The American Spectator

p> AN UNMARRIED STATE BR>Re: David Holman's A New Covenant : p>Ms. Carlson's diatribe on Capital Gang was pathetic, but no more so than Mr. Holman's whining about it. Mr. Holman writes, “To Margaret Carlson, any politician who voices the idea that the state ought to discourage divorce is an opportunist cashing in on the culture war.” The state ought not to be taking a position on divorce or marriage one way or the other. Maybe I missed that section on divorce in the Constitution. Marriage is nothing more than a civil process for legal entanglement between two people. The standard marriage vows seem unambiguous to me. Do people like Mr. Holman and Gov. Huckabee not take their initial marriage vows seriously enough and therefore need to “upgrade” their marriage to one of the covenant variety? Shouldn't this be a private matter? Mr. Holman also mentions “voluntary covenant marriage legislation.” If I ever get in trouble with the IRS I'll be sure to mention the idea of voluntary tax legislation —voluntary being the operative word. p>If politicians are so serious about marriage they should spend more time working on them and less time publicizing their marriage “upgrade.” BR>— Ben Berry BR>Washington, D.C. p>Amidst the dispute over Covenant Marriage should at least be a question about the value of marriage counseling. I saw no data on how effective that was. Why should the taxpayer or citizen pay for an ineffective screening process? If half of the population gets divorced in a lifetime, I could use a coin flip and be right 25 percent of the time. Can they do better than that? BR>—