Susan Gregory Thomas.
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By JOHN GARVEY My wife and I have sent five children to college and our youngest just graduated. Like many parents, we encouraged them to study hard and spend time in a country where people don't speak English. Like all parents, we worried about the kind of people they would grow up to be.

We may have been a little unusual in thinking it was the college's responsibility to worry about that too. But I believe that intellect and virtue are connected. They influence one another. Some say the intellect is primary. If we know what is good, we will pursue it. Aristotle suggests in the "Nicomachean Ethics" that the influence runs the other way. He says that if you want to listen intelligently to lectures on ethics you "must have been brought up in good habits." The goals we set for ourselves are brought into focus by our moral vision.

"Virtue," Aristotle concludes, "makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means." If he is right, then colleges and universities should concern themselves with virtue as well as intellect.

I want to mention two places where schools might direct that concern, and a slightly old-fashioned remedy that will improve the practice of virtue. The two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up.

Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for young adults aged 17-24. Students who engage in binge drinking (about two in five) are 25 times more likely to do things like miss class, fall behind in school work, engage in unplanned sexual activity, and get in trouble with the law. They also cause trouble for other students, who are subjected to physical and sexual assault, suffer property damage and interrupted sleep, and end up babysitting problem drinkers.

Hooking up is getting to be as common as drinking. Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who heads the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, says that in various studies, 40%-64% of college students report doing it.

The effects are not all fun. Rates of depression reach 20% for young women who have had two or more sexual partners in the last year, almost double the rate for women who have had none. Sexually active young men do more poorly than abstainers in their academic work. And as we have always admonished our own children, sex on these terms is destructive of love and marriage.

Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.

I know it's countercultural. More than 90% of college housing is now co-ed. But Christopher Kaczor at Loyola Marymount points to a surprising number of studies showing that students in co-ed dorms (41.5%) report weekly binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing (17.6%). Similarly, students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year—and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.

The point about sex is no surprise. The point about drinking is. I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up—and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up).

Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls. It will take a few years to complete the transformation.

The change will probably cost more money. There are a few architectural adjustments. We won't be able to let the ratio of men and women we admit into the freshman class vary from year to year with the size and quality of the pools. But our students will be better off.

Mr. Garvey is president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

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On gay marriage, stop playing the hate card
By Matthew J. Franck
Sunday, December 19, 2010; B01

Matthew J. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.

In the debates over gay marriage, "hate" is the ultimate conversation-stopper.

Some stories from recent months: A religion instructor at a midwestern state university explains in an e-mail to students the rational basis for Catholic teaching on homosexuality. He is denounced by a student for "hate speech" and is dismissed from his position. (He is later reinstated - for now.) At another midwestern state university, a department chairman demurs from a student organizer's request that his department promote an upcoming "LGBTQ" film festival on campus; he is denounced to his university's chancellor, who indicates that his e-mail to the student warrants inquiry by a "Hate and Bias Incident Response Team."

On the west coast, a state law school moves to marginalize a Christian student group that requires its members to pledge they will conform to orthodox Christian doctrines on sexual morality. In the history of the school, no student group has ever been denied campus recognition. But this one is, and the U.S. Supreme Court lets the school get away with it.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a once-respected civil rights organization, publishes a "report" identifying a dozen or so "anti-gay hate groups," some for no apparent reason other than their vocal opposition to same-sex marriage. Other marriage advocacy groups are put on a watch list.

On a left-wing Web site, a petition drive succeeds in pressuring Apple to drop an "app" from its iTunes store for the Manhattan Declaration, an ecumenical Christian statement whose nearly half-million signers are united in defense of the right to life, the tradition of conjugal marriage between man and woman, and the principles of religious liberty. The offense? The app is a "hate fest." Fewer than 8,000 people petition for the app to go; more than five times as many petition Apple for its reinstatement, so far to no avail.

Finally, on "$#*! My Dad Says," a CBS sitcom watched by more than 10 million weekly viewers, an entire half-hour episode is devoted to a depiction of the disapproval of homosexuality as bigotry, a form of unreasoning intolerance that clings to the past with a coarse and mean-spirited judgmentalism. And this on a show whose title character is famously irascible and politically incorrect, but who in this instance turns out to be fashionably cuddly and up-to-date.

