Seeking a definition

When Kelley and Joe Pujol married 11 years ago, they knew it wouldn't be a fairy tale or fantasy story where everyone lives happily ever after. Statistics said that about half the couples married in the 1990s would divorce sometime in the future.

But the Pujols were more realistic about what their marriage would be. They found a community of support in their church and continue to work at making their relationship last.

Like many couples who get married today, Kelley and Joe Pujol were older when they wed -- she was 25 and he was 31, more honest about what to expect in a marriage and joined as a partnership.

"I think we were both fairly realistic," Kelley said. "We were both older, and a lot of people aren't realistic" about sharing space and living together with a spouse.

Without getting too sentimental, the Pujols said their marriage is based on a friendship of soul mates, but it's also a partnership. "It's not something that I preach, but a spouse being your best friend -- that's a good starting point, and it's a partnership after that," Joe said.

Especially when there are children, Joe added. The Pujols have three daughters: 4-year-old twins and a 3-year-old.

Marriage should be about two people who honor each other and respect each other and partner with each other, said Stacy D. Phillips, a family law practitioner with Phillips, Lerner and Lauzon law offices in Los Angeles.

That's one set of parameters. But marriage is considered much more by society and religious groups.

It's a building block for society, said Dr. Gerald Stott, a sociology professor at Southeast Missouri State University. People are socialized to accept marriage as the norm, Stott said. "That's the pattern we grow up with."

Marriage is usually a bond between two adults, he said. Webster's Third New World Dictionary defines marriage as "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband and wife."

But same-sex marriages are beginning to challenge that definition and society's stereotypes while causing people to examine what it means to be married. It isn't just society that's grappling with this issue. Religious communities are dealing with their own issues about marriage and homosexuality.

Covenant, public promise

Religious ceremonies, media stereotypes and social mores have shaped how Americans understand marriage. Though it's come to be symbolized in a gold ring or an elaborate wedding ceremony, marriage is much more.

Marriage is both a covenant and public promise on the part of two people, said the Rev. Scott Moon, pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Cape Girardeau.

In the United Methodist Church, it must be a covenant between a man and woman. The church does not bless same-sex marriages nor does it allow its clergy to officiate at such services. Nor do Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God and nondenominational churches in the region.

One argument is that same-sex marriage opens the culture to accepting other possibilities like bigamy or polygamy. "It would have a tendency to weaken the significance and importance of marriage," Stott said.

The Rev. Daniel Hale, pastor of First Baptist Church in Millersville, agrees.

Marriage is more than just a civil ceremony, he said. Even if "society has relegated it to the back burner, that doesn't make it any less important in the eyes of God."

Hale believes there is a spiritual importance to marriage. The Bible, in Ephesians 5:22-33, likens the relationship of the bride and bridegroom to that of Christ and the church.

A wedding ceremony symbolizes the union of man and woman, and marriage symbolizes Christ's commitment to the church, Hale said.

If marriage is instituted by God then it's important to him, Hale said. It should be important to society, but, "like a lot of things, society has corrupted the meaning of marriage," he said.

Counseling required

Through premarital counseling sessions with engaged couples, Hale, like other clergy, tries to stress the importance of a lifelong commitment in marriage.

He won't perform a wedding unless a couple agrees to counseling. None of the church's staff will participate in a wedding unless they know the couple will receive counseling before the ceremony.

In the mid-1990s, 40 churches in Cape Girardeau and Perryville adopted a program focused on curbing the divorce rate by requiring engaged couples to have counseling before being married. Marriage Savers was part of a national initiative aimed at lowering the divorce rate, which reached its all-time high in the 1980s.

Today, nearly all couples have counseling sessions with a minister regardless of the denomination and take premarital inventories before any wedding occurs. Those surveys and counseling sessions allow pastors to talk with couples about everything from finances to sexuality.

Hale knows that counseling isn't going to keep a couple together, but he feels responsible for giving the marriage a solid foundation. "If we're going to put our stamp of approval on this or participate in this, then I feel it's important to do the counseling.

