The Seven Year Itch

"In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."
(May 5, 2007)

In his most bizarre misstatement of the past three months — including the Battlefield Earth shout-out! — Romney used the occasion of a commencement address at Regents University to condemn a non-existent French marriage policy. The line was picked up, without comment, by the Washington Post; when reporters tried to suss out what the candidate could possibly be referring to, a spokesman referred them to France's civil union agreements...which have no set end date, either. One possible source for the impressively specific legalese ups the odd quotient even further: Seven-year marriage contracts are a plot point in the "Memories of Earth" science fiction series by Mormon author Orson Scott Card, itself a retelling of the Mormon theology in which the limited marriages stand in for the other non-traditional marriage practices of that faith. What's Romney really trying to say here? That the French are Mormons? That they're from outer space?