What's going on here? Clearly a determined effort is afoot, in cultural bastions controlled by the left, to anathematize traditional views of sexual morality, particularly opposition to same-sex marriage, as the expression of "hate" that cannot be tolerated in a decent civil society. The argument over same-sex marriage must be brought to an end, and the debate considered settled. Defenders of traditional marriage must be likened to racists, as purveyors of irrational fear and loathing. Opposition to same-sex marriage must be treated just like support for now long-gone anti-miscegenation laws.

This strategy is the counsel of desperation. In 30 states, the people have protected traditional marriage by constitutional amendment: In no state where the question has been put directly to voters has same-sex marriage been adopted by democratic majorities. But the advocates of a revolution in the law of marriage see an opportunity in Perry v. Schwarzenegger , currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In his district court ruling in the case in August, Judge Vaughn Walker held that California's Proposition 8 enacted, "without reason, a private moral view" about the nature of marriage that cannot properly be embodied in public policy. Prop 8's opponents are hoping for similar reasoning from the appeals court and, ultimately, from the Supreme Court.

The SPLC's report on "hate groups" gives the game away. It notes that no group is listed merely for "viewing homosexuality as unbiblical." But when describing standard expressions of Christian teaching, that we must love the sinner while hating the sin, the SPLC treats them as "kinder, gentler language" that only covers up unreasoning hatred for gay people. Christians are free to hold their "biblical" views, you see, but we know that opposition to gay marriage cannot have any basis in reason. Although protected by the Constitution, these religious views must be sequestered from the public square, where reason, as distinguished from faith, must prevail.

Marginalize, privatize, anathematize: These are the successive goals of gay-marriage advocates when it comes to their opponents.

First, ignore the arguments of traditional marriage's defenders, that marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that children will have mothers and fathers, and that same-sex marriage is not an expansion but a dismantling of the institution. Instead, assert that no rational arguments along these lines even exist and so no refutation is necessary, and insinuate that those who merely want to defend marriage are "anti-gay thugs" or "theocrats" or "Taliban," as some critics have said.

Second, drive the wedge between faith and reason, chasing traditional religious arguments on marriage and morality underground, as private forms of irrationality.

Finally, decree the victory of the new public morality - here the judges have their role in the liberal strategy - and read the opponents of the new dispensation out of polite society, as the crazed bigots of our day.

American democracy doesn't need civility enforcers, nor must it become a public square with signs reading "no labels allowed." Robust debate is necessarily passionate debate, especially on a question like marriage. But the charge of "hate" is not a contribution to argument; it's the recourse of people who would rather not have an argument at all.

That is no way to conduct public business on momentous questions in a free democracy. "Hate" cannot be permitted to be the conversation stopper in the same-sex marriage debate. The American people, a tolerant bunch who have acted to protect marriage in three-fifths of the states, just aren't buying it. And they still won't buy it even if the judges do.

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The Community Levee Association believes the arguments for "marriage equality" are misguided because those in favor of preserving the traditional definition of marriage are not asking the government to prohibit behavior, only to not misuse a religious term. If behavior were being prohibited, as it was with slavery, jim crow, and laws against miscegenation, then there would be legitimate constitutional issues and the "marriage equality" movement would be a great civil rights struggle. As it is, this is simply a group of persons who want a title that does not apply to them, though they are free to live as they wish.
Marriage equality for all couples
By John D. Podesta and Robert A. Levy
Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A17


Nearly a century after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that "marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.' " That 1967 case, Loving v. Virginia, ended bans on interracial marriage in the 16 states that still had such laws.

Now, 43 years after Loving, the courts are once again grappling with denial of equal marriage rights -- this time to gay couples. We believe that a society respectful of individual liberty must end this unequal treatment under the law.

Toward that goal, we have agreed to co-chair the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. The foundation helped launch the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is currently before a federal district court in California but is likely to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Perry case -- scheduled for closing arguments next Wednesday -- was brought by two couples whose relationships are marked by the sort of love, commitment and respect that leads naturally to marriage. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier and their four children, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, ask for no more, and deserve no less, than the equal rights accorded to every other American family. But they are blocked from obtaining marriage licenses under California's Proposition 8.

