We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, 

 

• Premarital sex with one partner substantially increases the odds of divorce.Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability,” Institute for Family Studies, June 6, 2016.  

 

• If you have had two pre-marital sexual partners, you cut the chance of a successful marriage, at the 5-year mark, by almost 50% (as compared to a person with no pre-marital sex partners).  National Survey of Family Growth 1995, Centers for Disease Control.   

 

• Research from the Netherlands shows that couples who cohabited prior to marriage have a 29-percent higher risk of divorce than couples who do not cohabit.  Matthus Kalmijn, Paul De Graaf and Anne-Rigt Poortman, “Interactions Between Cultural and Economic Determinants of Divorce in The Netherlands,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004): 75-89.

 

• Ninety-two percent of married men and 93 percent of married women reported being faithful to their spouses during the previous 12 months.  “Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002,” National Center for Health Statistics, Advance Data 362 (September 15, 2005). 

 

• Marriages preceded by cohabitation have higher disruption rates than marriages not preceded by cohabitation. William Axinn and Arland Thornton, “The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Divorce: Selectivity or Causal Influence?” Demography 29 (1992): 357-74.  Neil Bennett, Ann Blanc, and David Bloom, “Commitment and the Modern Union: Assessing the Link Between Premarital Cohabitation and Subsequent Marital Stability,” American Sociological Review 53 (1988): 127-38.  Alan Booth and David Johnson, "Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Success,” Journal of Family Issues 9 (1988):  255- 72. Alfred DeMaris and William MacDonald, “Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Instability: A Test of the Unconventionality Hypothesis,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 55 (1993): 399-7.   

 

• Couples who cohabit prior to marriage are at 39 percent greater risk of marital infidelity. Judith Treas and Deirdre Giesen, “Sexual Infidelity Among Married and Cohabiting Americans,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 48-60.

 

• Cohabitation is associated with greater levels of depression and lower levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction.  Cohabitation puts women at risk by making it more difficult to read a man’s intentions and facilitates relationships with less than ideal mates.   Scott M. Stanley, Galena Kline Roberts, and Howard J. Markman, “Sliding Verses Deciding:  Inertia and the Premarital Cohabitation Effect,” Family Relations 55 (2006):  499-509.

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• "…sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.”  Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 

who abuse spouse or offspring, 

 

• Cohabiting couples reported rates of physical aggression in their relationship that were three times higher than those reported by married couples. Sonia Miner Salari and Bret Baldwin, “Verbal, Physical and Injurious Aggression Among Intimate Couples Over Time,” Journal of Family Issues 23 (May 2002): 523-550.

 

• Stable married couples had the lowest rates of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) with an incidence of 16.2 percent for overall IPV and 3.5 percent for IPV involving “physical violence with injury.” The rates for cohabiting couples rate ran more than twice as high for overall IPV (37.5 percent) and for “physical violence with injury” the rate was four times as high (16.1 percent). Though the incidence of overall and severe IPV ran higher among newly married or remarried couples (overall IPV 18.7 percent and 7.0 percent for “physical violence with injury”), it was still far below that observed among cohabiting couples.  Greer Litton Fox and Michael Benson, “Household and Neighborhood Contexts of Intimate Partner Violence,” Public Health Report 121 (2006): 419-427.     

 

• Couples who share the same religious commitment are less likely to commit acts of domestic violence.  Men who attend religious services at least weekly are less than half as likely to commit an act of violence against their partners as their peers who attend once yearly or less.  Christopher G. Ellison, John P. Bartkowski, and Kristin L. Anderson, “Are There Religious Variations in Domestic Violence?” Journal of Family Issues 20, no. 1 (January 1999): 87-113.

 

• Regular attendance at religious services has a strong and statistically significant inverse association with the incidence of domestic abuse.19)  Christopher G. Ellison and Kristin L. Anderson, “Religious Involvement and Domestic Violence Among U.S. Couples,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 2 (June 2001): 269-286.

 

or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. 

 

• Seventy-one percent of poor families with children are not married.  Marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82 percent.  Calculations based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Census, American Community Survey, 2006-2008.

