Hurray for Impunity
As appeared in The American Enterprise | June 2000

From the latest edition of Propositions, by David Blankenhorn:

For people who worry about marriage as a social institution, simply paying attention can now be disconcerting. Here are two examples.

In Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt, Governor Kirk Fordice, age 65, announces his decision to seek a divorce from Pat, his wife of many years. Pat is not amused. About that time, the governor begins taking trips to France and to Gulf Shores, Alabama, with his former sweetheart from his junior high school days in Memphis, Tennessee. These facts get reported in the media. Fordice is livid. He announces that he considered resigning "just to keep from going through this [publicity] in trying to have a transition from one marriage into another, which is done all the time with complete impunity and no publicity." Fordice is correct. This is done all the time with complete impunity.

Wendy Wasserstein, the Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, had a baby girl, Lucy, on September 12, 1999. And, according to the New York Times, "what a production it was!" Meryl Streep dropped by the hospital to see the baby. An important costume designer decorated the hospital room. Lots of impressive theater people came to visit. "If you haven't won a Tony, can you go?" quipped a well-known set designer. The baby's father "was not announced," according to the Times. Ms. Wasserstein, it turns out, had decided "to have the baby alone." The Times continues, "Still, there are a large number of men, gay and straight, whom Ms. Wasserstein regards as 'husbands.' They include [a number of impressive theater people]. She knew that no child of hers would lack for 'fathers.'"