SOUTH KOREA: Divorce is up, childbearing and marriage are down. Some of it reflects cyclical patterns. 2007 was the year of the golden pig, believed to bring affluence to children born in that year, and 2006 was a double spring year, believed to bring blessing to couples. Most of the statistical changes are long term though. The 2007 birth rate was 1.26 per woman, compared to 4.53 in 1970. Over the same time period, the divorce rate increased over 900%.

By Scott Williams

Before the 60's and 70's rolled around, cohabitation was considered a cheap imitation of marriage and a public disgrace to those who do it. Then came the "sexual revolution" and the popular idea that cohabitation is a great trial run for marriage. That assumption began to be challenged in the 80's and 90's as research showed that marriages failed at a greater rate when couples lived together before the wedding.

Today, cohabitation has become commonplace, and so has research into the particular living arrangement. With a growing body of data at their disposal and more cohabiters to study now, social scientists are looking more deeply into cohabitation and wonder if cohabitation and marriage are really that different.

A recent article in USA Today featured Census data that one of every 10 heterosexual couples living together in 2007 were cohabiting.

"There's been a sea change in societal, cultural and individual acceptance of cohabitation," says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. "A lot of the earlier studies were relying on data that may have been gathered in the late '80s and mid-'90s. We're talking about a moving target. The evidence is a lot more mixed."

Apparently, cohabitation may no longer be the scapegoat for marital failure, according to the article.

"The nature of cohabitation has changed," says Jay Teachman, a sociology professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham. "Cohabiters 20 years ago were the rule breakers, the rebels, the risk takers --------- the folks who were perhaps not as interested in marriage, and using cohabitation as an alternative to marriage."

Teachman's analysis of 25-years of national data revealed that a woman who cohabited only with the man who would become her husband showed no greater risk of divorce, but those who lived with more than one man did.

In fact, more studies are beginning to show that cohabitation is less a predictor of marital failure than previously assumed. A current Cornell University study actually indicates that a woman who marries her only cohabiting partner is 28% less likely to divorce than a woman who never cohabited. That study will be published in the Journal of Marriage and Family in December. The USA Today article also mentions:

Other recent studies have shown that certain subgroups don't appear to experience negative effects from cohabiting, such as engaged couples who move in together or those who have already decided to marry in the future.

The USA Today article makes a big jump however in assuming that cohabitation is not to blame for marital failure or in championing the popular culture mantra that it may actually be good for marriage.

Scott Stanley certainly disagrees. Along with colleagues at the University of Denver, Stanley is currently conducting the largest ever study exploring the nuances of cohabitation and it's impact on relationships. In a recent email to the Smart Marriages listgroup, Stanley said that cohabitation still is generally a negative predictor.

"We are continuing to get the pattern of significantly increased risk for cohabiters who began cohabiting either prior to engagement or marriage. In other words, people appear to be at increased risk when they cohabit prior to BOTH partners being very clear about future plans to marry (whether that is because they waited all the way until marriage or were at least engaged). We are finding this pattern to hold up (more or less) in very recent samples, including for those who only cohabited with their eventual mate, and for first or second marriages, etc."

Harry Benson of the Bristol Community Family Trust in England also mentioned on the Smartmarriages list that he is seeing many of the same patterns in his current research.

"What Scott Stanley says about cohabitation in the US seems to be mirrored here in the UK. I've just completed a survey of married and unmarried cohabiting mothers attending post-natal clinics with their new babies. Even amongst the mostly well educated new parents who attend such groups, the unmarried are more likely than the married to exhibit certain unhelpful relationship interactions. These are new parents surveyed in the last 12 months."

It is good that researchers are no longer trying to force the blame for all marital ills on cohabitation, in the same way that it was good for feminists to give up their claims that domestic abuse is an inherent product of marriage. On it's face, these things may seem to be the cause, but the explanations actually lie beyond social constructs.

I'm beginning to believe that that there is little difference between cohabitation and the way our culture thinks of marriage in the wake of no-fault divorce. Both relationships may start high on love and shared interests, but commitment is low on the priority list.

