Family Action Council of Tennessee

For the last several weeks Family Action News (The FAN) has offered analysis and commentary on political matters taking place on Tennessee's Capitol Hill. We hope you have enjoyed them or at least found them thought provoking. We appreciate your readership.

Some of the responses we've received have centered on a desire to know more about "who we are" or "who is doing FAN?" These are great questions. The FAN is an electronic newsletter published by Family Action of Tennessee, a political advocacy organization. Family Action is a sister organization to The Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT), Inc, designated as a 501(c)(3) organization by the IRS. We invite you to visit our webpage, www.factn.org.

But Family Action and The FAN are about more than analysis and commentary; they are also advocacy, advocacy for certain legislative proposals related to the family. In this, our initial year, we are focusing on marriage and on life and human reproduction. Among the several legislative items we are pursuing are reforms in our divorce and child support laws and awareness about chemical abortion. Our proposals are grounded in the belief that not all values are equal, certainly a heretical statement in our "culture of tolerance." But those who would disagree and assert all values are equal should at least acknowledge that they are themselves asserting a value that they believe to be "greater" than the one we would espouse; otherwise they wouldn't find it worth arguing about!

Of course, the real meaning of tolerance assumes the existence of truth for without truth, there can be no error. And without error there is nothing to tolerate. So, for those of you who we may have already inflamed, we appreciate your tolerance.

Our mission is "to promote and defend a culture that values the traditional family, for the sake of the common good." For many today this is a radical statement. It assumes two basic truth claims: one, that there is an order or pattern for the family - a married mom and dad raising their children - that is an ideal to be encouraged and fostered and two, that valuing that order promotes our common good - our good as a social order.

Some will no doubt deny that this is the truth about the family and will deny its value to society. But we hope they will not do the really foolish thing and deny that there is a thing called truth and that some ideas about the family are closer to the truth than others, and that truth, by its very nature, is not and cannot be a relative concept - it is set, established and solid. Unfortunately, often those who most fervently deny the existence of truth do not appreciate that such a denial is itself a claim to truth. Upon reflection, we recognize such a denial is an internally inconsistent statement (if it is true - that there is no truth - then the statement is false because it asserts a truth). Such statements are not worthy of acceptance ... unless we want to embrace incoherence and irrationality.

Since most of us don't want to embrace irrationality, it would seem safe to say that we want our lives and social order to conform to what is true. For example, we readily acknowledge this principle of living every day when we seek such things as nourishment and rest. Why do we do these things? It is because there is a truth about what we need to function, and we conform to it.

Where do families come from and other things your parents may not have told you.

So let us proceed to the ultimate question that we must answer when it comes to family issues: Is the family a social construct that society can change without consequence or is it a reality established in nature by a Transcendent Authority, a "Creator" as our Founders used that term in our Declaration of Independence, which we ignore to our harm? To answer this question, we must know how we will determine the "true" answer to this question.

At Family Action, we believe that we can know things by revelation which, of course, assumes there is a Revealer who we call God. And we believe that the Bible reveals that the structure of the family is grounded in and flows from the nature of its Creator, a triune God whose unity and diversity is reflected in the unity and diversity of one man and one woman, two individuals, becoming one.

This, of course, is an anathema in a culture that embraces either atheism (naturalism) or what I call "practical atheism." For the atheist such a claim is, of course, absurd as there is no God who creates anything, let alone creates things consistent with his nature and character. Practical atheism, on the other hand, is the belief in God, but a denial of God's relevance to things political. In our view, if there is something within our existence over which God has nothing to say and over which Man is autonomous, then Man is God in this area and "God" is not. "God light" we might say.

But, at Family Action we prefer to speak on terms that people of different religions and even no religion can appreciate. We need not rely on revelation only. Because we believe there is a thing called truth and that there is a truth about the family, we believe that that our experience with reality will, in time, bear witness to the truth for nature cannot ultimately contradict itself without inviting the wise to self-correction. As they said in the old Chiffon margarine commercial, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

And what the evidence, collected over the years has shown, is that a married mom and dad are important in the life of a child. While many single parents to a remarkable and wonderful job raising their children, the research is clear - children just plain do better, statistically speaking, when raised by a married mom and dad.

