Full Disclosure Please, Senator!

By Esam Sohail
Op/Ed

For a man whose conversion to Catholicism has had a markedly benign influence on his political outlook, it is hardly surprising that my Senator Sam Brownback chose his alma mater's lecture series recently to boldly emphasize the social and economic benefits of marriage. His church stands today as the only national institution that unapologetically defends marriage as something more sanctified than a playful contract entered on a whim and broken with greater ease than an apartment lease.

Yet, even as presidential candidate and new Catholic Brownback passionately promoted marriage to the starry eyed students at Kansas State University last month, the former law professor seemed to have forgotten a key phrase in any good attorney's vocabulary: full disclosure.

The sad fact is that after forty years of incessant legislative and academic assault, joined in by Protestant and Catholic alike, marriage is the most risky contract an honorable man or woman can enter into in forty nine of the fifty states of our Union (New York remains the last exception).

In fact, marriage in America is the only 'contract' that can be unilaterally broken without any reason by one party and if any penalty is assessed at all it goes against the party that wants to keep the marriage intact. With such incentives to break vows and an entire therapist industry dedicated to talk one out of any guilty conscience, it is no shock that one in two marriages in America fail.

That is a fifty percent failure rate for an endeavor that Senator Brownback and so many others enthusiastically promote while doing precious little to level a legal playing field that is stacked against matrimony. At the very least, the young people of American need to be given the full disclosure on the potential pitfalls of their nuptial unions in this Union of ours.

Some of the egregiousness of the laws governing divorce, which is the end result of half the marriages in America, is nothing less than sadistic. For example, in the home states of Brownback, and George Bush, and in very Catholic Massachussetts, the law is clear that a divorce(e) is financially responsible for any child conceived as a result of his ex-spouse's adultery during the marriage! Consider another unfortunately not unusual type of scenario:

A low-income man cheats on his high-income wife of many years. He files for divorce to move in with his mistress while the wife still wants to preserve the marriage and work on it. Judges in thirty states will not only grant the divorce quickly but also require this ex-wife to partially support her cheating ex-husband and his mistress for many years, if not a lifetime.

If the genders in the above example are reversed, nine out of ten times any children of the marriage will be placed with the offending spouse as well who is, in most states, at liberty to relocate thousands of miles away from the other parent of the kids. While almost all states require the family court to be the guardian of such a minor child's moral upbringing and 'continuous meaningful contact' with both parents, that judge is rare who considers adultery to be a bad example to children or a father anything other than a wallet for child support payments.

It is hardly surprising that every year tens of thousands of perfectly good divorced men are deprived of a role in their own children's lives with the exception of sending a check for child support which may be spent on the children or on the former wife and her current live-in boyfriend. Our own state of Kansas, like almost every other state, does not require that child support dollars be spent on the child! Divorce and subsequently guaranteed child support is thus a lucrative way of life for many ex-spouses and their current beaus.

Unfortunately, conservative Catholics like Sam Brownback have not only done nothing to change such an affair of things but, inadvertently, helped perpetuate them. Misnamed federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and Interstate Child Support Enforcement Act have been used to fund 'educational' and 'counseling' programs by groups that have a barely hidden contempt for marriage and family. While federal resources have been used with ferocity to collect child support payments, no such help has been forthcoming from Congress to help ensure the parenting rights of fathers and mothers whose former spouses block their access to their own children. As far as state family courts and Congress are concerned, if a marriage breaks down, just send the check to the lucky ex-spouse and otherwise forget that you have kids.

Senator Sam Brownback and other conservatives are absolutely right in touting marriage as one of the most effective tools for combating poverty, child neglect, and juvenile crime. Every one out of two marriages, however, is an equally effective tool for promoting financial ruin, permanent separation of children from one parent, and blatant injustice.

The heartfelt convictions of my senior senator, which I fully share, will have more credible resonance with decent young people if such convictions are backed by substantive efforts not just to encourage marriage but also to protect it as an institution where the potential risks do not outweigh the potential benefits.

Even fiscal conservatives can understand that argument!

_________________

Esam Sohail (The author is a Kansas banker who regularly contributes current affairs commentaries to various publications. He has never been married and does not have any children.)

Contact

Esam Sohail
KS, US
Esam Sohail - Banker,

Email

sohail@websurf.net

Keywords

Marriage Disclosure

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