Last week, in addition to being Valentine's Day and Purity Day, was also National Marriage Week. Don’t you hate it when you miss out on a party?

What is National Marriage Week about? Why, it's about families. A rotating set of images appear on the site’s front page. There are African-American couples with their African-American children, Hispanic couples with their Hispanic children, Asian couples with their Asian children, and white couples with… oh, you know the rest. 

In other words, it's about real families, with a mommy and a daddy and children.  Families that have to be protected against the incursion of … others.  You know, two mommies or two daddies or interracial couples or opposite-sex couples who selfishly decide not to have children. 

To their credit, there's no explicit hectoring about those evil LGBT people out to destroy the holy tradition of marriage on this site. Like the interracial and childless families, they simply don't exist. For more about the bootless rearguard action against Massachusetts Marriage Equality, you need to go to MassResistance or Massachusetts Family Institute's websites. (Look 'em up if you want, I'm not doing anything to raise their Google profiles.) 

The site does seem to have an overriding message. The most important way to have a happy marriage is to buy self-help books and DVDs, attend seminars led by marriage experts, and go on guided marriage retreats often led by those same self-appointed marriage experts. 

There's nothing so ridiculous as the advice of the experts on the proper conduct of a marriage. One of the resources on the Marriage Week site is a sample dialog:  "Take turns sharing this sentence, 'I know that I can sometimes be ______, but that you for remembering today, that deep down, I really am a ______ person. I love you.'" It goes on to supply a list of possible imperfections(impatient, irritable, insensitive, preoccupied, oblivious....), as well as words the partner can use thanking the other person for sharing.  I'd turn this into Mad-Libs myself. But what do I know? I'm not a published marriage expert.

According to one of the experts who has created "Love and Respect Ministries", everything you need is in a quote from Saint Paul. Ephesians 5:25 - Men need respect, women need love, do that and you'll have a happy marriage.  "Respect," according to his book, means respecting that he's in authority, he's the boss, he's the wise one in the family, and he wants more sex. 

Along with the assumption that only families headed by heterosexuals count, there's also the assumption that Christianity is key to the longevity of any marriage. The family that prays together and all that. It’s surprising how many self-annointed experts also happen to be evangelists.

They are right about one thing: married couples are financially better off than singles. Of course, once you bring children into the mix, that's no longer true, but two incomes and shared expenses are superior to one. Marry for the money if for no other reason.

Where they fail is in connecting the last dot. If marriage is so good for families, for financial security, for health, for happiness, for childrearing if you have them, then shouldn't the marital estate be encouraged?  Shouldn't we share the joy with everyone?

It's been almost ten years since the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry. Massachusetts is also one of the least religious states. Yet we continue to enjoy one of the lowest divorce rates in the nation. We must be doing something right. Maybe we should start offering seminars for those other states.