Ever hear anyone tell you that actions have consequences? Like maybe your mom or dad? As children, when we choose to disobey our parents, we reap consequences—and appropriately so. If we choose to ignore God’s plan and go our own way, we will definitely have consequences. Interestingly, these truths don’t apply just to individuals. They are also true for families, churches, communities, states and nations.

I recently was on a radio program in the Milwaukee area when someone called in who highlighted this truth in reference to our cultural choices regarding marriage and family. Specifically, the caller noted the decision our culture has made to alter and virtually dismantle the traditional family. I am not referring just to the seemingly wholesale acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, which is one of the vital struggles of our day and certainly deserves our attention. What equally deserves our full attention is divorce and other heterosexual choices to move away from marriage, choices that by any standard are detrimental blows to the family.

Between 1965 and 1975 the divorce rate in the state went from 1.2 divorces to 2.9 divorces per 1000 people. In 1978, Wisconsin chose to abolish its fault-based divorce system in exchange for a no-fault divorce law. The consequence? By 1980, the divorce rate in this state was at an all-time high of 3.7. Just as important is the marriage rate. From 1980 to 2006, Wisconsin’s marriage rate has dropped from nearly 9 marriages per 1000 people, to 6 marriages per 1000 people today.

As a state, our choices have trivialized marriage and popularized divorce. Today we see more people living together out of wedlock, rearing children in single-parent homes and in the homes of same-sex couples.

On the heels of the no-fault divorce laws that swept the nation in the 70s, cohabitation in this country went from just over 500,000 in 1970 to almost three million in 1990. Today, many couples view cohabitation as a substitute for marriage. We would submit, however, if couples are unwilling to make the lifetime commitment of marriage, then they should be unwilling to make decisions that will produce lifetime responsibilities, such as children and mortgages.

When we collectively decide that some other model works better than the family unit, we must be prepared for the consequences of our actions. And many times, children bear the consequences. In 2006, divorce in Wisconsin alone affected just over 16,000 children, many of whom went through much heartache and trauma seeing their parents choose to stop living together as husband and wife, mother and father. Without both a father and a mother in many homes today, our culture faces grave consequences with many children not receiving the proper training for relationships and gender roles and many other critical skills and values, which only leads to further undermine and damage the institution of marriage.

The choice to disdain marriage has resulted in many young people having less of a desire to enter into marriage. Their choice to not marry has led to the consequence of more and more children born out of wedlock and significant increases in sexually transmitted infections and diseases, which in turn leads to more single-parent homes, which brings us to a whole other set of consequences, since these families are more prone to higher state welfare use, child abuse, juvenile crime, and other problems that single parenting brings.

If you take all this back to its root, the initial action that has set us on this road, was a decision to ignore God and His Word and His plan for marriage and family. When we began to feel the consequences of our action and saw massive cultural issues, many people began to assume the institution of marriage and family was flawed—which was a completely wrong assumption and assessment. As a result, however, instead of turning to Biblical principles for help, we’ve tried to blame shift and remake the institution to fit our own image.

Wisconsin Family Council is committed to doing every thing we can to restore a marriage culture in Wisconsin. We encourage you to make strengthening marriage a priority in your life, whether it is your own marriage, anticipation of a future marriage, or even the marriage of a close friend. Although making wrong decisions can produce bad consequences, making good decisions and acting on them will not only produce good consequences, but also, and most importantly, God’s blessings. Make no mistake: our individual and collective actions have very real consequences!

For Wisconsin Family Council, I’m Julaine Appling reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”