The problem with both cohabitation and easy-out marriages is that both have abandoned God's original design for a man and woman to join together in oneness for life. That requires commitment, not just to one's spouse, but to Christ who empowers a person to love beyond his or her capacity, and to serve his or her partner rather than just looking for the personal benefit.

The good news about all this current research focus is that eventually it will show what tears relationships apart and what holds them together. And in the final analysis it won't be a test marriage or a church wedding or a state license. I'm confident that the research will show that that these success predictors will line up almost point for point with God's blueprints for a marriage relationship.

Egypt: It started as a blog post. Then it became a comic book. There's even talk of a sitcom.

But for countless Egyptian young women, it's no laughing matter. Ghada Abdelaal, a young Egyptian woman, lampoons the cultural "living room marriage," where parents parade strange men before their daughter, who must make a snap decision on his suitability as a husband.

"People who go for a picnic need to know each other a little longer than that - let alone make a lifelong commitment."

Breaking the Marriage Covenant

Bill Muehlenberg writes a blog down under which goes by a familiar name: Culture Watch . His August 12 post refers to the unfolding details of North Carolina Senator John Edwards' affair and launches a commentary on the current state of marriage in Western culture.

But what especially caught my eye in this ugly episode is a remark made by a high-ranking Democrat who sought to defend Edwards. Howard Wolfson, a former senior official for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, made this extraordinary remark: “We have unrealistic expectations for people. John Edwards, like the rest of us, is only human. The truth is a lot of ordinary, average Americans have affairs.”

And the idea that a “lot of ordinary, average Americans have affairs” is equally unhelpful and disingenuous. First, while a lot of people may have affairs, an awful lot of people do not. Indeed, one suspects that the majority of people are faithful to their partners and their wedding vows.

Second, so what if a lot of people have affairs? Since when is morality determined by mere numbers? A lot of people rape women. A lot of people sexually abuse children. A lot of people cheat on their taxes. A lot of people violently assault others. Does the fact that a lot of people do these things somehow make these things right?

2007 U.S. Divorce rate: 3.7

The Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog is always good about updating the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control's National Vital Statistics Report. This number gives a good, quick glance at the number of divorces in a given year, but it has to be taken as a comparison.

Most people try to compare the divorce rate for a given year against the marriage rate for the same year, thinking it to accurately represent the percentage of marriages that end in divorce. This is where the 50 percent divorce rate fallacy comes from. Problem is, the couples who got married in 2007 are not the ones who got divorced (well, maybe a few).

A better comparison would be to look at the divorce rate from 2007 against the same figure for previous years to determine whether divorce is on the rise, or in decline. In this case, it declined slightly from the previous year, but the divorce rate is still relatively unchanged in recent years.

What's disturbing is that the marriage rate continues to fall. In 2006, 12 people out of 100 got married. In 2007, that fell sharply to 11.4.

The report for 2007 is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_21.htm
For future reports on divorce rates, check the National Vital Statistics Reports at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr

ISRAEL: The Jerusalem Family Court set a new precedent by requiring a husband to pay his wife for the nine years he refused to grant her a divorce.

KUWAIT: Officials estimate that the proposed family court would cut divorce rates in half. The court should be in place within the year.

CHINA: A marriage counseling company is offering a course in “wifely skills training” to combat the rising divorce rate. They’re considering offering a similar course on “being a good husband.”

Back in the olden days, the scenario was pretty standard. A young man and young woman, probably from the same town, met, fell in love and got married (presumably for life) and started a family. If they couldn't have children, they generally remained childless.

Imagine, then going back in time to try to explain to one of these couples the current dilemma facing Baby Manjhi Yamada . Modern childbirth alternatives are becoming so complex that one wonders if we are causing more problems than we are preventing:

A while back Ikufumi Yamada and his wife, Yuki, got married in Japan. But they found they couldn't have children. So after some online searching they found they could fly to India, Mr. Yamadi could donate sperm, a stranger could donate an egg, and a surrogate mother could donate her womb, all the time planning to give the baby up upon delivery at the hospital.

