
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 9, 1995                   TAG: 9506140025
SECTION: EDITORIALS                    PAGE: A-18   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

UNMENTIONABLE

THE CHRISTIAN Coalition's "Contract with the American Family," every item of which Newt Gingrich has promised to bring to a vote in Congress, includes a lot of provisions of, shall we say, tangential relation to strengthening the American family. Provisions like making prisons tougher and eliminating federal funding of the arts.

Meanwhile, with one minor exception, the contract makes no reference to discouraging the principal means by which families break up: divorce. It seems, at first glance, an odd omission.

William Bennett, former education secretary and drug czar and now an author of books about morality, in a speech to the Christian Coalition last fall, argued: "If you look in terms of damage to the children of America, you cannot compare the homosexual movement - the gay rights movement - what that has done in damage, compared to what divorce has done to this society."

Bennett publishes an "Index of Leading Cultural Indicators." It indicates that half of all marriages end in divorce. "Divorce," says Bennett, "is what's really kicking the hell out of America."

James Q. Wilson, a scholar much admired by conservatives, echoes the same concern. "It is now easier to renounce a marriage than a mortgage," Wilson has observed. "Half of all divorced fathers rarely see their children and most pay no child support."

So why no condemnation of divorce, or proposal to slow down impulsive divorces, in the Contract with the American Family? The one reference to divorce is minor, but it is illuminating. The contract proposes to eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corp., partly on the grounds that the organization sometimes helps poor people obtain divorces.

Yet even this reference is not couched in a general, moral denunciation of divorce. Breaking up families would seem to be wrong only when the poor do it. Why?

We wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions. But we can't help but notice the near-marriage of Christian Coalition and GOP leadership - emphasized by the array of Republican notables who attended the coalition contract's unveiling last month.

Morality must be restored, thundered House Budget Chairman John Kasich at the coalition's news conference. Bring back old-fashioned family values, said Tex. Sen. Phil Gramm. Ditto, said House Speaker Gingrich. Right on, added Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who met with coalition leaders following the press conference.

None of these politicians mentioned America's divorce epidemic. But that is understandable. Every one of them has been divorced. As if at a wedding, it would have been impolite to bring up the subject.

In the 1950s, divorce might have blocked these men's political aspirations. Today, thankfully, divorce disqualifies no one from high office. Neither, apparently, does it disqualify anyone from preaching family values.

by CNB