Why Get Married? Pt. 2

    There are a couple of problems that we as a community must address in order to strategically deal with this shift in the perception of marriage.

    The first issue is a rather political one. It has to do with the marriage penalty.  In low income, senior and mentally handicapped communities where individuals are largely dependent on public assistance they are incentivised to stay single because if they choose to get married the government reduces their benefits. Their rationale of course is that when a married couple moves in together their expenses are reduced (eg. two rent payments and utilities down to one, etc...).  That would be true if everyone getting married were relatively young, on their first marriage and with no financial complications in their lives.  The fact is that is rarely the case.

     This is especially disturbing for the adult mentally handicapped population where their expenses do not go down when they are reside in assisted living facilities as many mentally challenged adults do.  In one case I know personally, two mentally retarded adults wanted to be married but due to the marriage penalty would not be able to meet their expenses if they married legally.  These two precious young people were dedicated to their faith and sincerely believed that it was wrong to have sex before they were married.  Their parents were forced to make arrangements for them to be married in a private ceremony without the legal sanction of obtaining a marriage license.  I would hope none of us would be too quick to judge what the parents did when we remember that the system especially in this case is inherently immoral.  Our government is asking two young people stricken from birth with a life-devastating defect to make the choice between compromising their morals rooted in their Christian faith, giving up their home and dignity in order to afford to be married or staying single and not experience the simple joys of godly marriage.  To be forced to make that choice is in my opinion unconscionable. 

    I understand that reversing the marriage penalty is not going to magically erase the problems with marriage in our culture but I do think it is an opportunity for people of faith and conviction to stand up and demand that the government do the right thing for the sake of marriage.  There is a letter contained in my blog that I would encourage you to copy and paste into a letter or e-mail from you to your senators and representatives.  The URL’s for my blog and for information on how to contact your representatives are below.

Tim’s blog – http://timothyatripp.blogspot.com/
Senator/Rep. Info – www.senate.gov and www.house.gov

    In part three of this series we will discuss how to intentionally train young men and women to be committed to the concept of God’s design for family.