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Smith: A new decade for marriage
By ORAN P. SMITHGuest Columnist
In 2003, Palmetto Family held its first Celebrating Families dinner. The keynote speaker was NFL Hall of Famer Steve Largent. Largent was introduced that night by his friend from Congress, Mark Sanford, who had just been elected governor.
Since the fateful day when Mark Sanford returned from Argentina, and especially since Jenny Sanford filed for divorce, Palmetto Family leaders have relived that night over and over, because of the governor's connection to our efforts to celebrate marriage and family.
Although he has been reluctant to aggressively push issues of faith and values legislatively, the governor went out of his way to help us promote the event, even going on a local radio station talking about the importance of fatherhood and parenting. (I believe he was sincere.)
Congressman Largent and Gov. Sanford are good friends who got to know one another through their participation in "C Street," a Christian accountability ministry that works with members of Congress. Despite the efforts of the C Street group, both Gov. Sanford and U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, engaged in extramarital relationships that became public this summer.
Just a few hours before Largent was to speak, Palmetto Family leaders agreed it would be a good time to announce a vision for a marriage initiative - a comprehensive plan to strengthen marriage in South Carolina.
That night, with its rally around family and marriage led by Steve Largent and Mark Sanford, is now just a memory. It is a particularly bittersweet memory, because of the scholarly literature we live by at Palmetto Family: Kids who grow up in two-parent homes do better in school, are less likely to have encounters with the criminal law and are less likely to be physically or emotionally sick. Married couples have better health, sexual satisfaction and financial resources than unmarried people or cohabiting couples.
Mark Sanford isn't alone in stumbling, of course. A number of high-profile marriages took a hit in 2009, most notably that of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren. That means the institution of marriage itself took a high-profile hit.
So what do we do now? At Palmetto Family, we're not ready to surrender. More South Carolinians can enjoy healthy marriages, but to do so, we must think and act.
In our thinking, we as South Carolinians should have a grasp on the importance of marriage to society. That's not religion or even Dr. Phil, that's Public Administration and Business Administration 101. This is reflected in the work of Ben Scafidi, a Georgia State University economist. His peer-reviewed research estimates the cost of divorce and family fragmentation on our state budget at a whopping $469 million. (That's equal to the combined budgets of the departments of Social Services, Juvenile Justice, Probation, Pardon and Parole and Clemson and MUSC.) USC Professor Melinda Forthofer estimated in The Journal of Marriage & Family that marital problems translate to a loss to American businesses of approximately $6.8 billion per year.
Unfortunately, the idea of "working on one's marriage" is assumed to be high on a wife's list but somewhere below the Gamecocks or Tigers for the average husband. If that is so, it need not be that way. The blunt subtitle of one of the best books on healthy marriage is How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage. This book by Willard Harley gets right to the bottom line with a checklist and a test. A number of churches and civic organizations have outstanding programs and retreats addressing marital health as well. Even businesses are considering making healthy marriage a priority at work (which is, if nothing else, a sound business decision).
For our part, Palmetto Family is collecting marriage resources at www.palmettofamily.org/marriage. You may know of sources we have missed. Helpful advice from our own in-house marriage expert, Jay Ostrowski, can be found on our new blog at www.palmettofamilylife.com. We invite you to join the conversation.
As we continue to pray for the Sanfords - and all the other families hit hard by family fragmentation last year - let us not miss the wake-up call. Our state can be better off in every way, including financially, if we think and act together to defend marriage.