Choosing to Be Bound

According to a New York Times story about "covenant marriage," an option that makes divorce harder, President Bush "has taken no position" on the idea, "which he considers a state issue." So when it comes to the conditions under which a marriage can be dissolved, Bush believes in federalism. But when it comes to who can marry, he supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex couples.

People can argue about which aspect of marriage is more fundamental, but it's hard to believe that gay couples pose more of a threat to the institution than laws that, as one Christian activist puts it, make marriage "easier to get out of" than "a contract to buy a used car." The essence of the arrangement, after all, is a binding commitment to stay together, except in extraordinary circumstances.

Critics of no-fault divorce have a legitimate complaint: The state imposed on people a change in the terms of their marriages that many of them did not want. The solution, as advocates of covenant marriage implicitly recognize, is not to change the rules back for everyone but to give couples the opportunity to choose the rules they want.

In the three states that offer covenant marriage (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Arizona), couples can choose between the standard contract and one that is harder to get out of. (Only 1 or 2 percent choose the latter option.) Although most people who support covenant marriage presumably oppose same-sex marriage, the policy they advocate points the way toward a separation of marriage and state that would allow people to enter into any mutually agreeable arrangement.