The plaintiffs' legal team, headed by former Bush v. Gore antagonists Theodore Olson and David Boies, has demonstrated that no good reason exists for the denial of fundamental civil rights under Proposition 8. We support that position.

Although we serve, respectively, as president of a progressive and chairman of a libertarian think tank, we are not joining the foundation's advisory board to present a "bipartisan" front. Rather, we have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation's character. This is not about politics; it's about an indispensable right vested in all Americans.

Over more than two centuries, minorities in America have gradually experienced greater freedom and been subjected to fewer discriminatory laws. But that process unfolded with great difficulty.

As the country evolved, the meaning of one small word -- "all" -- has evolved as well. Our nation's Founders reaffirmed in the Declaration of Independence the self-evident truth that "all Men are created equal," and our Pledge of Allegiance concludes with the simple and definitive words "liberty and justice for all." Still, we have struggled mightily since our independence, often through our courts, to ensure that liberty and justice is truly available to all Americans.

Thanks to the genius of our Framers, who separated power among three branches of government, our courts have been able to take the lead -- standing up to enforce equal protection, as demanded by the Constitution -- even when the executive and legislative branches, and often the public as well, were unwilling to confront wrongful discrimination.

Indeed, the Supreme Court issued its Loving ruling in the face of widespread opposition. A Gallup poll taken within months of the decision found that 74 percent of the American public "disapproved" of interracial marriage. Nevertheless, the court vindicated those constitutional rights to which every American is entitled. As we look back, the Loving decision is hailed as an example of the best in American jurisprudence.

In terms of public opinion, courts addressing marriage equality have less of a hill to climb. Opposition to same-sex marriage pales next to the intense hostility the court faced before its ruling in Loving. A February Post poll showed 47 percent support for same-sex marriage (up from 37 percent support in the same poll in 2003). The Post poll also showed that the younger an individual is, the more likely he or she is to favor marriage equality, regardless of political persuasion. Among individuals ages 18 to 29, an estimated 65 percent support marriage equality.

Our history will soon be written by young people who are seizing the reins from the baby boomers. They seem prepared to reject laws that serve no purpose other than to deny two committed and loving individuals the right to join in a mutually reinforcing marital relationship.

The decision in Perry depends, of course, on values far more permanent and important than opinion polls. No less than the constitutional rights of millions of Americans are at stake. But the public appears to be catching up with the Constitution. Just a little more leadership from the courts would be the perfect prescription for a free society.

John D. Podesta is founder and president of the Center for American Progress. Robert A. Levy is chairman of the Cato Institute.
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Marriage Needs and Builds Maturity I read with interest "Matrimony: Eat, Pray, Love, Then Commit" (Weekend Journal, Jan. 2). Author Elizabeth Gilbert advises people to not "get married when you're 20 years old," and she says that marriage requires that we "check at least a few of our most idealistic youthful dreams at the door before entering."

My husband and I were married when I was 22 and he was 25. Our union has been tried in ways I never thought possible, and we have dealt with each of the "Big Three" issues that marriage counselors say often lead to divorce: sex, money and in-laws. Now, 2½ years into the marriage and almost one baby later, we are closer, more in love and more committed than we were when we married—without a prenuptial agreement but with a commitment to work out problems and stay happily married. We married the old-fashioned way: young and for life.

I think the grandest "idealistic dream" that 21st-century Americans need to check at the door is the idea that 30 or 40 years of living with few responsibilities and little accountability will prepare them for a stable, happy marriage. Upon graduating from high school I did something few people my age do any more: I moved out of my parents' house, got a job, worked my way through college and lived in cheap, crowded apartments with several roommates and without a car, cell phone, or any money from my parents. More so than 30 years of partying and "finding myself," these experiences helped shape me into a woman who was ready for marriage. If we want to make peace with marriage we need to grow up enough to accept the responsibilities it entails.

Nicholette Lambert

South Jordan, Utah
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Can the Recession Save Marriage? more in Opinion » By W. BRADFORD WILCOX Judging by recent press reports, the family fallout associated with the Great Recession has been severe. Take the Bachmuth family, profiled last month in the New York Times. After Paul Bachmuth lost his job at a Texas electric consulting firm in December of last year, his life and marriage took a turn for the worse. Often dejected, he would spend hours surfing the Internet or watching television.

