CARE is committee to upholding marriage in society. We believe that marriage is a key social institution that is good for the family and good for the whole of society. We believe that it is vital that our Government does all it can to encourage stable marriages that enable families to flourish.

Our Public Affairs team works hard to enable and encourage MPs and Peers to speak up about the importance of marriage. We make sure legislation that might impact marriage is scrutinised, that the Christian view of family commitment is represented in consultations conducted by Whitehall Departments, and that policy proposals from the Government take the family and marriage into consideration.

Our Communications team seeks to speak about the importance of the marriage commitment and stable families in the public sphere. They engage with both secular and Christian media to speak positively into the public sphere, and use our social media presence to highlight our work in the online world.

In the last few years we have engaged on a few particular issues as we have sought to promote marriage in the United Kingdom.

In our desire to see society transformed we have published research on the impact our highly individualised tax system has on families. Single earner families face a particular harsh income tax burden, paying significantly more than comparable families in the US, France and Germany. We have campaigned to see the current discrimination in our tax system against one-earner married couples ended and marriage made a more financially appealing option for all.

We have pushed back strongly against the Government's divorce bill, which will remove any requirement for couples to give a reason for why their marriage has broken down. This misguided Bill prioritises individual freedom over family stability and security. We have worked closely with Peers and MPs to challenge the Bill and attempt to amend some of the worst aspects of it.

Finally we have worked extensively on the new Relationships and Sex Education regulations that introduced a requirement for all schools to teach RSE from September 2020. We have spoken positively about the ways schools will be encouraged to teach sex education through a relational lens, whilst highlighting how the parental right to withdrawal has been significantly watered down and could face legal challenges in the future.

At CARE we want to see culture and society reflecting a better story for everyone. At the heart of that is marriage and the communities that flow out of stable families. Strong marriages are good for couples, but they are also good for children, single people, widows, divorcees and older people. God’s blessing of marriage is a better story for everyone.