From the Big-Wide-World Department, it bears noting that rituals exist for happy couples wanting a Klingon wedding.

Yes, and please keep comments to yourself. Klingons have weapons you don’t want to deal with.

From my reading of wedding instructions, translated to English from the original Klingon language, the engaged Trekkies walk into their ceremony to the tune of “Hill of the Skull.”

At one point, the officiate lifts a dagger over the heads of the couple, and before long comes the critical moment where he says, “Today, you are un-alone.”

Then, everyone leaves to eat cake and get loaded.

Not sure how many states recognize the Klingon nuptials. Since Klingons are a gender-distinctive race, I assume the ceremonies hold up.

They would also pass muster for supporters of traditional marriage.

The words “traditional marriage” always come up around election time. It represents the union of a man and a woman, and by extension means people of the same sex need not apply where the words “I do” are concerned.

In political terms, this is known as a wedge issue. The wedge divides people into philosophical camps.

As they said where I grew up in the Bootheel, some are “fer” and some are “agin.” (Actually, on the matter of same-sex marriages, none of them were “fer” and most were aghast.)

But traditional marriage throughout Missouri deserves a look. State records show that 40,399 marriages took place in 2006. In those, 13,148 grooms and 12,854 brides had been previously divorced.

Vital statistics also show that Missouri recorded 22,463 marriage dissolutions in 2006. In those breakups, 5,616 couples gave wedded bliss three or fewer years.

Sometimes, things don’t work out. That’s tradition for you.

As traditional marriage makes its every-other-year appearance in these parts, just in time for the campaign shouting, a history lesson comes to mind.

Buchanan County gets its name from James Buchanan, the nation’s 15th president. Historians generally rank Mr. Buchanan, who let the country slip undeterred toward the Civil War, as one of the worst to serve in that high office.

Mr. Buchanan also had another distinction as the only American president never to marry. But he did not lack for companionship.

According to Michael Farquhar’s “A Treasury of Great American Scandals,” Mr. Buchanan for years shared quarters with Sen. Rufus King of Alabama. In days of less political correctness, Andrew Jackson referred to Mr. King as “Miss Nancy.”

A state representative at the time regarded the Alabama senator as Mr. Buchanan’s “better half.”

When Mr. King took a federal appointment to France, Mr. Buchanan wrote to a friend of his loneliness. “I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them,” he confessed in the letter.

With that, the Pennsylvanian seems to have brought San Francisco values to the Northwest Missouri county that bears his name.

Perhaps this says nothing about traditional marriage. It seems to indicate that whether single or civilly united, a person can just as easily mess up a country.

When I remind my wife of 32 years that we have a traditional marriage, she only sighs in agreement and gets a far-away look.

That’s what I call tradition.

Ken Newton’s column runs

on Sunday and Tuesday.