Seven Years of Marriage

Mitt Romney recently gave the commencement speech at Pat Robertson's Regent University (which is tied for the lowest ranking law school in the country), and he made a rather curious comment about marriage in France:

"It seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking," Romney told the crowd of more than 5,000. "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."

The curious thing about this comment is that it's 100% not true. So where did Romney get this idea from? Well it seems like Mitt is confusing French civil law with that of fellow Mormon Orson Scott Card's Sci-Fi novel "The Memory of Earth," a fictionalization of the first 100 years of the Book of Mormon set in outer space. It takes place on Planet Harmony, which was colonized 40 million years after the destruction of earth, and the citizens contract for marriage in seven-year terms. They also have to resist the computerized Oversoul from maintaining control over the human race. This certainly seems the most likely candidate, since Romney has already expressed his affinity towards Sci-Fi novels written by crazy people (he says that his all-time favorite novel is Battlefield Earth). As far as the French connection goes, perhaps he's mixing this book up with the French comedy "7 ans de mariage."