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Grant Robertson Paul and his wife, Amanda, fought over money. She also resented the part-time job she had to pick up at a day-care center to keep the family solvent, especially since she continued to shoulder the bulk of the family's cooking, cleaning and laundry. "She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off," Mr. Bachmuth told the Times. The couple is now seeing a counselor.

The Bachmuths' experience is by no means unique, according to "Money & Marriage," a report released this week by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values. As the report notes, the financial pressures associated with the Great Recession can lead to a downward spiral of marital recriminations, tension and conflict as spouses struggle to pay bills, adjust to the loss of a job or find themselves forced out of their home. This downward spiral is especially likely to unfold when a husband loses his job—a particularly salient reality in the current recession, where more than 75% of the job losses have fallen on the shoulders of men.

In some cases, this spiral leads directly to divorce court. In recent years, couples who report disagreeing about money matters once a week are about twice as likely to divorce compared with couples who disagree about money less than once a month, according to the report.

But there may be a silver lining in all this financial pain. For most married Americans, the Great Recession seems to be solidifying, not eroding, the marital bond. The divorce rate is actually falling. It declined to 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2008 from 17.5 divorces in 2007 (a 3% drop), after rising from 16.4 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2005 (a 7% increase).

To be sure, some couples have simply postponed a divorce until the economy rebounds, when they expect to have a better shot at starting new lives. A recent Wall Street Journal story, for example, profiled an Alabama couple, the Brewsters, who have put off their divorce until they can sell their home for a reasonable price.

But anecdotal evidence suggests that other couples have responded to the recession by rededicating themselves to their marriages. "I had one couple who started to file for divorce but put the proceedings on hold because the husband lost his job," Florida family attorney J.J. Dahl told the Orlando Sentinel. Eventually, the couple decided to remain married. "They said, 'We made it through this tough time, and we learned how to compromise, so we've decided to stick it out.' "

Two factors seem to be particularly important in fostering this ethic of marital dedication and family togetherness. First, the recession has encouraged Americans to rediscover the virtue of thrift. After running up a record $988 billion in credit-card debt in 2008, Americans have cut $90 billion from their bills. They are also eating at home more often. The National Restaurant Association reports that inflation-adjusted restaurant sales fell in 2008 for the first time in about 40 years.

All this is good for marriage because debt corrodes the marital bond, whereas assets solidify it. According to research by Jeffrey Dew at Utah State University, newly married couples who ran up their credit cards spent less time together, fought more and had significantly lower levels of marital happiness compared with couples who did not accrue such debt. By contrast, couples with financial assets (savings, investments, and the net value of a home) are markedly less likely to experience problems, largely because wives are happier and more likely to stick with their marriages when they share such assets with their husbands. Mr. Dew found, for instance, that couples without assets were 70% more likely to divorce than couples with $10,000 in financial assets.

Perhaps more important, the Great Recession is leading some spouses to develop a renewed appreciation for the social and economic solidarity engendered by marriage and family life. While it is true that the recession has been a source of harmful stress for many couples and families, a recent Pew Research survey found that about four in 10 Americans report that the recession has brought their "family closer together." Thus, today's "tough times" seem to be reminding a large minority of couples that marriage is not only about an intense, continuing emotional connection.

This marks a departure from the past four decades, when many Americans came to see marriage largely as a chance to pursue a "soulmate" relationship, where couples focus on emotional intimacy, sexual satisfaction and personal fulfillment, rather than as a chance to share childbearing and childrearing and economic cooperation with an extended family. A 2001 report from the National Marriage Project found that more than 80% of young women thought that it was more important to marry a man who can communicate his deepest feelings than earn a good living.

But the recession has made the soulmate model look impoverished. Today spouses are rediscovering the value of a husband with a good health-care plan, a wife with a good job or in-laws who are willing to provide free child care or a temporary rent-free place to live. In other words, Americans are rediscovering the power that family ties have to carry them—financially, socially and emotionally—through tough times.

