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CNN Sunday Morning

President Bush Proposes Spending $300 Million a Year to Promote Marriage

Aired April 21, 2002 - 09:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Denver police have issued an international alert for thousands of stolen birth and death certificates. Authorities say some 2,000 blank birth certificates and 300 death certificates were discovered missing from a county records office earlier this month. The documents could be used as false identification, and Denver police have asked the FBI, Interpol, and other agencies to be on the lookout.

Money for marriage? Well that's the latest tactic in the welfare reform movement. President Bush has proposed spending $300 million a year to promote marriage, but in Oklahoma, the state is already encouraging people to walk down the aisle. CNN's Kathy Slobogin reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It's an April wedding in Oklahoma, a state that has a lot riding on marriage. Oklahoma has the second highest divorce rate in the country. State officials say in half the counties, divorce petitions outnumber marriage licenses, so the governor has launched a marriage initiative. Why a marriage initiative?

GOVERNOR FRANK KEATING (R) OKLAHOMA: Strictly for the purpose of lifting this state up economically.

SLOBOGIN: Governor Frank Keating has put his state at the forefront of the marriage movement, vowing to cut the state's divorce rate by a third in ten years. Marriage is so personal and intimate, should it be government's business to promote marriage?

KEATING: If the marriage doesn't work out, guess what? A judge that you've never met in your life, you don't know that person from Adam, determines where your paycheck goes and where do the kids live. If that's not government being intrusive, I don't know what government could do any worse.

SLOBOGIN: The idea behind the marriage movement is that marriage is an anecdote to poverty. The poverty rate for single mothers is five times that of married couples with children.

SLOBOGIN (on camera): Promoting weddings may make politicians feel good, but a number of critics say the marriage movement is a simplistic fix that won't necessarily lift people out of poverty.

DORIAN SOLOT, ALTERNATIVES TO MARRIAGE PROJECT: Oklahoma really has it backwards. It's true that divorce causes poverty in some cases, but what's even more true is that poverty causes divorce. Poor people are less likely to get married, and they're less likely to stay married.

SLOBOGIN (voice over): But Oklahoma is betting on marriage. Governor Keating has set aside $10 million in welfare money to promote marriage. Some of that money has gone to training volunteers around the state to run marriage workshops, available free to any couple married or thinking about it.

Keating has also corralled 800 ministers around the state into signing a marriage covenant. That means, they'll only marry couples who go through premarital counseling first.

REV. JEFF STEWART, CROSSINGS COMMUNITY CHURCH: We have had a lot of couple that decide, even without my initiating it, not to get married. They just decided that they agreed to part company.

SLOBOGIN: Governor Keating believes supporting marriage with tax dollars pays off. He says taxpayers pay the price when marriages fall apart through welfare, broken homes, and damage children.

KEATING: We think to take a little drop at the front end to avoid a flood at the tail end, makes good sense.

SLOBOGIN: Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Oklahoma City.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well some diehard Yankee fans are being left in the dark. When we return, details of a fight over cable television that's driving some fans to desperation.

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