Our culture might say that potential marital partners benefit from living together before marriage, but statistics show that cohabitation before marriage can lead to marital problems once the couple weds and can increase the risk of divorce.

Sadly, by trying to avoid the broken homes and shattered lives experienced by family members and friends they know, some young people or even frightened divorced individuals are somehow hoping to avoid brokenness again by this avoidance of a long-lasting, in-front-of-God commitment to one another in marriage. But the solution really only leads to two single people living under one roof, not two people living in unity.

And it can be particularly damaging financially when couples break up before marriage. Imagine investing five, seven, or even ten years of your life in an arrangement that seems semi-permanent only to discover you are now out of a home and a loving relationship because your partner has called it quits without warning. You have no legal leg to stand on, and you have to begin again. This cycle can lead to poverty as well as lead individuals away from love altogether.

All this can be avoided by reserving passion and home-building for the solid, long-lasting, protected covenant we call biblical marriage.
 

America began a social experiment decades ago with no-fault divorce, removing the historical requirement that there be grounds for divorce. This was a major shift in the understanding of marriage and the relationship between marriage and reproduction.
Consequently, this shift paved the way for declining marriage rates, increased co-habitation, and demands for homosexual marriage. Research is now very clear that, in general, divorce (particularly in the absence of abuse) has tremendous negative effects on women and children.

And there is a tremendous cost to taxpayers from family fragmentation, over $700 million in Tennessee tax dollars annually.

More About This Issue

• The Cost of Family Fragmentation – Full Study
• The Cost of Family Fragmentation –  Executive Summary

Pornography (including strip clubs euphemistically called “gentlemen’s clubs” or “adult-oriented entertainment”) is not a victimless activity. It is a tool that destroys marriages, affects the brain negatively, breeds disease and crime, and is used in sex trafficking.
 

Support for homosexual marriage, or same-sex “marriage,” reflects not only a misunderstanding of what marriage is, but also a lack of appreciation for the impact the redefinition of marriage will have on society and the reasons that governments provide benefits and impose duties upon marriage.

We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman because that is the biblical definition. We believe that the United States Supreme Court showed governmental overreach by trying to legislate from the bench in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case, which opened the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

Tennessee does not currently have a specific marriage licensing law on the books that includes same-sex marriage, so the Court usurped state’s rights.