Well, the best laid plans of man and science often go wacko. As it turns out, the Yamadas didn't count on falling out of love. When they split up, the ex-Mrs. Yamada bailed. In fact, none of the child's three mothers wanted her. Mr. Yamada still did, but Japanese law considers a single man an unfit parent, even if he is the biological father.

So here lies poor Baby Manjhi in the hospital, just two weeks old and looking like she will become the world's first orphan without four parents. But there still might be a reasonably happy ending. On Tuesday, the Indian government issued Manjhi a birth certificate bearing the name of her natural father. Word is that she will be eligible for a passport soon back to Japan.

In the meantime, the child is being wetnursed by the wife of Dr. Yamada's friend. The couple had a baby just last week... the old-fashioned way.

Found on other culture-watching sites:

Family fun reduces risky teen sex, Boston College study finds
Jim Liebelt’s Youth Culture Watch reports on research that teens who spent more family time were less likely to be involved in risky sexual behavior.

Family activities were "centrally important supports for children, providing opportunities for emotional warmth, communication, and transmission of values and beliefs”, the study authors found.

Marriage, church attendance go together
Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink points out that married men are 57 percent more likely and women 41 percent more likely to attend church than their single counterpart. That data comes from Princeton sociology professor Robert Wuthnow.

"It exaggerates only a little to say that Americans in their 20s and early 30s divide into two groups of about equal size: those who are married, the majority of whom participate in religion; and those who are not married, the majority of whom do not participate," Wuthnow said at a conference at The Heritage Foundation.

Planned Parenthood pushing the limits
Vicki Courtney’s Virtue Alert blog has this blurb about the new Planned Parenthood video campaign aimed at teens, "Take Care Down There."

This site is nothing more than an online playground for the prurient. The screen promises "the ins and outs about the ins and outs," but the material is highly inappropriate for adults, let alone young children.

Better judgment prevents me from sharing many of the details here, but if you need to see for yourself you can link to the site through the Virtue Alert post. The inconsistency of Planned Parenthood is what strikes me: the idea of talking to kids about how to safely practicing unsafe behavior. But never are any of these sexual behaviors questioned.

EUROPEAN UNION : Nine countries have joined to bypass Sweden’s veto in an effort to establish a common divorce law for Europe.

France, Italy, Spain, and six others have already joined forces, and Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and Lithuania are considering doing so. The new law would allow divorcing couples to choose the nation whose laws they will abide under.

Sweden resistance was to protect its liberal divorce laws, typical of the Nordic countries. Ireland, which doesn’t allow for divorce, also opposes the Lisbon Treaty.

It’s hard enough for teens to go against the culture and publicly declare they intend to remain sexually pure until marriage. Now it appears the culture that has long scoffed at chastity is now on the offensive against it.

LifeStyles Condoms has publicly announced that they want Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old singing star behind the Hannah Montana craze, to be their spokesperson.

Here’s a blurb that E! Magazine Online ran on the shameless Lifestyle publicity stunt.

While Cyrus has vowed to save herself for marriage, the company says the young star should never say never.

Pointing to a certain fellow tween queen (cough, Jamie Lynn Spears, cough), LifeStyles claims that, should Cyrus choose to get into bed with them, so to speak, she may enjoy a less dysfunctional future.

"Pop culture proves that teens are more ready than ever to discuss the subject of sex," says the company's VP of marketing, Carol Carrozza. "We believe that Miley is both influential and relatable to this afflicted set—and is the obvious choice to get the message of safe sex out to teens across America."

Actually, Miley Cyrus is the obvious choice to get the message out to teens across America, but where Lifestyle has it wrong is where the teen star has it right. The message is not about safe sex but about saving sex for marriage and encouraging emerging men and women to wait for God’s best.

by Dave Boehi

I visit a lot of different websites each week, searching for interesting articles or for story ideas. The New York Times website is one of my favorites, and while there I always look at a little box that lists the "most emailed stories" of the day.

