Category Archives: Marriage

Order in the Courtroom!

May 14, 2004

Her steely eyes shoot laser beams over the bench.  “You got it wrong!” she lashes out to her targeted victim.  “WRONG!”

The camera pans around the courtroom past a young lady at a podium, moves across an aisle and a gallery of spectators, and lands on a young man at another podium.  His shoulders sag an inch, and his eyes fall to the ground.

“Look at me!” Judge Judy’s sharp voice commands.  She has lost her sense of humor.  And it’s hard to blame her.

Week after week, her courtroom is filled with young men and young women fighting it out to the bitter end.  Lots of young men and lots of young women, but their stories are the same sad song.

They fell in love.  He moved in.  They had a baby.  He moved out.  And now, standing on opposite sides of the aisle in a courtroom, they are laying out all the reasons why the other person is awful.  It’s all his fault.  Or her fault.

“I only want what’s fair,” the young man says.  “I paid the rent for a year.”

“But he said he would support me,” the young woman challenges.  “And then I caught him with another girl.”

All the while Judge Judy shakes her head.  Impatient…she taps her pencil on the papers.  She looks at her bailiff Burt.  “Do I look stupid?” she asks him.

Smiling, Burt shakes his head.

“Stop!” the Judge snaps.  “Stop, I’ve heard enough.”

“But I haven’t finished.”

“You don’t need to finish, Madam.”

“But he wrecked my car and he said he would fix it.”

“But I paid her rent, and she owes me half.”

“STOP!”  The boy and girl stand silent, and the audience giggles.  They know what is coming.  They’ve heard it all before.

“You got it wrong, Sir.  Young lady, you got it wrong.  First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes boy and girl with a baby carriage.

“None of this makes any difference.  You aren’t married.  You decided to do things your own way…out of order…and you created this mess.

“The saddest part of this is that you now have a child together.  The baby is going to pay for your mistakes.

“No.  If you had been married, then you would have had an agreement. Marriage means there are certain obligations and definite rules about how to start a marriage and make it work. Then we could talk.

“But you have nothing.  That’s it.  You had a friendship, and now you don’t.  Case dismissed.”

It makes for entertaining television.  But it makes for tragic lives.

If members of Congress really want to know why marriage is important, they need to watch Judge Judy during each lunch recess.  They will have a front row seat to witness the endless stream of young girls and boys who never learned the natural order of life, of producing families, and of creating marital harmony.

America abandoned marriage in the 60s for the promise of “real love,” and now we have a culture where order doesn’t matter.  Fall in love, get pregnant, live together, move out and start over again, it’s a new modern order that never gets down to the basic question of life.  What about the children?

The traditional order of love and life was not an arbitrary structure forced upon society by some mad social scientist.  It is a natural order established in all world cultures over thousands of years, an order that recognizes the basic desire of humans to fall in love and to build families.  It’s an order that we used to teach our children, an order we used to honor in our own lives as their parents.

The young people in Judge Judy’s court room are funny to watch when we treat their problems as entertainment.  But they and their problems are tragic when you think of what we have failed to teach them.  We have failed to address the true path of building life together with another person and planning for success.

Order in the courtroom:  first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Dad and Mom with a baby carriage.

See April 23, 2004: m…m…m…Married?

m…m…Married?

April 23, 2004

They were a tender sight across the room, the two of them leaning across the table, talking and laughing, smiling into each other’s eyes.  Even as they ate dinner under the low lights, they kept their fingers laced together on the tabletop.

As the waiter cleared their table, they sat in silence.  Then, in the quiet interlude before dessert arrived, the young man reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a small box.  Scooting his chair backwards, he stood tall and moved to the side of his date.  Slowly, kneeling on one knee, he looked up to her.

Everyone in the room knew something special was happening.  Cooperating with the young man, voices drew lower, and when the young woman’s face lit up with joy, the couple was met with an impulsive collective applause from the strangers seated around them.

It really happened.  But it seems quaint today, an awkward public moment to declare one’s intentions.  One simple question, Will you marry me, ushering in a lifetime of commitment.  One question, followed with an answer and a promise, a tender moment that will be tested by the trials of time.

Boy, how things have changed.

My husband and I met in the 60’s when marriage vows were passé.  Quaint promises were given on the beach and meant, not for a lifetime, but for as long we both shall get along together.

During our college years divorce was elevated to a social duty for unhappy married people.  And the advent of birth control seemingly eliminated any consequences of sex…along with the need for parents to usher in a late-night wedding to save the family honor.

In 1966, Robert Rimmer’s The Harrad Experiment portrayed an experimental college where students were “expected to couple up in various combinations and permutations in order to develop a free and uninhibited approach to sexuality.”  None of that had a single thing to do with marriage, vows, and fidelity.

And in 1969, this experimentation spawned the movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice where two couples applauded one another’s affairs and swinging.  Billed as a farce, the foursome under the sheets provided Americans a voyeuristic romp with the “neighbor next door” that made marriage vows a laughable anachronism.

For people of our generation, confidence had been shaken in traditions of the past.  Marriage was seen as just a piece of paper.  Cynicism grew.  And grew.  Even the word itself came under suspicion…m…m…m…marriage, “You want to get m…m…m…married?”

As we saw it, marriage was difficult.  It wasn’t perfect.  People cheated on each other.  They got divorced.  Why try it if you knew it wouldn’t work?

Well…after all these years, we got what we wanted.  And now we are paying the price.  Congress is working to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment.  Meanwhile, abstinence educators are working to teach children the benefits of saving sex until marriage.

Yet, the hardest work lies ahead…even if we restore marriage as a timeless and honored relationship between a man and a woman…even if we lead the coming generation to the altar.

Marriage as an institution is only as good as the love that blooms when a young man bends his knee and a woman reaches out to accept his hand.  Cynicism has no place in marriage.

Marriage as a lifelong relationship will only flourish if we restore the sense of dignity and hope contained in a vow to love and honor, till death do us part.

If marriage matters, we must bestow honor on those who work to make their marriages last a lifetime.  We must work to understand the desires and emotions that cause marriages to crumble, and we must honor our marriages enough to work for their preservation.

Most of all we must muster up the courage to admit that marriage is a good thing.  We must stop the stammering and stand tall.  We must ask boldly and answer gladly.

Will you marry me?  Yes!