Bush's Costly Marriage Initiative Shouldn't Live Happily Ever After

Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook. Alex and Cynthia Rodriguez. Hulk Hogan and Linda Bollea.

It seems divorce is all the rage these days.

So much so that the Tampa Bay area's provider for the federal healthy marriage initiative has a new Web site: www.IHateHimSoMuch.com.

What's next? She'sSuchaNag.com?

Billboards advertising the Web site are eye catching and the goal of teaching relationship skills is admirable, but the signs also symbolize what can happen when Washington tries to play marriage counselor.

Responsible for the sign is the nonprofit Family Resources Inc., a St. Petersburg social services provider that has been awarded nearly $1.1 million a year since 2006 to push President Bush's pro-marriage initiative, which the administration promoted as a $1.5 billion antipoverty program.

The group has diligently pursued the effort. But it turns out this initiative's partnership with the local nonprofit has not been a match made in heaven.

The reason why Family Resources has taken such a brassy marketing approach is it is desperate to fill seats at its marriage and relationship workshops. And it's trying to reach anyone, not just impoverished families.

After extensive market research, the agency settled on a marketing campaign that would speak candidly to women, who usually make the first call to salvage their marriages.

Chief Operating Officer Pat Gerard says other providers in the Bush marriage initiative are in the same boat: their programs have not been nearly as popular as Washington expected. Federal records show Family Resources was funded to serve about 2,000 people a year, but Gerard says it served just 1,300.

Family Resources, to its credit, didn't sit idle as the federal dollars rolled in. Officials did their utmost to see that the money was put to the intended use. They reached out to a wide range of clientele, from women in jail to high school students thinking about their futures.

Gerard says her group can serve many more people; they just can't get men and women to voluntarily come to their programs. So they're making themselves known with the hard-to-ignore campaign.

A recent Mathematic Policy Research Inc. assessment of marriage initiative programs in seven states - including programs in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale - found organizers resorted to offering couples gift cards, baby clothes, movie tickets and cash to attend the counseling sessions. That's not the way tax dollars should be spent.

With both presidential candidates likely to continue Bush's faith-based initiatives, this is one due re-examination.

It makes sense for Washington to support stable marriages for impoverished families with no access to counseling. Children raised by two married parents are less likely to live in poverty, less likely to enter the juvenile justice system and more likely to graduate from college.

But it is entirely another thing to take federal tax dollars and use it to provide relationship advice for the masses.

For $1.5 billion Washington could buy every household a subscription to Cosmopolitan magazine and call it a day.

The honeymoon is over for Bush's marriage initiative. However promising it once looked, it has taken on a form the public never pledged to support. The next president should demand an annulment.