If one article keeps showing up on this list day after day, you know it has attracted an unusual amount of interest. And this was the case recently with an article titled "An Ideal Husband," by columnist Maureen Dowd. It stayed on the "most emailed" list for about a week, which means that somehow the column struck a chord with many readers.

It's a simple article, actually. It raises the question: How do you know if you've found someone who would make a good husband? Dowd then introduces Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest who "has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some 'mostly common sense' advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness."

Connor's advice is the type of practical wisdom you don't normally find in the New York Times. (Perhaps that is one reason the article was so popular!)

For example:

• "Never marry a man who has no friends. This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands."
• "Does he use money responsibly?"
• "Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It's good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it's your husband."
• "Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins."
• "Don't marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He's a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he'll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so."
• "Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you'll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women."
• "Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?"

What would be on your list of attributes for a prospective husband—or wife? What would you say to a friend or child who asked, "What should I look for?"

I like Connor's advice, but I would add some questions about spiritual compatibility . To me, a couple's spiritual foundation is the key factor for making a marriage work.

The first question is, "Are both of you Christians?" As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership has righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?"

Let me quote from Preparing for Marriage , a premarriage manual I edited and co-wrote with three colleagues here at FamilyLife:

This passage makes it clear that a Christian should only marry another Christian. Marriage is not a man-made institution. God created it. Its fullest enjoyment and expression can only be found in two people who have a relationship with Him.

When Christians fail to obey God in this critical area, they experience a growing frustration after marriage:

• They are unable to discuss the most precious, intimate part of their lives with their mates.
• They have conflicting goals and expectations.
• They clash over the values they teach their children.
• They have differing circles of friends.
• They have difficulty communicating and resolving conflict.

A second question is, " Do you both share the same commitment to spiritual growth and to serving God?" My observation is that many Christians avoid this second question; they know they need to marry another believer, but they allow infatuation, loneliness, or weariness of singlehood to cloud their minds about deeper spiritual compatibility. Quoting again from Preparing for Marriage :

1 John 2:15 tells us, "Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." You may both have received Christ, but if one of you is more focused on loving the world rather than loving God, you will experience many of the same conflicts as a believer and non-believer. Your goals and values will differ. Your lives will head in different directions. …

To evaluate this area of your spiritual compatibility, begin by asking yourself questions such as:

• Do both of us share the same desire to know and please God?
• Do I have any sense that one of us is putting on a facade of spiritual commitment?
• Do our actions back up our words?
• Do we both consistently display a desire to obey God in all things?
• What priority does each of us place on ministering to other people?
• Are we both willing to follow God's direction?

When you are truly spiritually compatible, and are walking with God daily in the power of the Spirit, you are able to experience marriage the way God intended.

Let me know your thoughts about spiritual compatibility in marriage. When you married, were you and your spouse at the same level spiritually? How has that affected your relationship?

If you are counseling someone considering marriage, you will find Preparing for Marriage a great manual—it's being used by thousands of pastors and counselors every year.

In our highly sexualized culture, temptation is everywhere, and is as likely to hit women as it is men. But researchers from Canada’s McGill University have found that the difference in the processing of the temptation yields very different results for men and women.

The article, which appeared in the most recent issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that women are more likely to protect their relationships when meeting an attractive man, while men were more likely to view their current partner more negatively upon finding a flirtatious alternative.

The research consisted of seven experiments, including one that exposed men and women to available and unavailable persons of the opposite sex, followed by a questionnaire to find out how they would respond if their current partner did something to annoy them.

As it turned out, men who had a flirtatious interchange with an available woman were 12 percent less likely to forgive their partner, while women in the same situation were 18 percent more likely to forgive.

"One interpretation of these studies is that men are unable to ward off temptation. We do not subscribe to this. Instead, we believe men simply interpret these interactions differently than women do," said [lead author John E.] Lydon. "We think that if men believed an attractive, available woman was a threat to their relationship, they might try to protect that relationship."

