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On September 17, 2019, President Russell M. Nelson gave a devotional address to a capacity crowd at the Wilkinson Center on the campus of Brigham Young University. In it he underscored doctrines found in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. He declared, “Our commission as Apostles is to teach nothing but truth. That commission does not give us the authority to modify divine law.”
One of those divine laws concerns “the definition of marriage. In recent years, many countries, including the United States, have legalized same-sex marriage.” The truth of the matter is, however, “that in the beginning—in the beginning—marriage was ordained by God! And to this day it is defined by Him as being between a man and a woman. God has also not changed His law of chastity” in regard to sexuality and its intended purposes within the bonds of marriage.
It should be said that we all embrace loved ones who heroically struggle through tragedies like death or necessary divorce in order to serve their remaining family members. Their efforts are irreplaceable. But today, too often, functional families are becoming an endangered species unnecessarily.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe deeply in marriage and family. But increasingly we find ourselves unable to articulate compelling reasons for exactly why we believe. Sometimes we are like Adam who offered sacrifices to God without understanding why. “I know not, save the Lord commanded me” is all we can answer (Moses 5:6). This is especially understandable when we find ourselves in the modern landscape of the West, which might be the most confused culture in history regarding the sacred, as well as the tangible and practical, benefits of marriage.
This article is intended not only to uphold prophetic truths about marriage, but to give readers clear and tangible evidence of that truth. Although the original article includes a full ten, here are six reasons your family, and millions more just like it, are the key to a peaceful prosperous society.
1. Marriage protects the rights of children to know their parents. Children need to experience the love of a mother and father. Children are entitled to a relationship with both parents. But children cannot protect these entitlements on their own. Marriage proactively protects these rights and assures that children, created by their parents, will also be bound to their parents.
2. Marriage directs sexual activity into healthy channels.Marriage creates an expectation that the husband and wife will not make babies with other partners. A marriage, even if it is currently childless, protects the natural rights of future children to affiliate with both parents. In this way, even permanently childless marriages benefit children’s rights, and hence society, by reserving sexual activity to a setting that prevents out-of-wedlock birth.
3. Marriage Prevents Fatherlessness. Marriage is society’s most reliable way of attaching fathers to their children. Large numbers of scientific studies over decades have consistently shown that father absence presents problems for children. For millennia, marriage has brilliantly solved the fatherhood question by attaching men and women to each other before new life is created. This attachment eliminates confusion about the obligations either parent has to each other and to the child.
4. Marriage teaches children about the permanence of true love. Children of divorce consistently say that they are unsure whether they can make love last and are more likely to get divorced themselves. These facts point to one overarching fact: a stable marriage helps children understand and appreciate lifelong love.
5. Marriage helps children learn to trust. The family is a child’s first link to the rest of the human race. Parents spend a lot of time wiping noses and tying shoes, which might seem to be menial chores anyone can do. But as a by-product of fulfilling these mundane tasks, parents convey to the child that he or she matters to them. Only a parent can say, “You are our child, and no one else will ever take you away. We will never get rid of you.” The parents’ marriage creates this unique promise which is irreplaceable by any other institution. This relationship creates a foundation of trust essential to all other forms of human cooperation.
In the interest of space, we have elided the next four paragraphs. But you can click here to download the full article.
6. Marriage saves taxpayers money.
7. Marriage sets the standard for children’s future interactions with the opposite sex.
8. Marriage reduces violence in the community.
9. Marriage reduces poverty.
10. Marriage makes marriage available to the next generation. We all have a marriage “imprint” based upon the marriage of our parents. Can you imagine entire communities without a marriage model? For instance, in Fredy Grey’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, home of the 2015 Baltimore riots, only 13% of children experience a two-parent home. Children have a harder time understanding what marriage is, how it functions, or how to behave in marriage, since they see permanent relationships so rarely. Such a weak marriage culture also makes it harder for young adults to find a dating pool of qualified partners to choose from. Their acquaintances have most likely not seen or experienced the benefits of a functional marriage either.
Conclusion
“There is no substitute for the family in helping self-centered infants develop into cooperative adults.”[1] For good or bad, America’s children are shaped by the union of their mother and father, and the skills and commitments that are modeled there.
The Proclamation was spot on when it pointed out the tie between family breakdown and civil unrest: “Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”
Your marriage, for better or worse, truly is the key to a successful America. Not to cast aspersions on the hope of any political promises, but if we truly cared about American peace and prosperity, Making THE FAMILY Great Again, would be the top priority.
—
Thanks to
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Founder of the Ruth Institute, for her contribution
to the writing of this article. Click here
to download the PDF of the full 10 reasons
from the Ruth Institute’s Website.
[1] Love & Economics, Page 97
pattyOctober 23, 2019
Giving Keri the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming she has only experienced in her limited circle of LDS acquaintances (be it an LDS ward(s), stake(s), LDS family, LDS friends) those who don't "lovingly embrace" divorced people. Very sad. I must say that I don't categorically fall into her personal experience. I am one of over 16 million LDS people from around the entire world and to be told by a total stranger that I "judge and marginalize" any group of people is simply not "truthfully" true. Who is "truthfully" judging and marginalizing here? Not me.
A. B.October 23, 2019
The family is a species in extinction for sure. I thought of that 20 years ago after vising the local zoo. My own father had recently left the house. I was shaken and thought to myself, "Why in the world did I get married? Will this also end in abandonment?" Fortunately for us, the Lord worked in mysterious ways and my father came back. My parents forgave each other and they are still together. I cry with each episode of Relative Race on BYUTV, because these adults have always had this question in their minds all their lives, "Who is my father/mother, and why was I given up? Wasn't I enough?" I tell our kids they are fortunate to know their father and their mother and know that even though we are not perfect, we love them and are trying hard to raise them to be their best selves.