Kansas Seeks Federal Money to Promote Marriage

Less than a week after turning down $31 million from the federal government to implement a health care exchange, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is requesting $6.6 million to promote marriage, WORLD News Service reports. If approved, the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services would offer faith-based and secular counseling services for unwed parents. If, at the end of six sessions, a couple marries, the state would pay for the marriage license. While some state legislators called the move hypocritical, the administration says it’s simply strategic: Promoting marriage among the 19,000 unwed couples who give birth in Kansas each year will go a long way toward reducing child poverty — one of Brownback’s major initiatives. Glenn T. Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, agreed: "Marriage promotion is certainly not a call for big government, but (an effort to) strengthen fragile families so these mothers and their children don’t become dependent on the state for decades."