The researchers wanted to see if they could alter this behavior in men by getting them to visualize a titillating encounter with an attractive woman and preparing a strategy beforehand to protect their relationship. These men were later found to be more likely to distance themselves from these women.

Lydon says women, on the other hand, don't need to be trained to withhold any reactions when approached by attractive men. "Women have been socialized to be wary of the advances of attractive men," says Lydon. "These findings show that even if a man is committed to his relationship, he may still need to formulate strategies to protect his relationship by avoiding that available, attractive woman. The success rate of such strategies may not be 100 percent but it is likely to be significantly higher than if the man was not made aware of the specific consequences of his actions."

As I read about the research, I can’t help but think of countless admonitions in the Bible, mostly surrounding men, that encouraged a plan of action to avoid temptation. Genesis has a narrative of how Joseph avoided the sexual aggression by running away. Job speaks of how he made a pact with his eyes not to look lustfully at a woman (Job 31:1-12). Proverbs is loaded with counsel, including wisdom from a father to a son about proactively guarding himself from flirtatious women. (Proverbs 6:20-7:27). Jesus said that a man who entertains impure thoughts about a woman has already committed adultery in his heart, and encouraged him to take drastic precautions to avoid the temptation. (Matthew 5:27-30).

Realistically speaking, both men and women face strong temptation in today’s culture to sacrifice a marriage for the hope of something more exciting or fulfilling. We would all be wise to do as Job did and weigh the consequences of such indiscretions, and to guard our moral and spiritual purity by proactively thinking of how we can avoid compromising situations, and to escape them if or when they happen.

WALES : Authorities fear an outbreak of child trafficking and forced marriage after the disappearance of nearly three dozen children from Swansea and Cardiff.

GERMANY : A new law is causing controversy. For the first time in over a century, couples are being allowed to marry in churches without first having a civil ceremony.

CHINA : Couples are rushing to register for certificates to marry on the opening day for the Olympics—8/8/08. The number eight is considered good luck in China.

The 1950s are considered by most to be the Baby Boom, but according to preliminary National Center for Health Statistics figures, 2007 saw more births than the peak boom year of 1957, and may be the beginning of a new wave .

"I suspect this is the beginning of a new kind of baby boom, although it's going to be nowhere near the baby boom of the 1950s or '60s," says demographer Arthur Nelson of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "It will be sort of a boomlet."

Not only has there been a sustained increase in the number of babies born - this is the fifth straight year with an increase - but the fertility rate is also at a long-time high. The 2.1 births per woman is the highest since 1971.

The last time there was talk of a boomlet was during the 1980s and '90s. Those babies were sometimes known as "Echo Boomers" and today are called Millennials or Generation Y.

Nelson attributes the 2007 numbers to a "perfect storm" of factors: more immigrants having children, professional women who delayed childbearing until their 40s, and larger numbers of women in their 20s and 30s in the population, keeping the fertility rate high.

UGANDA : A proposed law would prevent marrying couples from divorcing for the first two years of marriage, although it would allow for separations.

SAUDI ARABIA : A proposed law would require both spouses to appear before a court for a divorce to be granted. Currently a husband can divorce his wife in her absence. Sixty-two percent of Saudi marriages end in divorce.

INDIA : A new TV series, Balika Vadhu, takes on the increasingly criticized practice of child marriage, and stars child actors.

By Dave Boehi

Recently I was wondering what ever happened to A.C. Green, a former star basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers who was well-known for his vow to remain a virgin until he married. Did he ever get married? Did he keep his pledge of abstinence?

Happily, the answers are yes, and yes. In a recent issue, Sports Illustrated caught up with A.C., who said of his vow: "I love that people remember me for that. I took a stand, and I was a voice for a generation. I'm proud of that."

Green was married in 2002, and continues to promote abstinence. I never realized what a battle it was for him to remain celibate as a player. "You could have anything you wanted, whenever you wanted it," he says. At one point, his teammates even sent a woman to his hotel room. But he remained strong, and today serves as an example that it is possible to remain pure until marriage.