 

• The economic benefits of marriage are not limited to the middle class; some 70 percent of never-married mothers would be able to escape poverty if they were married to the father of their children.  Robert Rector, Kirk Johnson, Patrick Fagan and Lauren Noyes, "Increasing Marriage Will Dramatically Reduce Child Poverty," Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. CDA03-06, May 20, 2003. 

 

• Ever-married women, regardless of race or education, had a poverty rate roughly one-third lower than the poverty rate experienced by never-married women. Daniel Lichter, Deborah Roempke Graefe and J. Brian Brown, “Is Marriage a Panacea? Union Formation Among Economically Disadvantaged Un-wed Mothers,” Social Problems 50(2003): 60-86.

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Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.  

 

• “[B]eing married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to non-married states for the same man.” Robert Sampson, John Laub and Christopher Wimer, “Does Marriage Reduce Crime? A Counterfactual Approach to Within-Individual Effects,” Criminology 44(2006): 465-502.

 

• High School students who report heavy episodic drinking are disproportionately “older, male, from families that receive welfare benefits, are not living in intact families, are attending religious services less often and are more likely to have delinquent friends than those who have not drunk heavily in the month prior to the survey.” Barbara Costello, Bradley Anderson and Michael Stein, “Heavy Episodic Drinking Among Adolescents: A Test of Hypotheses Derived from Control Theory,” Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education 50.1 (2006): 35-36.   

 

• On average, children without their father (single-mom household) have:

  • Increased risk of poverty, involvement in crime, failing in school, less likely to graduate from college

  • Increased risk of psychological distress and mental illness, child abuse and suicide 

  • More likely to be exposed to high levels of aggravated parenting

  • Less healthy physically

  • Higher infant mortality

Child Trends, Family Structure: Children & Youth, 2015.  National Center for Family and Marriage Research, “Child Poverty in the United States, 2010,” Bowling Green University, Ohio.  Wendy Wang and W. Bradford Wilcox, “The Millennial Success Sequence,” Institute for Family Studies. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 1-Year Estimates, 2010  

 

• James D. Unwin, after studying 86 ancient cultures, concluded that “In human records, there is no instance of a civilization retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence. Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation."” Those civilizations that went from no sexual regulation to strict regulation of sexual activity advanced proportionately, while those that went from strict regulation to complete abandonment of sexual mores collapsed within about three generations.  J. D. Unwin, J. D., Sex and Culture. London: Oxford University Press, (19340; p. 412.

 

• Pitirim Sorokin, the founder of sociology at Harvard, concluded that once individuals--especially males--are freed for sexual behavior outside of marriage, civilizational collapse becomes inevitable.  P.A. Sorokin,The American Sex Revolution. Boston, MA: Frank P. Sargent (1956).

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• Do we need marriage [and traditional family]?  “The answer to this question is, I think, abundantly clear from 40 years of experimentation both here and in Europe.  The consequences of our current retreat from marriage [and family] is not a flourishing libertarian social order, but a gigantic expansion of state power and a vast increase in social disorder and human suffering.  

"The results of the marriage [and family] retreat are not merely personal or religious.  When men and women fail to form stable marriages, the first result is a vast expansion of government attempts to cope with the terrible social needs that results.  There is scarcely a dollar that state and federal government spends on social programs that is not driven in large part by family fragmentation:  crime, poverty, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, mental and physical health problems.  Even Medicare spending is inflated, as elderly singles spend more of their years in nursing homes.

“Losing this battle [to preserve marriage and the natural family] means losing the idea that children need mothers and fathers.  It means losing marriage.  It means losing limited government.  It means losing American civilization.  It means losing, period.”  Maggie Gallagher, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy.

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• “The family is the seedbed of economic skills, money habits, attitudes toward work, and the arts of financial independence. The family is a stronger agency of educational success than the school. The family is a stronger teacher of the religious imagination than the church. Political and social planning in a wise social order begins with the axiom ‘What strengthens the family strengthens society’…. The roles of a father and a mother, and of children with respect to them, is the absolutely critical center of social force.”  Michael Novak, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.