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Marriage Education Advocate Applauds Federal Funding to Build Healthy Families

by Mary Rettig
February 9, 2006

(AgapePress) - - Diane Sollee, founder and director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education (SmartMarriages.com), says she is pleased that Congress has approved $750 million in funding to help build stronger, healthier marriage and family relationships.

The deficit reduction bill signed by President George W. Bush yesterday includes $500 million for secular or faith-based programs to promote and strengthen the bonds between husbands and wives. This money will be used over a five-year period, primarily to fund local organizations, churches, and other groups dedicated to helping marriages, Sollee says, while the other part of the money will go towards fatherhood initiatives.

"We're very excited about it," the Coalition spokeswoman notes. "It's based completely on marriage education -- on the idea that we can help couples, American citizens of any class or any ethnic background to learn more about marriage, master marriage, and just become smarter about marriages."

Sollee says this is the first time Congress has earmarked federal money for healthy marriage-building and promoting programs. And, she points out, this allocation is not an increase in federal spending but is actually a redistribution of funds that were previously used for slowing the rates of abortion and out-of-wedlock births.

Funding Demonstrates Government's Realization: Traditional Marriage Matters
The marriage, family and couples education advocate says she is pleased the U.S. government has finally recognized how important healthy marriages are to the nation's well-being and interests as a whole. This is a truth she says the Coalition has been trying to communicate for some time.

"We had to come at marriage first through fatherhood," Sollee explains, "and so we had to first establish that fathers did indeed matter." She says for a long time many U.S. programs "were operating as though fathers didn't make any difference, that kids were just fine in any family form, in single-parent families."

But eventually, that mindset was proven erroneous, Sollee says. "The research was overwhelming." The data that came in, she asserts, "showed we were wrong and that two-parent families really do benefit children on anything we can find to measure."

A Bush administration official has noted that the funding provided by this newly signed legislation cannot be used to promote same-sex "marriages" in Massachusetts. According to an Associated Press report, Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary Wade Horn says the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as "the union of one man and woman" for all federal services and programs.

Also, Secretary Horn emphasizes, religious groups that receive federal funding for marriage programs will not be allowed to proselytize or to discriminate against participants based on their "faith perspective."
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.

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