—Mr. Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for American Values.
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Wait for sex and marriage? Evangelicals conflicted
By ERIC GORSKI
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 9, 2009 6:09 PM




-- When Margie and Stephen Zumbrun were battling the urge to have premarital sex, a pastor counseled them to control themselves. The couple signed a purity covenant.

Then, when the two got engaged and Margie went wedding dress shopping, a salesperson called her "the bride who looks like she's 12." Nonchurch friends said that, at 22, she was rushing things.

The agonizing message to a young Christian couple in love: Sex can wait, but so can marriage.

"It's unreasonable to say, 'Don't do anything ... and wait until you have degrees and you're in your 30s to get married,'" said Margie Zumbrun, who did wait for sex, and married Stephen fresh out of Purdue University. "I think that's just inviting people to have sex and feel like they're bad people for doing it."

Against that backdrop, a number of evangelicals are promoting marrying earlier, nudging young adults toward the altar even as many of their peers and parents are holding them back.

Couples like the Zumbruns are caught between two powerful forces - evangelical Christianity's abstinence culture, with its chastity balls and virginity pledges, and societal forces pushing average marriage ages deeper into the 20s.

The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?

The conversation is spreading from what pastors say is a relatively small number of churches and ministries that promote early marriage to the broader evangelical community, with the latest development being a Christianity Today magazine cover story this month titled "The Case for Young Marriage."

The article's author, University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, argues that evangelicals "have made much ado about sex" but are damaging the institution of marriage by discouraging and delaying it.

Regnerus is not saying that premarital sex is OK. But he does suggest that abstinence has its limits, and that intensifying the message won't work. When people wait until their mid- to late 20s to marry, he writes, it's unrealistic and "battling our creator's reproductive designs" to expect them to wait that long for sex.

Statistics show that few Americans wait. More than 93 percent of adults 18 to 23 who are in romantic relationships are having sex, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. For conservative Protestants in relationships and active in their faith, it's almost 80 percent.

Regnerus, a conservative Presbyterian, knocks the "abstinence industry" for perpetuating "a blissful myth" that great sex awaits just beyond the wedding reception. He advises against teen marriage, but argues that early 20s marriages are not as risky as advertised.

"I'll probably get framed as I want people to marry because I don't want them to have premarital sex," said Regnerus, author of "Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers."

"I think marriage is just a fantastic institution for people who think rightly about it, have realistic ideas about it and put the requisite work into it."

The median age for first marriages in the U.S. is about 26 for women and 28 for men, the highest figures since the Census Bureau began counting. Solid data on evangelicals is not readily available, but research suggests they marry only slightly younger, Regnerus said.

High-school sweethearts Megan and Jay Mkrtschjan planned to marry at 20. But the suburban Chicago couple waited an extra year to finish college under pressure from Megan's parents.

There were few doubts in their minds about marrying young. They had found each other. Why wait?

"For me, it was really a trust issue," Megan said. "Marrying right out of college was showing our friends, showing the people we were acquainted with, that we trusted our lives with God."

For Jay, a songwriter and guitarist, "the sex issue" was the best argument for early marriage. "By getting married young and dating for a shorter period of time, it leaves less room to sin sexually," he said.

Now four years married, the Mkrtschjans say their relative youth helped them through early trials, which at one point took them down to $26 in the checking account.

"We were going through these hardships together," said Megan, a fifth-grade teacher who owns a cake-decorating business. "It made things easier because we weren't stuck in our ways. We were open to what each other had to say."

Many young adults today view their 20s as a time for fun, travel, career-building or finding themselves - not for settling down.

Among evangelicals, there's a tendency to wait because many believe God "is going to deliver me a spouse right to my door," so they don't actively seek one, said Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, a young marriage promoter.

Then there's what Stanton calls the "eHarmony philosophy" - the belief God will deliver someone perfect.

Stanton doesn't blame the abstinence movement. "I don't think that it's so much to much focus on abstinence, but the silence on marriage makes the abstinence message sound so much louder," he said.

At Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., associate pastor Michael Lawrence emphasizes that marriage is a covenant, not a convenient arrangement, and offers advice to young couples on overcoming arguments over money, sex and family.

"We probably haven't served our young people well by on the one hand emphasizing abstinence, but on the other hand telling them to wait to get married," Lawrence said. "It seems to be setting them up to fail."

