Tuesday, February 20, 2007

 

Spousal shootings to rise in Oklahoma

Yes, I am a little cynical about this.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A Republican lawmaker hopes to reduce the state's high divorce rate by allowing "covenant marriages" that would make it more difficult for couples to split up.

Read all about it, from the News Examiner-Enterprise in Bartlesville.

Somebody tell me if I'm too cynical, but why would anyone want to try to save themselves from themselves by trapping themselves with themselves this way?

Reminds me of the old line: "Oklahomans will vote against liquor-by-the-drink as long as they can stumble to the polls." Which was true right up until they sobered up and voted *for* it 20-odd years ago.

"Oklahomans will defend the sanctity of marriage as long as they can beat their wives and get away with it (the men) and cheat on their husbands with the yard boy (the women)."

Cynical, I am.


Here's *the* source, apparently, on the Covenent Marriage movement.

--ER

Comments:
sohjfbeu
When people believe that they need government to monitor a moral issue are they not saying we don't believe that God can handle this on his own? Or maybe they think that secular government is actually the hand of God. That is Islam's position.
On the other hand. We can have "Covanant" legal government marriages in Oklahoma and then still disolve them in Reno, Nevada.
So it is really no more than a fundamentalist facade.
As far as marriage is concerned, I've been married forty years to the same woman. I've always seen it as a covenant. I didn't need the Oklahoma legislature to make it so. Marriage is in the eyes of God and the two participants anyway. The secular law is simply an economic/property safety contract.

Repeal Term Limits!
 
Amen.
 
"Ten years ago, the divorce rate was 6.8 divorces for every 1,000 Oklahomans. But marriages also have decreased since, from 9 marriages for every 1,000 people in 1994 to 6.4 marriages for every 1,000 people in 2004."

I sure wish they would figure out a better way of comparing these numbers since these mean virtually nothing. What I'm guessing they are trying to say is that we've got just about as many marriages as divorces per 1,000 people.

So, although premarital counseling and longer engagements may help a couple make a more committed marriage, we're at a point where -- what, nearly 100 percent??? Or the more widely acceptable 50 percent??? -- of marriages will end in divorce.

I see a couple of things happening. Either they will make the trip to Vegas or they will become liars and claim one of the "acceptable" reasons for divorce.

The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative actually started with Frank and Cathy Keating as an economic development project -- you can read about it here.
 
Don't you just love the Keating's concept of cause and effect? It reminds me of the apocraphal story of the Mayor of New York in the 1960s, who after hearing that children who eat fresh tomatoes are only half as likely to become juvenile delinquents, ordered fresh tomatoes to be served in the city's schools lunches.
 
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