(by Stanley Carlson-Thies)

In May, 2015, renewed federal funding for marriage-strengthening and for fatherhood-promoting programs was announced. The rules try to accommodate both traditional and progressive views, but raise serious questions.

Federal funding of fatherhood and marriage programs go back quite a few years, as Congress realized that entrenched poverty and other social problems are connected with unraveling families and marriages. Dealing with these complex matters has become even more difficult as views of parenting and marriage have become more diverse.

Ever since the US Supreme Court, in its Windsor decision in June 2013, struck down the federal definition of marriage as one man-one woman, the federal government has been revising its internal policies and the rules that apply to federal grants when those policies and rules deal with “marriage,” “spouses,” “dependents, “families,” and the like.

With grants, the changes have often been commonsensical: if to determine eligibility for a service the grantee has to count both the applicant’s income and the income of the applicant’s “spouse,” now the income of both same-sex and opposite-sex married partners has to be taken into account.

But what about grant programs where marriage or family is at the very center of the services to be offered? How will grantees in these programs deal with new definitions of family, marriage, and spouse—and how will new rules accommodate the diverse views grantees and our society has about these important matters?

The new round of marriage and fatherhood programs propose one way to deal with the new realities, but it is not entirely satisfactory.

The application information for the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Grants does not specify any particular definition of marriage, and the marriage curricula that are listed, though not required, do not crusade for marriage equality. However, grantees are required to abide by the following nondiscrimination requirement:

“In providing services to eligible persons, grantees may not discriminate on the basis of the potential participant’s race, gender, age, disability, or religion. Grantees cannot, on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, or religion, discriminate in determining eligibility, benefits, or services provided, or applicable rules.”

Thus, it appears that one organization might successfully apply for funding to provide marriage and relationship education from the perspective of traditional marriage while another might successfully apply to teach these topics and skills from the perspective of same-sex marriage. And then the programs of both grantees will have to be open to and provide help to whomever shows up, whichever couples arrive and enroll in the courses.

So far, so good. But what happens when the opposite-sex engaged couple finds it puzzling and even unhelpful that the same-sex marriage curriculum never even mentions the specific dynamics of intimate male-female relationships? What happens when the same-sex couple finds it puzzling and even offensive that the traditional marriage curriculum is always talking about husband-wife relations? Remember: the respective curricula have been accepted by the federal authorities.

If the opposite-sex couple complains, will the federal government pressure the same-sex grantee to adjust its curricula and retrain its staff—or recommend that the couple find another course? What will happen if the same-sex couple complains in the other program?

The application materials are just silent. And yet surely applicants for the grants will want to know whether, in predictable disputes like these, the federal government will stand behind them rather than charging them with illegal discrimination.

The New Pathways for Fathers and Families grant materials include a similar dilemma or concern.

The grant program acknowledges the importance of engaging specifically biological fathers and also father figures (“e.g., grandfathers, foster fathers”) in the lives of children. Fatherhood curricula that are really about fatherhood are acceptable. And yet there is the same nondiscrimination requirement as in the marriage grants, forbidding discrimination on the basis of gender (etc.). And also this specific additional requirement: “The projects and activities assisted under these awards must be available to mothers and expectant mothers who are able to benefit from the activities on the same basis as fathers and expectant fathers.”

So the grantees will freely emphasize how important fathers, specifically, are in the lives of children—their children and other children with whom they have or can have a connection. And in the audience there may well be: mothers—mothers who want to better engage as mothers with their children, perhaps some mothers who find it annoying or even offensive that the federal government is spending all this money to promote fatherhood . . . When there are complaints, what will federal officials say and do?

At the very least, the federal government ought to specifically state that participants in marriage and fatherhood programs have no right to object to the curricula of those programs. And it should specifically state that all efforts, including social media campaigns, to pressure grantees to modify their curricula are unacceptable. Charges of discrimination will just be dismissed.

Concern about what specifically can be taught in federally supported programs like these is hardly trivial. Legal equality notwithstanding, there is a serious question about the substantive equivalence of same-sex and opposite-sex marriage. Fatherhood and motherhood can be equally valued without assuming that there are essentially simply two names for generic parenting. In fact, major religious traditions have millennial-old convictions about such matters. By ensuring that federally funded programs are not required to wash out these important differences the government both protects religious freedom and honors the diversity of convictions in our society—better serving the diverse public.

In fact, rather than the uneasy compromise reflected in these announcements, the federal government could go an important step further, converting these grant programs to voucherized funding and then specifically solicit and make available a variety of marriage and parenting programs.