Like most proponents of young marriage, Lawrence does not set an arbitrary "right" age for marriage. Waiting until after college might be advisable if the alternative is crushing debt or dropping out, he said.

Supporters of abstinence programs promote them as both marriage-preparation tools and longer-term support systems for those who don't marry.

Jimmy Hester, co-founder of True Love Waits, part of the Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay Christian Resources, disagreed with the argument that abstinence past a certain age is too much to ask.

"There are too many examples of people who have done it," he said. "And not out of their own strength, even, but out of a relationship with God who gives them strength."

Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin, who studies families and public policy, said young marriage is a tough sell. A half-century ago, when people married earlier, fewer people attended college, high school graduates could get good-paying factory jobs, women became mothers right after school and families were larger, he said.

"Most evangelicals, as well as most Americans, realize how expensive it is to raise children these days," Cherlin said. "The most important rationale for early marriage - having a larger family - has disappeared."

Some single evangelical women want to marry young, but the numbers are against them: single women outnumber single men in churches 3 to 2, and the available men are postponing growing up, Regnerus and others say.

Skeptics, meanwhile, suspect early marriage backers want to turn back the clock on gender roles.

"There is some rolling of the eyes, especially among women ... 'Why are you giving up your 20s and going back to the 1950s and June Cleaver?'" said Jay Thomas, college pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Ill.

Other evangelicals simply want to wait and cite their faith as motivation. Valerie Strattan, 24, of Chicago, has a serious boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. She believes that for now, God has called them to focus on separate pursuits: he's a musician, she works in refugee resettlement.

"We don't feel the rush to marry," Strattan said. "If I am listening to God, and he is listening to God, then God isn't going to lead us in separate places if he does truly want us to get married."
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Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts The culture war will never end if judges invalidate the choices of voters

By ROBERT P. GEORGE We are in the midst of a showdown over the legal definition of marriage. Though some state courts have interfered, the battle is mainly being fought in referenda around the country, where “same-sex marriage” has uniformly been rejected, and in legislatures, where some states have adopted it. It’s a raucous battle, but democracy is working.

Now the fight may head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Following California’s Proposition 8, which restored the historic definition of marriage in that state as the union of husband and wife, a federal lawsuit has been filed to invalidate traditional marriage laws.

It would be disastrous for the justices to do so. They would repeat the error in Roe v. Wade: namely, trying to remove a morally charged policy issue from the forums of democratic deliberation and resolve it according to their personal lights.

Even many supporters of legal abortion now consider Roe a mistake. Lacking any basis in the text, logic or original understanding of the Constitution, the decision became a symbol of the judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives. It sent the message that judges need not be impartial umpires—as both John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor say they should be—but that judges can impose their policy preferences under the pretext of enforcing constitutional guarantees.

By short-circuiting the democratic process, Roe inflamed the culture war that has divided our nation and polarized our politics. Abortion, which the Court purported to settle in 1973, remains the most unsettled issue in American politics—and the most unsettling. Another Roe would deepen the culture war and prolong it indefinitely.

David Klein Some insist that the Supreme Court must invalidate traditional marriage laws because “rights” are at stake. But as in Roe, they are forced to peddle a strained and contentious reading of the Constitution—one whose dubiousness would undermine any ruling’s legitimacy.

Lawyers challenging traditional marriage laws liken their cause to Loving v. Virginia (which invalidated laws against interracial marriages), insinuating that conjugal-marriage supporters are bigots. This is ludicrous and offensive, and no one should hesitate to say so.

The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.

Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

Of course, marital intercourse often does produce babies, and marriage is the form of relationship that is uniquely apt for childrearing (which is why, unlike baptisms and bar mitzvahs, it is a matter of vital public concern). But as a comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union—marriage has value in itself and not merely as a means to procreation. This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages.

Only this understanding makes sense of all the norms—annulability for non-consummation, the pledge of permanence, monogamy, sexual exclusivity—that shape marriage as we know it and that our law reflects. And only this view can explain why the state should regulate marriage (as opposed to ordinary friendships) at all—to make it more likely that, wherever possible, children are reared in the context of the bond between the parents whose sexual union gave them life.

