Our culture might say that potential marital partners benefit from living together before marriage, but statistics show that cohabitation before marriage can lead to marital problems once the couple weds and can increase the risk of divorce.

Sadly, by trying to avoid the broken homes and shattered lives experienced by family members and friends they know, some young people or even frightened divorced individuals are somehow hoping to avoid brokenness again by this avoidance of a long-lasting, in-front-of-God commitment to one another in marriage. But the solution really only leads to two single people living under one roof, not two people living in unity.

And it can be particularly damaging financially when couples break up before marriage. Imagine investing five, seven, or even ten years of your life in an arrangement that seems semi-permanent only to discover you are now out of a home and a loving relationship because your partner has called it quits without warning. You have no legal leg to stand on, and you have to begin again. This cycle can lead to poverty as well as lead individuals away from love altogether.

All this can be avoided by reserving passion and home-building for the solid, long-lasting, protected covenant we call biblical marriage.
 

America began a social experiment decades ago with no-fault divorce, removing the historical requirement that there be grounds for divorce. This was a major shift in the understanding of marriage and the relationship between marriage and reproduction.
Consequently, this shift paved the way for declining marriage rates, increased co-habitation, and demands for homosexual marriage. Research is now very clear that, in general, divorce (particularly in the absence of abuse) has tremendous negative effects on women and children.

And there is a tremendous cost to taxpayers from family fragmentation, over $700 million in Tennessee tax dollars annually.

More About This Issue

• The Cost of Family Fragmentation – Full Study
• The Cost of Family Fragmentation –  Executive Summary

Pornography (including strip clubs euphemistically called “gentlemen’s clubs” or “adult-oriented entertainment”) is not a victimless activity. It is a tool that destroys marriages, affects the brain negatively, breeds disease and crime, and is used in sex trafficking.
 

Support for homosexual marriage, or same-sex “marriage,” reflects not only a misunderstanding of what marriage is, but also a lack of appreciation for the impact the redefinition of marriage will have on society and the reasons that governments provide benefits and impose duties upon marriage.

We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman because that is the biblical definition. We believe that the United States Supreme Court showed governmental overreach by trying to legislate from the bench in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case, which opened the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

Tennessee does not currently have a specific marriage licensing law on the books that includes same-sex marriage, so the Court usurped state’s rights. 

Human sexuality is a gift from God and is a visible expression of the invisible reality of the kind of unity, fellowship, union, intimacy, and commitment that exists within the nature of the Triune God. Therefore, any expression of sexual intimacy outside of the union and commitment reflected in the marriage between one man and one woman is a distortion of God’s design.

Apart from this theological underpinning, however, prudence would suggest restraint because of the relational, physical, and emotional harm that generally follows acts of marital infidelity, promiscuity, and homosexuality, and from the substitution of pornography for sexual expression within marriage.

When it comes to an individual’s identity, current secular society is pressing for us to use the term gender identity and to equate that term with the historically understood term “sex.” However, history shows us that the term "gender" is a grammatical term, not a biological one. Therefore, the terms are different and distinguishable. FACT prefers to use the term "sex" to indicate biological differences.

Though our culture is currently debating the terms "gender dystopia," “transgenderism,” “gender-neutral” pronouns, and the fluidity of gender expression in order to legitimize and legislate a new identity based on gender that is not concurrent with Scripture, the Bible makes it very clear at the beginning of God’s Word in Genesis that He made us “male and female” (Genesis 1:27).