Oregon debates divorce vs. commitment -7/24/99

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from: SmartMarriages


Oregon debates divorce vs. commitment: Who's right?

The movement rallies around the "covenant marriage" theme

Saturday, July 24, 1999

Nancy Mayer of The Oregonian staff 

Family activists who want to strengthen the institution of marriage and 
make divorces harder to get are echoing a movement that is gaining 
momentum both in Oregon and across the nation. just as in other states, 
Oregon lawmakers recently tried to legislate tougher rules on marriage -- 
and divorce. Though a marriage bill failed during the final few days of 
the 1999 Legislature, politicians signaled that the topic is likely to 
remain popular.

Senate Bill 1336, the "covenant marriage bill," passed the state Senate 
but died in the House on Wednesday by a 32-24 vote. The bill would have 
given two options to Oregon couples who wanted to many. the current 
"nofault" marriage, with its possibility for a fasttrack divorce, or a 
new "covenant marriage," which would have made it much harder to get a 
legal split. The new type of marriage required premarital counseling and 
restricted divorce to cases of adultery, abandonment, abuse, habitual 
gambling or a felony criminal conviction.

"This is just the beginning of a conversation in Oregon about what 
marriage means," said Rep. Bruce Starr, R-Hillsboro. "I expect this to be 
brought back up next session and passed."

Oregon's bill mirrored a ground-breaking law passed in Texas two years 
ago. The discussion also echoed other legislatures' debates over 
strengthening marriage laws and making it much harder to break 
matrimonial bonds.

Last year, 17 states considered similar legislation, but only Arizona 
passed it into law.

This year the issue came up again in about 25 states, including Oklahoma, 
Texas, Colorado and Virginia, said John Crouch, executive director of 
Americans for Divorce Reform and a divorce lawyer.

In contrast, no-fault divorce caught on as fast as a grass fire after 
being introduced in California in 1969, and all 50 states later passed 
easy-out marriage laws.

While few lawmakers have passed covenant marriage laws, governments are 
attempting to strengthen marriage in other ways. 

Florida requires marriage education in high school; Oklahoma Gov. Frank 
Keating has pledged that his state -- which has the second highest 
divorce rate behind Nevada -- will reduce divorce by 33 percent in the 
next decade, according to Crouch. 

Critics of tighter marriage laws and Oregon lawmakers who opposed the 
bill worried that the trend will revive the stigma formerly associated 
with divorce, trap couples in bad marriages and cause uglier, more 
expensive divorces. 

Several Oregon lawmakers called it a full employment act for divorce 
lawyers. 

While critics may flinch at the thought of private investigators again 
taking pictures of adulterous spouses to establish grounds for divorce, a 
movement led by the nation's churches to strengthen marriage has spread 
like ivy in the past decade. 

In Oregon, ministers of several denominations in Marion County, Newberg, 
Corvallis, Philomath, Sweet Home, Salem and Keizer have signed a 
"Community Marriage Policy" promising that ministers will preside at a 
wedding only if a couple has gone through premarital counseling. 

Similar policies have been adopted in 100 communities nationwide. 

Three decades ago, pundits began to wonder aloud if marriage and the 
traditional family would soon fade and become obsolete. 

"My own hunch," futurist and author Alvin Toffler wrote in a 1971 Look 
magazine article, "is that most people will try to go blindly through the 
motions of the traditional marriage and try to keep the traditional 
family going, and they'll fail." 

Toffler's prediction proved correct. 

In 1970, one-third of all marriages ended in divorce, according to U.S. 
Census figures, and 20 years later, almost half of marriages dissolved. 
In addition, almost one out of three Oregon children is born to a single 
woman, according to Oregon Health Division statistics. 

Whether marriage laws change or not, 27-year-old Eric Richey of Salem 
said he intends to make his 1-year-old marriage to 25-year-old Molly 
Richey last until death. His own parents have a committed relationship, 
and he and Molly went through a premarital class and counseling at Salem 
Alliance Church before their wedding. 

If covenant marriage had been a choice, Richey said, they would have 
jumped at the chance. 

But in Louisiana, which has a covenant option, only about 2 percent of 
marrying couples are opting for that type of marriage, said Alan J. 
Hawkins, director of the Family Studies Center at Brigham Young 
University in Provo, Utah. 

Researchers say implementation has been rocky. In several Louisiana 
counties, clerks hand couples marriage forms with the traditional 
marriage box already checked off, Hawkins said. 

"Is covenant marriage going to make an immediate, dramatic impact? I 
don't think so," said Hawkins, part of a research team studying 
Louisiana's law. "But indirectly, and over the long run, it will help in 
important ways that are hard to measure. It makes people think and talk 
about their values, and specifically, about commitment." 

Members of the generation marrying now seem to have a stronger desire to 
be in stable marriages than their parents did, Hawkins said. They are 
also worried about the viability of a long-term marriage, since many of 
them grew up in divorced households. 

Marriage has gone through changes and drastic experimentation in the last 
20 years, Hawkins said, a lot of which has not worked well. "But people 
are opening themselves up to a new way to make sense of their lives and 
create happiness and stability," he said. "They want to believe in 
marriage as a lifetime commitment again." 

 Reach reporter Nancy Mayer by phone at 503-221-8143 or by e-mail at 
nancymayer at news.oregonian.com. 



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