If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy.

A veneer of sentiment may prevent these norms from collapsing—but only temporarily. The marriage culture, already wounded by widespread divorce, nonmarital cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing will fare no better than it has in those European societies that were in the vanguard of sexual “enlightenment.” And the primary victims of a weakened marriage culture are always children and those in the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of society.

Candid and clear-thinking advocates of redefining marriage recognize that doing so entails abandoning norms such as monogamy. In a 2006 statement entitled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage,” over 300 lesbian, gay, and allied activists, educators, lawyers, and community organizers—including Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, and prominent Yale, Columbia and Georgetown professors—call for legally recognizing multiple sex partner (“polyamorous”) relationships. Their logic is unassailable once the historic definition of marriage is overthrown.

Is this a red herring? This week’s Newsweek reports more than 500,000 polyamorous households in the U.S.

So, before judging whether traditional marriage laws should be junked, we must decide what marriage is. It is this crucial and logically prior question that some want to shuffle off stage.

Because marriage has already been deeply wounded, some say that redefining it will do no additional harm. I disagree. We should strengthen, not redefine, marriage. But whatever one’s view, surely it is the people, not the courts, who should debate and decide. For reasons of both principle and prudence, the issue should be settled by democratic means, not by what Justice Byron White, in his dissent in Roe, called an “act of raw judicial power.”

Mr. George is professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and founder of the American Principles Project (www.americanprinciplesproject.org).
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The Community Levee Association agrees with Mr. Cooper's opinion below, first published as a letter to the editor in the July 29th edition of the Wall Street Journal.


California Has the Right to Ban Same-Sex Marriage, July 29, 2009

 In his July 20 op-ed “Gay Marriage and the Constitution,” attorney David Boies explains why he and his co-counsel, Ted Olson, are attempting to take the controversial public policy issue of same-sex marriage out of the hands of California’s voters and place it in the hands of federal judges. A majority of Californians recently amend­ed their state constitution to restore the age-old definition of marriage, which the California Supreme Court had discarded in an activist, four-to-three decision recognizing same-sex marriage.

Mr. Boies argues that defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman—the definition common to 44 states, the federal government, nearly every other country in the world, and nearly every civilization in history—reflects nothing but “the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing.” Indeed, he likens the traditional understanding of marriage to the racist Jim Crow laws which prohibited interracial marriages.

Mr. Boies’s divisive rhetoric defames as bigoted not only the majority of Californians, but also the overwhelming majority of Americans—decent people from all walks of life, all political parties, and all races and creeds. Indeed, President Barack Obama supports giving gay couples the legal protections of domestic partnerships, but opposes same-sex marriage—precisely what California has done. Mr. Boies denounces all those who hold this view as gay-bashers. Surely he does not really believe this.

The traditional definition of marriage has nothing in common with antimiscegenation laws. From their inception, those laws were designed to serve the hateful causes of white supremacy and racial oppression; they were rooted in bigotry and furthered no legitimate governmental interests whatsoever. The overriding purpose of marriage, in nearly every civilization throughout history, has always been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into stable and binding unions that will provide for the care and upbringing of the offspring of those unions.

It is an undeniable biological fact that only opposite sex relationships naturally, and often inadvertently, produce children. Accordingly, traditional opposite-sex marriages further the fundamental purpose of marriage in a way that same-sex relationships do not. This purpose of marriage goes to the very survival of civilization; it has nothing to do with literal or figurative gay-bashing.

The Supreme Court cases recognizing the fundamental right to marry contain not a scrap of support for redefining marriage to include same-sex unions. On the contrary, these cases have uniformly recognized the connection between the right to marry and society’s existential interest in creating, nurturing and educating the next generation. The court specifically rejected Mr. Boies’s constitutional arguments many years ago, and it specifically said that its recent decision invalidating criminal antisodomy laws did not imply a right to same-sex marriage. The people of each state are free to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, and a handful of states have begun experiments of this kind. Innovation and change are the hallmarks of a democratic and pluralistic society. Maybe these experiments will succeed and be imitated by other states. Or maybe not. But if the federal courts yield to Mr. Boies’s demands, that will be the end of the debate, and there will be no going back—not for California nor for any other state.