Green currently runs the A.C. Green Youth Foundation in Los Angeles, and has a blog that encourages young people to make good choices about purity and life.

(Photo by Katie Llibyaw)

Some disturbing new info about dating and teens (and even pre-teens) posted on Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch . Some highlights

• More than one-in-three 11-12 year olds (37 percent) say they have been in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.
• Nearly three-in-four tweens (72 percent) say boyfriend/girlfriend relationships usually begin at age 14 or younger.
• 69 percent of all teens who had sex by age 14 said they have gone through one or more types of abuse in a relationship.

The survey was commissioned by Liz Claiborne Inc. and appeared originally on CBS News , where this excerpt appeared:

"We were surprised at how many tweens or kids ages 11 and 12 are dealing with these issues," Liz Claiborne Vice President Jane Randel told Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith.

What's behind it all? Researchers believe early sexual activity tends to fuel dating violence among teens and tweens, Smith reports.

And Randel points out that, "Parents, while they think they know what their teens or, more importantly, tweens relationships are, they're really not fully aware of what's going on. And that's scary."

by Scott Williams

A couple of months ago, I heard a series feature on National Public Radio about parents who are dealing with a child who felt like he or she was trapped in the wrong body (i.e., a boy who thought he should be a girl, or vice versa). This particular segment featured parents who sought to chemically delay their preadolescent son's hormonal surge until he decided what sex he wanted to be.

Confusing to say the least, but not something I spent a lot of time thinking about since (thankfully). Now just in the past week, Breakpoint commentary brings up the issue again because of a similar positive article in the McClatchy Newspapers (authored by someone named Pagan Kennedy, for what that's worth) about Dr. Norman Spack of Boston's Childrens Hospital, the most visible proponent of this type of treatment.

While the practice of using medical means to change sexual characteristics may be new when it comes to treating children it's been done with adults for many years. And the arguments against performing such operations on adults apply equally with children. The Breakpoint column counters the practice of Dr. Spack with evidence from Dr. Phil McHugh, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, an institution which has discontinued the practice.

He says that treating these children with hormones "does considerable harm, and it compounds their confusion. Trying to delay puberty or change someone's gender," he added, "is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature."

Dr. McHugh knows what he is talking about. He and psychiatrist Jon Myer studied men who received sex-change operations at Johns Hopkins. His conclusion? "That Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness." Better, McHugh thought, to concentrate on fixing their minds instead of taking the more drastic step of changing their sex.

Actually, McHugh has been speaking out against the practice for more than a decade, as evidenced by this article from the Johns Hopkins official newspaper honoring McHugh for 30 years of service to the University in 1998. In a more recent article in First Things back in 2004, McHugh points out that proponents of medical sex selection are committed to a very different view of nature.

One might expect that those who claim that sexual identity has no biological or physical basis would bring forth more evidence to persuade others. But as I've learned, there is a deep prejudice in favor of the idea that nature is totally malleable.

Long before McHugh decried the practice of relative sexuality, one other spokesman on the subject made a declaration.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ( Genesis 1:27 )

It seems so simple and straightforward. But when we begin to consider ourselves not creatures of a Creator, but malleable products of nature, as McHugh puts it, we're willing to go just about anywhere our minds and scientific abilities will take us, no matter how bizarre it seems.

"Being a loving, fully-present father takes courage. You have to stand strong and secure in the face of opposition."

"Raising children is hard. You've got to connect with love at all times. If love dies, nothing else is important. But if love is there, you've got something."

—Former Heavyweight champion boxer and father of 10, George Foreman

by Scott Williams
and Bob Lepine

In the wake of the California Supreme Court's decision to recognize same-sex marriage, Episcopal Church leaders there are discouraging everyone from marrying in the church. The denomination doesn't recognize homosexual marriage.

"I urge you to encourage all couples, regardless of orientation, to follow the pattern of first being married in a secular service, and then being blessed in the Episcopal Church," Bishop Marc Handley Andrus wrote his clergy last month.

