Selective bias on divorce

Since Roamer (The Sunday Times, September 6) invoked me as his 'witness', some further 'testimony' may be useful background.

Firstly, on the 1986 Irish referendum: In my September 3 column I argued that for many, the anti-divorce argument had a secular force (linked to but separable from religious force).

However, my account of the Irish anti-divorce campaign also used terms like 'seemed', 'framed' and 'alleged impact' to allow for gaps between appearance and reality, behaviour and motive, claim and truth.

Secondly, I criticised a tendency in the Maltese pro-divorce camp not to face up squarely to the secular nature of some anti-divorce arguments.

However, a good illustration as any of 'facing squarely' is provided by the 1995 Irish government's information booklet on divorce (the one produced by the Department of Equality and Law Reform), since it set the record straight on some of the 1986 anti-divorce claims (while admittedly fudging it elsewhere).

Finally, Roamer called me to the stand just after an array of other witnesses had testified on the sorry state of UK families. A question I've raised in past columns is: Why select the UK?

Marital breakdown is a wounding experience everywhere but there is considerable international variation in rates and consequences. Like the US, the UK has one of the highest rates of marital breakdown in the Western world, while the social and economic consequences are among the hardest for both adults and children.

The anti-divorce camp's persistent focus on the UK and US needs a special argument that those countries are more relevant to Malta than others. Without it, the anti-divorce case is tainted by selective bias.