We realize, of course, that not every marriage will work. Some won't survive because one of the partners just doesn't "work" right and others will end through no fault of the adults involved such as where death intervenes. Regardless of the reason though, we should support and come alongside those families and their children.

But because there will always be divorce does not mean that we should not encourage what is best for marriage and for children when it is within our power to do so. It also means that we should not allow the interests of lawyers and the judiciary's interest in trial docket management to trump the interests of families and children. Families existed before civil government and the judiciary. Families should be our priority and government should be subservient to and supportive of the family.

When minor children are involved the law should encourage couples to take sufficient time to evaluate what is about to take place in their family and in the lives of their children. Surveys in various states have found that a substantial percentage of those who have divorced have said that they would have tried harder to save their marriage if they had known then what they later found out. This sad result is made sadder when minor children are involved.

But that is not all, the vast majority of divorces (74 percent) happened to adults who had been happily married five years previously. And two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later. But just one out of five of unhappy spouses who divorced or separated had happily remarried in the same time period. Unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married. In other words, life has its inevitable ebbs and flows and the grass is not always greener on the other side.

As a result, we are proposing that the waiting period for divorce, where there are no "fault" grounds, be extended when there are minor children in the home from 90 days to up to one year. In the space available, we cannot fully make the argument for why this promotes marriage and is good for children, but you can find the research on our web page, http://www.factn.org/divorce-reform.html. We believe it is compelling.

We also believe that justice demands that those who do wrong make restitution for that wrong. Yet, in the area of marriage and divorce those who, in the most egregious ways, breach the covenant of trust that is marriage can and usually do walk away without any consequence greater than if the parties agreed to go their separate ways. So, we are proposing that Courts not blindly divide the assets of a marriage equally when there is clear and convincing proof that one spouse has injured the other through adultery, physical abuse or abandonment.

For example, in these most egregious situations, justice might require that the spouse left with children or the older spouse left without means of support be "compensated" for the harm done them. When a colleague and I pursued such legislation two years ago, we received an outpouring of passionate support unlike any issue I've ever handled other than abortion. There are a lot of people wounded by an unfaithful or abusive spouse whose wounds were aggravated by the injustice of the judicial divorce mill. Not making restitution in these cases is an injustice by our justice system.

And, lastly, to encourage marital counseling and open communication pending the divorce and perhaps, thereby, save some marriages, the legislature will be asked to make those marital counseling sessions privileged.

These are a couple of the agenda items that we believe give recognition to the truth that families are the foundation upon which society is built and that they are not something we can "play with" as we please for they are not something we created.

If you enjoy reading The FAN, we would love to hear from you. You can drop us a note at info@factn.org. While we cannot respond to every comment, we find the exchange of information valuable and informative. Or, if you would like to support our on-going educational efforts on behalf of Tennessee families and culture, you can make a tax-deductible contribution on-line to The Family Action Council of Tennessee by clicking here.

Thank you "listening in" on our thoughts about political and cultural matters in Tennessee.

Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition, Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences (2005 Institute for American Values).

2005 Marriage Report by First Things First, Chattanooga, TN (research conducted by Harris Interactive): In Hamilton County, 53% of those who are currently divorced said they wish they and their ex-spouse had tired harder to work through their differences. In addition, in New Jersey, for example, 46 percent of divorced people reported that they wished that they and their ex-spouse had tried harder to work through their differences. Sixty-six percent of currently divorced Minnesotans answered yes to the question, "Looking back, do you wish you and your ex-spouse had tried harder to work through your differences?" See http://www.americanvalues.org/html/does_divorce_make_people_happy.html

All findings under this topic come from Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages By Linda J. Waite, Don Browning, William J. Doherty, Maggie Gallagher, Ye Luo, and Scott M. Stanley http://www.americanvalues.org/html/does_divorce_make_people_happy.html