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EDITOR'S
SIDEBAR
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| For
those of you who don’t know this already, I work for a living cataloging
serials at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. I’ve been doing
this for over 14 years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in that
time, it’s that cover dates and publication dates don’t necessarily have
ANYTHING in common with one another.
Usually,
this is a source of great frustration, but this month (or perhaps more
realistically, in the coming months), I’m going to be using this to my
advantage. As those of you who read “One Man Watching” may remember, back
in December 2002, I talked about the five month gap between issues and
I wrote, “Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to attempt to make some
sort of a plan or a timeline for myself that will result in ‘One Man Watching’
coming out in a more regular and timely fashion.” Given that it has now
been seven months since that last issue, it seems quite clear that the
plan/timeline didn’t even come close to panning out.
This
is not to say I haven’t had ideas or things I wanted to write about, just
that I didn’t get the writing done. Consequently, at the risk of becoming
“The Writer That Cried ‘Wolf’”, I am going to try again. However, in addition
to the ongoing writing I want and need to do, I am going to try to go back
and get the back issues I had planned written. It may be, then, that in
addition to the new issues coming out as dated (August in August, and so
forth), it may be that a February issue might come out in August, a March
issue in September, etc. I hope that their belatedness will not render
them inconsequential, and I hope you will give them the same generous attention
you have given my writings thus far.
Brad Pardee
Editor |
If you have any feedback, I'd love
to hear it. Contact me at:
[email protected] |
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| Defending Marriage Closer To Home |
| There has been a great deal of activity this summer on the issue of gay rights. The United States Supreme Court overturned Texas’ law which outlawed sodomy. Two provinces in Canada began issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples. The Episcopal Church in the United States appears to be getting ready to name an openly gay priest as a bishop.
In response, there is talk of going beyond the “Defense Of Marriage” acts which have been passed by Congress and many state legislatures to a amendment to the United States Constitution which would outlaw gay marriage.
Now I’m not going to pretend that I’m neutral on the issue of gay marriage, because I’m not. I don’t support changing the traditional “one man one woman” definition of marriage, and I’ll adress that issue another time.
There is, however, one point which has been raised by gay rights advocates that I don’t think has gotten the kind of attention it ought to, because it’s one point on which the advocates are absolutely right. They point to the divorce rate in this country as a sign that those of us who say we are concerned about the institution of marriage aren’t exactly walking the walk. According to Barna Reseach Group, the numbers on divorce are not statistically that different between evangelical Christians and non-evangelicals or non-Christians. They ask, and rightfully so, if we are so concerned about defending the institution of marriage, why do we spend so much time and energy on opposing gay marriages (which, even if legal, would be a small minority) and so little on preserving the heterosexual marriages that are failing and falling apart all around us.
I’m not going to say that I agree completely with the idea that remarriage after divorce is ALWAYS wrong. For example, if there is abuse, I’m not prepared to say that a victim should be forced to live as a single person as long as their abuser is alive. I’m also not going to say that someone who is divorced should automatically carry the stigma of being somehow morally unfit for decent company as used to be the case.
However, when I hear people say that they got divorced because they just grew apart or because their careers were going in different directions or the ever-popular ambiguity of “irreconcilable differences”, I can’t help but wonder why we go along with the popular culture that says that’s just fine. I can say from my own experience that a marriage takes work to keep it strong. If a couple is taking their marriage seriously from the beginning, then they aren’t going to allow themselves to grow apart. They are going to place their marriage ahead of their careers, which may mean that one of them won’t advance as far or as fast as the other. They are going to have to be willing to talk through their differences and sacrifice some of their own wants and desires so that those differences don’t become irreconcilable.
If we are going to make the case that marriage needs to be preserved and defended as an institution, as I believe it must be, then we can’t simply wait until an issue like gay marriage comes along to start defending it. There is an old saying that “character is what you do when nobody is watching,” and I think there’s a lot of truth to that, but the underlying principle goes farther, and it has application to the issue of defending marriage. If we haven’t fought to defend marriage in day-to-day life, before there was a legal or political issue on the table, then we shouldn’t be surprised when people wonder if our current, fashionable devotion to the institution is genuine or just so much political noise.
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