Marriage is a universal phenomenon of human cultures in all times and places, and this regardless of the religion of the people concerned.

This is not hard to understand.

Consider the earliest days of human civilisation. Had there not been cooperation both between women and their children, and between men and the children and women whom they protect and provide for, beginning with our first parents, there would never have been succeeding generations. The vulnerability of the woman bearing the child and the helplessness of the child has always been too extreme and prolonged, given the need for sufficient food, adequate shelter and the threat of natural disasters and warfare.

Marriage rites provided shape, commitment and recognition to the family and indeed marriage provided the sole legitimate avenue to sexual activity.

However, it has been this latter and proper requirement of marriage to legitimise a “one-flesh” relationship that has placed marriage under pressure. As Roger Scruton has observed, “the problem is that, by impeding our pleasures, (marriage) creates a strong motive to escape from it. And escape from it we did (in the 1960s), with a great burst of jubilation that very quickly dwindled to an apprehensive gulp.”

So what happened to facilitate this “great escape” from marriage?

In short order, and virtually all at the same time: the sexual revolution with its removal of the stigma associated with cohabitation and associated illegitimacy, the pill, legalised abortion, easy divorce, feminism, and the gay rights revolution.

Without spending time on significant antecedents stretching back into the previous century, a new sexual standard emerged in the 1960s and 1970s: the requirement of marriage was replaced with that of a loving relationship, and further, the notion that sex should be enjoyed on an individual basis whenever desired was advanced, so long as mutual consent prevailed. And so were born sex­ual relationships on a casual basis, with cohabitation, when occurring, acting as a stepping stone to marriage or else supplanting marriage entirely. With each passing decade since the 1970s, cohabi­tating couples have become more likely to break up in search of new relationships and therefore are less likely to marry.

None of this could have been sus­tained but for the pill and freely available abortions performed by doctors.

The pill, first marketed to married women in 1961, was made available to unmarried women from the early 1970s. The pill removed fear of pregnancy from sexual activity and is credited with allowing women to have a sexual relationship, whether married or unmarried, while pursuing a career.

At the same time, abortion was pro­viding a further relief from an unwanted child. Abortion had a number of consequences. The first was the number of babies offered for adoption virtually dried up overnight leading to the development of artificial reproductive technologies now being accessed by single women, gays and lesbians, at least in Victoria. The second consequence was that by locating the decision for an abortion in the hands of the pregnant woman, it helped to marginalise both men and marriage. In this, abortion worked in two ways: a decision for termination within marriage reinforced the effect of the pill to drive a wedge between marriage and childbearing with possible alienation between husband and wife, while outside marriage it encouraged the unwilling prospective father to walk away, saying, “too bad, it’s your problem”.

No-fault divorce and the resultant ballooning divorce rate further delegit­imised marriage, especially for the children of divorced parents. With the rise of divorce came the related rise of either single parenting invariably undertaken by the mother at great cost to her chil­dren or a new relationship often to be succeeded by further relationships, again invariably to the disadvantage of the children who may now find themselves in blended and often fragile families, where child abuse has proved all too common.

The role of feminism in the demise of marriage cannot be overstated. Contra the feminism of the late 19th century with its limited focus on prop­erty rights and the vote for women, the feminism of the 1960s lifted its sights towards abortion rights, reproductive rights for which the availability of the pill was paramount, gender equality, protection from domestic violence, sexual harassment, and against all forms of discrimination whether in the home, education, civic life or employment.

While arguably much of this has been good for women and their children and for society as a whole, there is nevertheless a dark side to feminism that is deeply inimical to marriage. Thus Germaine Greer’s influential book, The Female Eunuch contains a chapter entitled, The middle class myth of love and marriage, in which she raises the possibility of a women’s revolution:

women ought not to enter into socially sanc­tioned relationships, like marriage, and that once unhappily in they ought not to scruple to run away. It might even be thought to suggest that women should be deliberately promiscuous. It certainly maintains that they should be self sufficient and consciously refrain from estab­lishing exclusive dependencies and other kinds of neurotic symbioses.

Now whilst feminism has become more diffused and developed some softer tones in needing to accommodate to reality, it nevertheless remains true that feminism continues to deeply affect every aspect of social life to the detriment of the connection between sexual relations, marriage and procreation.

If there has been a women’s revolution, there has certainly been a homosexual revolution. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homo­sexuality from its list of disorders. This event was significant in mainstreaming homosexuality into medicine, and thence popular culture.

Homosexuality causes damage to marriage in two ways. First, homosexual relationships, whether gay or lesbian, reinforces the feminist bias against dis­tinctive male-female gender identity. Second, the political campaign to allow gays and lesbians to “marry” is an attack on traditional marriage as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”.

Forty years on we are in a position to evaluate the impact of the swinging sixties and the picture isn’t pretty. It is not pretty for women, nor for men and especially not for children.

There has been virtually a complete breakdown in the taboo that sex belongs inside marriage. According to the 2008 Secondary Students and Sexual Health survey of 3000 Year 10 and Year 12 students drawn from more than 100 schools across the state and private school systems, a quarter of year 10 students, and just over half of year 12 students said they had experienced sexual intercourse. Additionally, girls enrolled in year 12 reported they were “having more sexual partners and drinking 30 per cent more” than a similar group reported in 2002. Even allowing for some unwarranted boasting, these findings are highly disturbing, running very much against the experience of compa­rable groups of students in the 1950s.

