So Now What?

There are so many issues to discuss this morning, I don't know where to begin. Here are a few salacious headlines:

Michael Jackson plans to call Elizabeth Taylor, Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Chris Tucker, Steve Harvey, and about 300 others as witnesses for his child molestation trial. However, he doesn't plan to call any members of his immediate family...

"Nightline" devoted its program last night to the upcoming wedding of the British royals. The topic focused primarily on the stuffy protocol of what to call Camilla after the nuptials. I rolled over and went to sleep, proud to be an American. We've got better things to discuss, such as Michael Jackson and...

Mary Kay Letourneau is going to marry her little boy, I mean, young lover now that she is out of jail for seducing him seven years ago. Their two love children will be in the wedding as flower girls. Well, some stories do have happy endings, but I doubt this is one of them. I will wait for the inevitable implosion and for Mary Kay's mea culpa interview with Barbara Walters...

That's all the tabloid stuff for today!

The Marriage Campaign
The moral majority people are at it again! On Saturday, I saw an ad in the subway for a campaign that promotes marriage. Seemed benign enough until I saw more of them on my way out of the station. The photos depicted smiling couples in wedding attire, while the captions touted the benefits of marriage for society and for children. It was all very warm and fuzzy, kind of like eating wedding cake.

Then yesterday, there were the TV commercials, which took the cuteness a few steps further. The commercial focused on that part of the wedding ceremony when the officiant asks whether there are any objections to the marriage. The voice-over then offers a variety of statistics on the benefits of marriage. Let them eat more cake!

I think the campaign is clever, but sneaky as it relies on sweeping generalizations that leave too many false impressions. At least one of the statistics is probably true--married people live longer and are healthier, but the veracity of some of the other statements is suspect. For example, the ad claims that married people have lower rates of substance abuse, but then I wonder if that group includes alcoholics and smokers. It also claims that married people are happier, and that is usually true until one partner files for divorce.

The boldest statement refers to the status of children in marriage. These statements are most troubling because they place children at the center of the marraige relationship. Like any other good family lawyer will tell you, marriages should be about the couple and parenting should be about the children. When we blur this line and make raising children the primary focus of marriage, then we set families up for failure.

These ads stigmatize non-traditional family arrangements as unhealthy. Thus single parents (whether widowed, divorced or never married) must take the blame for society's problems. The children of these families are painted with a broad brush--they are more likely to be the drug users, the poor kids, and the drop-outs.

The other curiosity about the campaign is the conspicuous absence of same-sex couples. I know that is a political and social hot potato, but the same stats could easily be applied to children in those family arrangements. If you accept the idea that two-parent families create stronger communities (which is essentially the message of the campaign), then children of same-sex couples would stand to reap the same benefits. This is especially true when these couples adopt abused and neglected children who languish in the child welfare system.

This pro-marriage campaign is really a veiled attempt to impose a "traditional" value system. The billion dollar wedding industry is proof that people don't need to be sold on getting married. A more honest ad campaign would focus on strong families, instead of promoting utopian ideas of marriage. I can hardly wait for the next ad campaign that will extol the virtues of stay-at-home mothers...

Until something else gets my goat, Ciao!