article_snippet: If progressives want to tackle the scourge of inequality, then the retreat from marriage is an issue progressives can't ignore.
article_snippet: This is the marriage gap, and This's something new in America," declares a manifesto on "marriage opportunity" unveiled in a recent Washington Monthly cover story.
article_snippet: But Liberals seem uncomfortable talking about marriage, which is seen as an unwelcome distraction from issues of economic power.
article_snippet: It's tempting to blame such reticence on President George W. Bush's ill-fated Healthy Marriage Initiative, which triggered a flurry of new federal marriage promotion programs over the previous decade.
article_snippet: A centerpiece of President George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," the initiative managed to polarize the social policy community while having a negligible impact on falling marriage rates.
article_snippet: Which brings us back to the "marriage opportunity" manifesto.
article_snippet: Rather than actively promoting marriage -- something government has shown it doesn't really know how to do -- the opportunity agenda aims at removing impediments to marriage, especially for non-elite Americans.
article_snippet: They envision a possible political bargain in which conservatives accept gays as allies in fortifying marriage, and liberals recognize that family breakdown is magnifying America's disparities of wealth and income.
article_snippet: Could expanding marriage opportunity really become common ground in America's intensely polarized culture wars?
article_snippet: But Blankenhorn and company are emphatically right that both progressives and conservatives have a big stake in reversing the retreat from marriage.