And They Lived Gaily Ever After
Attempting to attract some additional votes in this election year, President Bush has decided to go out on a limb and endorse the idea of marriage. This is the kind of adventurous political initiative that could lay the groundwork for a slate of all the other things your mother always told you to do, such as getting the hair out of your eyes, standing up straight, changing your tone of voice when you talk to me and not leaving the house looking like that.
Under Bush's plan, $1.5 billion would pay for training to help low-income couples "develop the interpersonal skills that sustain healthy marriages." This despite the fact that some of the sickest marriages in history have been created and nurtured by high-income couples.
Some of this money would also be allotted to "the development of marriage promotion programs," which might actually work if they gave every couple taking out a marriage license the chance to star in their own adorable reality show. But as for spending money on ad campaigns "to publicize the value of marriage," it seems to me that if the combined pressures of family, church and society haven't provided sufficient motivation for getting and staying married in the past, billboards probably won't do the trick either.
Which brings us to the hidden agenda of Bush's benign if probably futile initiative: to address the considerable pressure being applied by conservative religious organizations that would like Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. This, despite the fact that a high percentage of low-income couples in the gay community already have good interpersonal skills.
While Bush has gone on record as saying that marriage should be exclusive to only a man and a woman, it is not clear whether he is ready to risk alienating the segment of the voting public that might find the banning of gay marriage to be an essentially intolerant position. Especially when you stop to think that all the damning statistics involving the deterioration of marriage in this country have been provided courtesy of heterosexual couples. After all, it is heterosexuals who are responsible for the current 60% divorce rate. And of the other 40% that do stay married, it is wise not to make too many sweeping generalizations. I still remember a story I read in the paper about a woman who set fire to her husband of 35 years because he ate her chocolate Easter bunny, demonstrating nicely that sometimes longevity in a marriage is beside the point.
