Louisiana had just passed a two-track marriage law. As Mr. Buckley explains it, "The regular route permits no-fault divorce more or less overnight. The covenant marriage would bind the marriage partners to a five-year moratorium before divorce is effective, and commit the partners to receiving marriage counseling, both before the marriage and after, if dissolution is sought." To Dr. Ragsdale, "I think we should teach people about the difficulty of maintaining true covenanted relationships; we should teach people to expect trouble in their marriages and to work through it.... I don't think that binding someone ever more tightly by the law is the way to accomplish it." To Ms. Gallagher, "Let me tell you what a waiting period can accomplish. First of all the evidence we have suggests that you will save some marriages that could and should be saved. That's the first goal. The second goal is that you shift at least some power and respect into the hand of the spouse that's being left. Right now, we talk about divorce as something that couples do, but in about 80 per cent of cases, it's something that one spouse wants and the other spouse doesn't."