Upon first reading about it in the Boston Herald , we wondered whether this might be a signal that the church, which has already ceded so much ground to the state when it comes to marriage, is finally giving up on it altogether.

In recent decades within Western civilizations, Christian marriages have first been blessed by God and celebrated in the church, and then recognized by the state. Today it seems, we look to the state to sanction and bless marriages, while making the blessing God and the church completely optional.

Reading the article, it becomes obvious that the Episcopal Church position is an attempt to sidestep the homosexual marriage issue. But some of Bishop Andrus' fellow clergy think it makes sense for the church to avoid the sanctioning of marriage altogether.

The Very Rev. Brian Baker, dean of Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento, supports the bishop's proposal.

Being a part of couple's special day is an honor, Baker said. But like other clergy, he believes weddings have become too trying in recent years.

"There are a lot of benefits in getting out of the legal marriage business," he said. "This way the clergy and the couple can focus on the spiritual blessings the church has to offer and not the political stuff."

While many couples choose to celebrate the start of their marriage in their home church (usually that of the bride), church attendance across denominations is dwindling, so increasing numbers of couples end up shopping for a church like they would for a cake, flowers, the gown or the invitations—something that looks pretty and would make the ceremony memorable.

The real issue is that God is the one who has the authority to bless a marriage. He is the author of marriage, and the local church or denomination is the caretaker of the things of God, His representatives on the earth. Marriage is a physical picture of the spiritual union between Christ and his church.

Bishop Andrus' proposal moves the church in exactly the wrong direction.

Instead of churches becoming less involved in the sanctioning of marriages, churches ought to be assuming more responsibility to guard and support the couples who are exchanging vows today. More than simply officiating ceremonies, local churches need to be involved in preparing couples for marriage, and in building up couples within marriage. Teaching and resources, mentoring, counseling in times of difficulty are all part of the church's role in supporting what God has ordained—what we once referred to as "Holy Matrimony."

Whatever the state chooses to recognize when it comes to marriage, Scripture makes it clear what kind of union God blesses . And as the biblical and cultural definitions diverge, the church will either surrender its authority over marriage (as some in the Episcopal church seem eager to do) or to kindly but firmly take a counter-cultural stand.

Today, the vast majority of all couples who marry in the U.S. still exchange vows in a church. Because of our culture's changing definition of marriage, Justices of the Peace may soon be performing more and more marriages. But once the ceremony is over, so is the involvement of the one who performed the marriage. The local courthouse won't be there to offer marital counsel, mentoring, or a supportive community to help couples stay together. In fact, the only time a married couple will return to the courthouse following a marriage ceremony is if they decide to divorce.

A recent study published in the June issue of the journal Human Nature indicates that today's sexual freedom hasn't served women's deep needs as much as some might have hoped. It centers on that bastion of sexual freedom, the one-night stand.

Overall women's morning-after feelings were more negative than men's. While 80 percent of men had overall positive feelings, just 54 percent of women had positive feelings.

The survey of some 3,300 found that about half the respondents admitted to having had a one-night stand, equally divided between men and women. A one finding from the survey was a bit of a surprise, and another was anything but.

Despite prevailing myth, women were not hooking up in hopes of a long term relationship. They did so because they felt valued by the flattering words and desirable because of the attention of their momentary suitor. When they realized he morning after that the attention was not genuine, the response of these women was anything but unexpected.

Women predominantly reported "regret at being used," with additional comments including: "I felt cheap," "horrified afterward," and "I felt degraded. Made myself look cheap and easy. Total regret."

"Often [women] said things like, 'I felt so flattered, so happy that he found me attractive. It was so nice to be wanted,'" said researcher Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University in England. "What women don't seem to see is that men drop their standards massively for a one-night stand."

She added, "No woman should be flattered because a man wants to have sex with her once."

Responses from the men expressed feelings of thrill, release and status among friends. Those who considered the one-night stand to be a negative experience reported feeling lonely or empty afterwards.