Since the 1960s the rates of cohabitation and illegitimacy have sky rocketed, whilst marriage has been increasingly delayed.

Cohabitation prior to marriage aver­aged less than 5% of all married and unmarried couples in Australia in the 1960s. Thereafter the proportion increased rapidly: 22% in 1978, 69% in 1999, and most recently, 78% of couples in 2008 who cohabitated prior to marriage.

In England, the rate of illegitimacy in 1900, and Australia was likely to be little different, was 4%. By 1960 this had edged up to 5%, but thereafter climbed rapidly to the present figure of one birth to an unmarried mother for every two births to a married couple, i.e. an eight­fold increase since 1900.

The raw figures disguise the fact that rates of cohabitation and illegitimacy are especially skewed toward the under privileged sections of Australian society, in complete contrast to the situation at the beginning of the 20^th century when the illegitimacy rate was lowest amongst the working class.

Cohabitation is a very poor substitute for marriage. Cohabitation merely means living together so long as it suits one partner. The apartment and bed may be shared but not the finances. Marriage means commitment for life, it means making an investment in one another and being prepared to ride out the inevitable bumps that come along. It provides security and stability for children to flourish and in their own turn replicate the pattern of their parents. Marriage may sometimes be less than that hoped for, but it is the way of personal and family stability and content­ment in this life that cohabitation can never hope to deliver.

Writing several years ago, journalist Angela Shanahan summed up the sexual revolution for women in this way: “The irony is that, despite the pill being pushed as an instrument for the liberation of women, its greatest beneficiaries are men. If anything encourages an abro­gation of responsibility and an unwill­ingness to form lasting relationships, it’s the pill”.

The educationalist Terrence Moore categorises young men today into two groups: barbarians and wimps, whilst concerning young women he says,

today, many young women are suffering from the aftermath of the sexual revolution and the extreme demands of the radical feminist agenda. These movements have made it far more difficult for them to find honourable men to love them ... The truth is there are fewer “right men” around these days — in part because of the ways women themselves have compromised their natural modesty and the inmost promptings of their hearts. Though women can command higher salaries, they have ceased to be able to command men.

However, if matters have turned out badly for many women experiencing difficulty finding husbands and fathers for their children, the situation for children not located in secure family settings is worse.

A stable parental relationship is crucial to a child’s development. A considerable body of evidence exists to demonstrate that the children of two-parent married couples are less likely to experience addiction, failed education, physical and sexual abuse, crime and poverty than those of cohabiting couples. Faring even worse than the children of cohabi­tating couples are those with a sole mother as parent.

The Breakthrough Britain report released in July 2007 neatly encap­sulated the trauma of the 1960s sexual revolution in its effects on children in this way:

Nearly one in two cohabiting parents split up before their child’s fifth birth­day, compared to one in 12 married parents

Three-quarters of family breakdown affecting young children now involves unmarried parents

If you have experienced family breakdown, you are 75% more likely to fail at school, 70% more likely to be a drug addict and 50% more likely to have alco­hol problems.

It is the commitment that marriage requires, especially of men, that provides the necessary stability for the child’s development. Marriage and children give men a sense of responsibility they never had as single men. The paradox of the commitment of marriage is that in giving up the freedoms of a single person, marriage gives far more in return: longer, healthier lives, better sex, and decent children.

The question is whether the tide can be turned in favour of marriage in the broader Australian community. In truth, marriage, despite the prevalence of cohabitation, is not regarded as an outdated institution, and this is true across all age groups. Women especially aspire to marriage.

Yet the persistent fact remains the proportion of cohabitating couples continues its inexorable climb from 6% of all couples in 1986, 10% in 1996 and most recently 15% in 2006.

Not only so, but the extension of marriage to same-sex couples appears irre­sistible. However, while such an outcome would be deplorable, the relatively small number of homosexuals, running at around 2% of the population, as well as the low take up of civil unions/marriage by homosexuals, means that longer term this is a second-order issue when com­pared to the widespread acceptance and prevalence of casual sexual relations, including cohabitation in the broader Australian heterosexual community.

Whilst other deviancies such as polyamory — engaging in multiple sexual relations at the same time whether homo or heterosexual — are undoubtedly occurring, these practices are so fraught with emotional and other difficulties, it is questionable whether many will engage in them. However to the extent that polyamory occurs, it is yet one more indicator of the unleashing of human depravity once the customs and protec­tions of a Christianised society have been removed.

If ever there was time for the Christian community to recognise that on the issue of sex belonging within the commitment of marriage the division between them and Australians more broadly is sharp and impassable, then that time has well and truly come. This is not something we can say in any supe­rior or judgmental fashion for as Christians we do not always demon­strate Christian teaching for marriage and family. How shall we ever be free of tears and deep compassion when we see people in difficulty, who may even be members of our own family, as a result of entering into an unwise, ungodly relationship?

Ultimately, the practice of Christian marriage may well be the most significant form of witness that the church can offer to a watching, hurting world of broken relationships.