Laws Discouraging Divorce Spreading Slowly if at All

Across America, it is easy to find politicians and civic leaders decrying the prevalence and social cost of divorce. It is far harder to find consensus about what, if anything, policymakers should do in response.

An array of proposals has reached legislative hearing rooms; few of substance have been enacted.

No state has followed Florida’s example in requiring a marriage-education curriculum for public high school students. One state, Arizona, has followed Louisiana in approving covenant marriages, in which couples voluntarily impose limits on their ability to divorce.

Despite setbacks, including rebuffs of covenant-marriage bills in more than 20 states, supporters of the so-called Marriage Movement say they’re encouraged. “At least marriage is back on the agenda,” said Alan Hawkins, professor of family sciences at Brigham Young University. “I find that amazing.”

Hawkins supports covenant marriage and other ways of discouraging divorce, but says he’s not surprised by legislators’ wary reaction.

“We’re just surfacing from a generation of living in a culture of divorce and questioning whether it was everything we hoped it would be,” he said. “It’s a bigger step from questioning, and realizing there are real problems, to saying we ought to do something about the problems.”

Few Choose the Option

Backers of Louisiana’s covenant-marriage law hoped they were sending a message to the nation when their bill was passed in 1997. It was touted as the first substantive move in two centuries to make divorce harder, not easier.

In essence, covenant marriage gives couples the option of spurning no-fault divorce; they sign binding contracts that require premarital counseling and permit divorce only in cases of abuse, abandonment, adultery, imprisonment of a spouse or a lengthy separation.

So far, fewer than 5% of Louisiana couples are choosing covenant marriage. Arizona opted for a weaker version that allows participating couples to divorce relatively easily if there is mutual consent.

Tony Perkins, the state representative who sponsored Louisiana’s law, acknowledges that the response of other states has been discouraging. He said the proposal had failed in some seemingly sympathetic legislatures--Texas and Oklahoma, for example--because of opposition by key committee chairmen who were divorce lawyers.

If covenant marriage were to spread, Perkins said, “It would be a blow to the divorce industry.”

Perkins predicted that at least a few other states will eventually try covenant marriage.

The Rev. Russ Stevenson, minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, La., says Louisiana ministers could more actively promote covenant marriage.

At his church, Stevenson said, couples planning to wed were at first simply advised that covenant marriage was an option.

“They would look at each other with stars in their eyes and say, ‘Honey, we don’t really need that, do we?’ ” Stevenson said. “When you are in the full flush of love, preparing to get married, you are not thinking about divorce.”

Now Stevenson is firmer.

“We really ask couples to have a covenant marriage, and if they object, we try to talk them into it. We think it’s in their best interest.”

Mike Johnson, a Baton Rouge lawyer, and his wife, Kelly, entered a covenant marriage in 1999. He has been trying since then to encourage friends to follow suit.

“In my generation, all we’ve ever known is the no-fault scheme, and any deviation from that seems like a radical move,” said Johnson, 28. “We’ve all been jaded by our parents’ divorces.

“Because so few people have chosen covenant marriage in Louisiana, it seems like an unpopular idea,” he said. “It’s not unpopular--it’s just unknown. Once the message is out there, a whole lot more people will choose it.”

Joe Cook, director of the Louisiana branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, disagrees: “It’s a bad idea whose time should have never come. Fortunately, it looks like it won’t catch on.”

The ACLU has criticized the law for seeming to infringe on the separation of church and state. Many of the movement’s staunchest backers are Christian conservatives, and the law offers a prominent role to clergy in premarital counseling.

The ACLU also is concerned that women who enter covenant marriages might have difficulty escaping from abusive relationships, even though the law specifies that domestic violence is among the grounds for breaking the covenant.

“They’re trying to come up with a quick fix to a complex problem,” Cook said. “If they want to help families, they can offer substance-abuse treatment, improve public education, ensure a living wage. . . . You just can’t legislate a good marriage.”

Tactics to curb divorce have been tried in other states, often unsuccessfully. In Minnesota last year, Gov. Jesse Ventura vetoed a bill that would have lowered marriage license fees for couples who seek counseling before tying the knot.

“I do not believe that government has a role in marriage counseling,” Ventura said.

In Wisconsin, a federal judge last year struck down a new state law that earmarked $210,000 in welfare money to help members of the clergy encourage mentoring of younger couples by long-married couples. The judge said the law unconstitutionally favored ministers over laypeople such as judges or justices of the peace.

In Florida, lawmakers did reach consensus in 1998 on a first-of-its-kind bill that promotes premarital counseling and requires relationship skills to be taught in high school.

Former state Rep. Elaine Bloom of Miami, who sponsored the bill, cited fathers who say, “If I had known before I started the divorce process how difficult it would be to see my kids, I would have made a better attempt to be a good husband and father.”

But she said any such curriculum is likely to be attacked from the left and right as government intrusion.

U.S. divorce rates soared in the 1970s after no-fault divorce laws spread nationwide, then stabilized. There are no current official national figures, but experts estimate that more than 40% of recent marriages will end in divorce.

Oklahoma, the most aggressive state so far, is pursuing a $10-million campaign under Gov. Frank Keating. He wants to cut the state’s divorce rate, one of the nation’s highest, by a third in 10 years.

In December, more than 200 Oklahoma religious leaders agreed to ask engaged couples in their institutions to go through a four- to six-month marital preparation period.

The Legislature passed some of Keating’s other proposals but balked at covenant marriage and a recommendation to remove mutual incompatibility as a ground for divorce.

*

Covenant marriage information: https://www.divorcereform.org/cov.html