When a woman enters motherhood, (Latin: “matrimony,” French: “marriage”), the physical, psychological and emotional demands of pregnancy and child rearing impact every area of her life. Marriage serves as a legal contract to guarantee her the support of the child’s father both during these affected years and beyond.
When a man enters fatherhood, his life changes as well. Paternity creates a legal and social obligation that is enforceable by law, whether he is married to the mother or not. Marriage seals his obligations to the mother while promising her cooperation in raising the child.
These mutual obligations benefit children most of all. When mother and father are cooperating on a child’s behalf, that child’s “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is protected. The greater the cooperation, the more the children benefit. Conversely, uncooperative parents rob children of their birthright.
Families have the right to expect that government will enforce marriage contracts. But so-called “no-fault divorce” laws renege on this basic duty.
Libertarians and libertines urged these laws by claiming that people who want to get a divorce should be free to do so. But almost always, one party doesn’t want the divorce. No-fault divorce laws do not make the government neutral. They put it on the side of whoever values the marriage least.
This is unjust for couples who shouldered the burdens of child-rearing believing their marriage would last for life. Breaking the marriage vow defrauds both the faithful spouse and the children in the home. The government becomes party to fraud when it fails to enforce the contract.
Divorce courts that should support the faithful spouse typically rubber stamp the breakup instead. This leaves the welfare state clumsily to micromanage the broken home. It throws money at the children as if this could compensate for the loss of a parent.
Ten years ago, the late Chuck Colson and others connected the dots between government’s abdication of its duties toward marriage and its parallel abdication of its duty to protect the youngest and most vulnerable people—children, the unborn, and frozen embryos. They also recognized that the more government abandoned families, the more it attacked religious liberty.
Colson decided to do something bold. He asked Drs. Robert George and Timothy George (unrelated) to draft a document that encouraged Christians to defend the vulnerable. Called the Manhattan Declaration, it was released on November 20, 2009. Since then, over a half-million others have signed it. I am one of them.
It is an appeal, to everyone who considers himself a Christian, to recognize that the sacred nature of marriage is no reason to be silent about its secular benefits. Rather, precisely because Christians understand the value of marriage, they have a duty of love to defend all who have been defrauded by a government derelict in its duties.
“Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good,” says the Declaration, “we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense… We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”
Attempts to intimidate Christians into silence have only increased since these words were written. Radical new laws strip infants of legal defense both before and after birth. A never-ending parade of government-sanctioned indoctrination seems calculated to destroy marriage for generations to come.
To shield these policies from criticism, anti-family forces routinely bludgeon good people with labels meant to intimidate and silence. Anyone who dares to stand for marriage, life and religious freedom is attacked personally, economically and even legally. Since the Manhattan Declaration was released, the ever-increasing shrillness of its detractors testifies to its truth.
Frederica Matthewes-Green wrote in her essay commemorating the Declaration’s release: “[E]very generation faces an issue that draws a line between those who will stand up for what is right, and those who just go along. It’s only the bravest who take a stand, and continue to bear witness even when others mock them and misrepresent them; only the bravest keep standing when, from a worldly perspective, the cause looks lost.”
The challenge of our generation is to defend our neighbors’ lives and marriages in the face of slander, verbal abuse and economic pressure. The Manhattan Declaration invites you to rise to that challenge. It is as relevant today as ten years ago.
Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on November 22, 2019.
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