A majority of California’s voters, with malice toward none, have decided not to try this experiment, at least for now. Nothing in our Constitution gives the courts the extraordinary and dangerous power to force it upon them.

Charles J. Cooper

Washington

Mr. Cooper represents Proposition 8 Official­­ ­Propo­nents in Perry v.­ ­Schwarzen­egger.
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Gay Marriage and the Constitution Why Ted Olson and I are working to overturn California's Proposition 8.

By DAVID BOIES When I got married in California in 1959 there were almost 20 states where marriage was limited to two people of different sexes and the same race. Eight years later the Supreme Court unanimously declared state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.

Recently, Ted Olson and I brought a lawsuit asking the courts to now declare unconstitutional California's Proposition 8 limitation of marriage to people of the opposite sex. We acted together because of our mutual commitment to the importance of this cause, and to emphasize that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, not a liberal or conservative issue, but an issue of enforcing our Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process to all citizens.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it. In 1978 the Court (8 to 1, Zablocki v. Redhail) overturned as unconstitutional a Wisconsin law preventing child-support scofflaws from getting married. The Court emphasized, "decisions of this Court confirm that the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals." In 1987 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a Missouri law preventing imprisoned felons from marrying.

There were legitimate state policies that supported the Wisconsin and Missouri restrictions held unconstitutional. By contrast, there is no legitimate state policy underlying Proposition 8. The occasional suggestion that marriages between people of different sexes may somehow be threatened by marriages of people of the same sex does not withstand discussion. It is difficult to the point of impossibility to envision two love-struck heterosexuals contemplating marriage to decide against it because gays and lesbians also have the right to marry; it is equally hard to envision a couple whose marriage is troubled basing the decision of whether to divorce on whether their gay neighbors are married or living in a domestic partnership. And even if depriving lesbians of the right to marry each other could force them into marrying someone they do not love but who happens to be of the opposite sex, it is impossible to see how that could be thought to be as likely to lead to a stable, loving relationship as a marriage to the person they do love.

Moreover, there is no longer any credible contention that depriving gays and lesbians of basic rights will cause them to change their sexual orientation. Even if there was, the attempt would be constitutionally defective. But, in fact, the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians is as much a God-given characteristic as the color of their skin or the sexual orientation of their straight brothers and sisters. It is also a condition that, like race, has historically been subject to abusive and often violent discrimination. It is precisely where a minority's basic human rights are abridged that our Constitution's promise of due process and equal protection is most vital.

Countries as Catholic as Spain, as different as Sweden and South Africa, and as near as Canada have embraced gay and lesbian marriage without any noticeable effect -- except the increase in human happiness and social stability that comes from permitting people to marry for love. Several states -- including Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- have individually repealed their bans on same-sex marriage as inconsistent with a decent respect for human rights and a rational view of the communal value of marriage for all individuals. But basic constitutional rights cannot depend on the willingness of the electorate in any given state to end discrimination. If we were prepared to consign minority rights to a majority vote, there would be no need for a constitution.

The ban on same-sex marriages written into the California Constitution by a 52% vote in favor of Proposition 8 is the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing. California allows same-sex domestic partnerships that, as interpreted by the California Supreme Court, provide virtually all of the economic rights of marriage. So the ban on permitting gay and lesbian couples to actually marry is simply an attempt by the state to stigmatize a segment of its population that commits no offense other than falling in love with a disapproved partner, and asks no more of the state than to be treated equally with all other citizens. In 2003 the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas held that states could not constitutionally outlaw consensual homosexual activity. As Justice Anthony Kennedy elegantly wrote rejecting the notion that a history of discrimination might trump constitutional rights, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."

There are those who sincerely believe that homosexuality is inconsistent with their religion -- and the First Amendment guarantees their freedom of belief. However, the same First Amendment, as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, preclude the enshrinement of their religious-based disapproval in state law.

Gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters, our teachers and doctors, our friends and neighbors, our parents and children. It is time, indeed past time, that we accord them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It is time, indeed past time, that our Constitution fulfill its promise of equal protection and due process for all citizens by now eliminating the last remnant of centuries of misguided state discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper stickers.

Mr. Boies is the chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.

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