Wineke: Love, marriage and the government
11:08 PM 2/06/04
Bill Wineke Wisconsin State Journal

This may be just what is needed to curb the nation's shocking divorce rate: <

Arizona now has a Marriage Mobile, a 48-foot semitrailer designed to carry marriage counselors, food and clothing to low-income neighborhoods. <

Leo Godzich, an Assemblies of God minister, executive director of the Phoenix-based National Association of Marriage Enhancement, has convinced Arizona to fund the $250,000 Marriage Mobile. <

He hopes President Bush's proposed $1.5 billion healthy marriage initiative will pay for similar programs. We could have marriage trucks in all states. <

Saving troubled marriages could do more to alleviate poverty than most other government programs, he says. <

Well, that's one idea. <

Somehow, the idea of having a huge truck roll up in front of my house and having a counselor knocking on my door and offering to mediate any marriage problems strikes me as being a little bizarre. But, if the counselor offers free food and a clean shirt to boot, who knows? It just might work. <

Marriage and divorce certainly seem in the news these days. <

Either we send around semitrailers to help people who want to get divorced stay married or we propose constitutional amendments to make sure people who want to get married can't do so. <

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled this week that the state constitution requires the government there to formulate policies that will make it possible for gays and lesbians to marry legally. <

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney thinks the state ought to adopt a constitutional amendment making gay and lesbian marriages illegal. President Bush says, perhaps, the nation ought to do the same. <

In the meantime, lawmakers and some pastors in Iowa are going to the Supreme Court there to try to block a decree granting a divorce to a lesbian couple. If you're a same-sex couple, it seems, you're not supposed to get married and you can't even get divorced. <

Personally, I think the government ought to keep its bureaucratic hands off marriage. <

There seems to be a growing national consensus that gays and lesbians ought to be treated equally under the law. We ought to be able to agree on laws that treat same-sex couples equitably. <

I see no such consensus about whether a legal partnership between same-sex partnerships constitute "marriage." <

We don't even agree among ourselves about what constitutes a valid heterosexual marriage. If you are a Roman Catholic who divorces your spouse and then marries someone else, your second marriage is valid in the eyes of the state but not in the eyes of your church. <

Same-sex couples who participate in commitment ceremonies are united in the eyes of the United Church of Christ but not in the eyes of many Lutheran churches. <

It was only a few years ago that no one even contemplated the legality of gay or lesbian marriages - but, then, it hasn't been all that long since some states prohibited marriage between people of different racial backgrounds. <

Marriage, most of us agree, is a sacred bond and sacred bonds ought to be the business of the church, not of the state. The state makes its decisions by majority votes of either legislators or of courts. That's a pretty fickle basis for legalizing or penalizing marriage. <

Reach Bill Wineke at 252-6146 or at bwineke@madison.com.