"Life Is Short"…

A billboard in Chicago for a law firm has been taken down. The message?

“Life Is Short…Get a Divorce.”

I have not seen pictures of the billboard, but according to the report, it also “featured” a scantily-clad man and woman.

Now, here’s the kicker: it wasn’t taken down because of the content! Rather, it was taken down because the law firm that put it up didn’t have the proper license. Yes, there were complaints about the content, but it was taken down for the legal reasoning. Oh, and even more sad? It was good for business!

Following is the Associated Press report:

A racy billboard proclaiming “Life’s short. Get a divorce” caused enough of an uproar, city workers stripped it from its downtown perch after a week.

It wasn’t so much about the partially clothed man and woman on the law firm’s ad. It was the phrase that lawyers Corri Fetman and Kelly Garland chose that drew scores of complaints from neighbors and from other attorneys who said it reflected poorly on their profession.

A city alderman who lives nearby found a technical reason to jettison the sign.

“I called the building inspector and told him to do his job and he did,” said Alderman Burton Natarus. “It has nothing to do with content or anything else. They did not have a permit and they were ordered to take it down.”

Fetman and Garland say they’re upset the sign was removed.

“They ripped our billboard down without due process,” Fetman said. “We own that art. I feel violated.”

Despite its brief run, the sign apparently was good for business. Since it went up last week, the two women said calls to their law firm have gone up dramatically.

A Stat Worth Filing Away

Members of the Lord’s church constantly mention the breakdown of the home as one of the major problems facing our society. We know that the home is the basic unit of society and, when it fails, so does our way of life.

The following article shows one more way that is happening. It was written by Richelle Putman, and published on All Headline News Online:

2005 found more independent women without a spouse, approximately 51% percent, according to Census Bureau statistics reported on in the New York Times.

The recently published findings are an increase of 2% from the 2000 statistics, two reasons for the increase may be that women are choosing to marry later in life and widows are living longer and not re-marrying.

The report also stated that 30% of black women live with a spouse, a relatively low percentage compared to the 60% Asian, 49% Hispanic, and 55% other women living with a spouse.

In an interview with the NY Times, Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families, was reported to say “This is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people’s lives.”

The bottom line is that women are choosing independence over marriage, some returning to college and participating in activities that they hadn’t been able to while married.

I say that this study is worth our interest. It shows the growth of many things in our society, including divorce. Of course, not every woman who is living without a spouse is divorced. Millions are widows and many more are delaying marriage until later in life. However, the trend cannot be disputed. And, for the trend to continue upward, many women must be getting divorced.

Single mothers have an extremely difficult job. Mnay are divorced for Scriptural reasons (i.e., the husband committed adultery), but many more are divorced for another reason. When that happens, the children suffer, as does society as a whole.

Pray that these numbers decrease, or that they only increase due to reasons that are not tied to the spiritual side of each woman. Let’s keep our families whole.