The Pujols think counseling was an important aspect of their marriage's foundation. "It was very specific," Kelley said. And even though she and Joe had talked about lots of things associated with sharing a life during their three years together, the counseling "makes you look at where you'll go for holidays and stuff that you don't necessarily talk about."

Having the blessing and acceptance of a church helps give couples a good start. It's a community that helps the couple with their marriage vows, she said.

Hale said counseling is important because he wants to give newly married couples what they need for marriage. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they have every advantage ahead of them," he said.

Married couples do seem to have the advantage over their single counterparts.

Married men live longer and healthier lives, married women are more financially stable than single or divorced women, and children raised by two parents simply fare better, studies show. Stott also said there are some studies to show that children fare better in households with a mother and father instead of parents of the same sex.

Society benefits from marriage because it provides an outlet for couples to raise children. It promotes wealth through economies of scale, which says that two incomes are better than one, and strengthens social bonds by building a sense of community. Married couples and parents in particular are more likely to be involved in religious and civic organizations and other social networks, and are more apt to be regular voters, said Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Declining marriage rate

Yet trends show a decline of more than 40 percent in the marriage rate from 1970 to 2002. Americans are less inclined to marry and are marrying later in life. Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show the average age of marriage increased from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to 25 and 27, respectively, in recent years.

Hale says that's not necessarily a bad thing. He knows couples who have waited to get engaged until they had college degrees or stable jobs.

That's what the Pujols did. Kelley and Joe met while they were both in graduate school in the South. Joe said it's hard to comprehend couples marrying at 19 or 20.

"I think about how different I was at 18 or 25 or even 31," he said. "You're evolving that whole time."

Although 90 percent of the population will marry at some point in their lives, some couples who don't find that living together offers some of the benefits of marriage without the legal obligations.

Some of the decline in the marriage rate is due to the fact that people of marrying age today are more likely to have grown up in settings where they didn't see marriage in a positive light, Stott said. Divorce is also a factor, since some people, particularly women, who have been through a divorce shy away from second marriages. Statistics show that men tend to remarry much quicker after a divorce.

Yet Moon thinks divorce has made couples more serious about marriage. Couples who marry today have an increased appreciation for the meaning of the institution, he says. But few truly know what they're getting into, he said, "an exciting adventure that's fraught with danger" but also a wonderful experience.

"Marriage is a formal relationship designed to deepen intimacy and trust and love," he said.

Even when a wedding is performed in a church or synagogue, a marriage is still a legal ceremony. Whether for a religious or civil ceremony, couples need a license to marry. "So ultimately it's the state that stands behind and legitimizes the marriage," Stott said.

But Hale believes the definition of marriage is more than just one man and one woman forming a union. It's also about being united in the church and for life. "I don't think there's any other way to define it," he said. "When it's all said and done in the state of Missouri, and we've voted, we aren't going to change the people's minds who think it's nothing more than a civil union and it's marriage as long as it's a man and woman."

'End where it started'

He questions where the redefinition of marriage will stop. He envisions "some wacko group on the left that says, 'I don't love a man or a woman, but I sure do love my dog.' Where does it end? It has to end where it started," Hale said.

For him that's as a union of man and woman.

But if marriages are designed to provide stability, what does it matter if that relationship is between a man and woman, man and man or woman and woman? Phillips asks.

To have a successful marriage, you have to find two people who want the same type of marriage. "It's more about what they expect than what sex they are," said Phillips.

Couples who enter marriages as partnerships encounter problems when one partner decides to change what the partnership is based upon, she said.

In January 2005, California will start granting domestic partnerships the same rights and responsibilities of marriages. While couples can base their lives together on such partnerships, "marriage is still the ultimate," Phillips said.

Kerrie Litner of the Rainbow Alliance student group at Southeast Missouri State University said gay couples recognize that marriage carries more weight.

Marriage "gives you that piece of paper that says 'till death do us part,'" she said. "It means you've got to work on your problems instead of just running away."

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126