Take the matter of permanence. Even without considering the sacramental nature of marriage, permanence in marriage is essential to preserve the dignity of the participants, to act fairly toward the spouses, and for the good of children. Any giving of spouses that is partial with respect to time is not a total donation, but a use of the spouse that offends against that person’s dignity as an image of God. Persons may not be treated as objects or used as means, but must be valued for themselves. Thus a man might give himself to a prostitute for an evening or to a mistress for many years, but no one mistakes these arrangements for marriage. They are clearly a use of another human being. It is patently unjust to take a woman at the peak of her attractiveness and then when she has grown older discard her as so much rubbish. Every comparative study of single-parent families shows that children in these situations are five times as likely to be poor, twice as likely to drop out of school, to end in long-term correctional institutions, to become pregnant at an early age, to fail academically, to commit crimes and abuse drugs, and to require psychological counseling. We have had a generation of experimentation with foster parents, boy friends and girl friends, and single parents as caretakers and the results have been alienation, rootlessness, and moral breakdown. It is idle to wring one’s hands over the increasing immorality of the upcoming generation without taking into account the role that divorce has played in promoting it. One does not set the ordinance of God aside with impunity. Unfortunately it is usually the innocent spouse and children who bear the heaviest cost.

If those wedding do not intend permanence the wedding does not result in a marriage no matter how elaborate was the ceremony. It is not possible to say, "I give myself to you for three years," and consider oneself married during that time. Such a couple is not married for even three seconds. Similarly when a couple weds with the understanding that they will remain in the union so long as it pleases them and that they have the right to seek other spouses if this marriage is not to their satisfaction, they are no more married than are a prostitute and her client or a man and his mistress.

Our country’s laws used to recognize the requirement of permanence, but in the 1970’s most states introduced no-fault divorce laws. The net effect of this was to abolish marriage from civil law. Agreements to live together so long as it pleases both spouses produce essentially a temporary, not permanent, arrangement and therefore empty the contract of marriage of its validity.

Why were no-fault divorce laws passed? Marriage was a contract that was legally enforceable. When people married the marriage was set in stone. Spouses had to sue for divorce in the same way that they might file a breach of contract suit. Divorce was granted only to the innocent party; the guilty party had no right to sue. If both were guilty neither could sue. The innocent party had an absolute right to keep a marriage together and prevent a second marriage on the part of the offending partner. Often the adjustment made by couples wanting a divorce to the enforcement of the matrimonial contract was to feign adultery, desertion, or "extreme" mental cruelty. Mere perjury was not too high a price to pay for achieving a divorce desired by both a husband and wife. But if an innocent party did not want the divorce the guilty one was stuck. With the no-fault divorce laws all that unpleasantness was gone. Legislators in their compassion did not wish to force anyone to remain in an unhappy marriage merely because he or she had contracted to do so.

No-fault divorces generate other effects, all of them bad. They lead to the virtual abolition of marriage because all marriages are arrangements that exist as long as both desire. In effect all marriages are "trial marriages." They put the guilty and the non-guilty on the same plane. The blatant injustice of this could be seen if the legislature did the same for a rape victim and her attacker and, in its benevolence, forgave them both. No-fault divorce laws might be called the adulterer/abuser/deserter/drunkard protective act. Often wives work during the years of their greatest attractiveness to help a husband obtain a degree only to discover that their husbands’ subsequent professional success to which they contributed so much is now shared with new, younger wives. Their former husbands can now afford lawyers who know how to spell "irreconcilable differences." These laws have probably contributed to the recklessness if not stupidity in spouse selection since one can easily get out the marriage if it does not work. Of all the contracts only marriage is made non-enforceable. Only in the commitment of one’s very self are there no penalties applied for betrayal. If a plumber does not live up to his contracts he is called a crook and he can be sued, but if he fails to live up to his marital commitment he is said to have grown and nothing is done to him.