Marriage has no best-before date

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘to divorce’ is ‘to separate or dissociate (something) from something else, typically with an undesirable effect’. For example: reality cannot be divorced from facts.

‘Reality’ and ‘facts’ make one indivisible whole, which if divorced would bring about the undesired effect of living a lie outside of reality.

Therefore, the term divorce is not just to separate one thing from another but to separate things which, by their nature, should be and remain one unified whole, such as in the case of marriage.

This is proved by the fact that the pro-divorce campaigners have not even hinted divorce is a good thing in itself. Instead, they raise issues which in themselves have nothing to do with the undesirable effects of divorce, for example that divorce is a ‘minority right’.

They ask: Is it in the common good that a majority of married couples impose their will on a minority of couples whose marriage might be on the rocks?

So, once divorce is not desirable in itself, we are asked to live and let live.

Even though the question does not make divorce any more desirable in itself, it does raise an important issue the answer to which involves fundamental human rights.

The modern understanding of the common good puts fundamental human rights at its very centre. The common good cannot exist without the state taking one step backwards where fundamental human rights are concerned.

In fact, even the political majority of the day is obliged to bow its head to fundamental human rights by not using its parliamentary majority to legislate against fundamental human rights.

Through fundamental human rights, therefore, the single individual becomes the centre of the common good, preventing dictatorship of the majority.

Now my quarrel with the pro-divorce lobby is that divorce is not a fundamental human right and it is up to the will of the political majority either directly through a referendum or through the electoral mandate of the voters at a general election to decide if divorce is to become a civil right protected by the law as any other ordinary right.

This in turn brings us back to the undesirable effects of divorce. Since divorce is not a fundamental right, society has every democratic justification to protect the marriage bond on the grounds divorce is not a good thing in itself. The breaking of the marriage bond forever by the state is a very, very serious thingto do.

A second ‘indirect’ justification of divorce would go: ‘Why should a couple not divorce if the marriage bond has died a natural death?’ The approach therefore shifts more to ‘live and let die’, which is only another way of calling for a ‘no fault divorce’.

Here we enter into the most delicate of issues. As already stated, divorce goes beyond the mere act of separating a married couple undergoing interpersonal difficulties even of a serious nature; divorce is a very invasive action by the state actively untying the bond which a couple had voluntarily tied each other to.

The greatest lie would be to depict the marriage bond as if it had a best-before date, just like any packet of biscuits would have. Both reality and facts disprove this preposterous idea.

Yet, that is precisely what the parliamentary motion presented by the Labour Party parliamentary group has done. It depicts the marriage bond as capable of painless dissolution after the time periodof four years just like any otherbest-before date found on any commercial product.

Human feelings and sentiments do not go by any ‘best-past-date’. The divorce motion is wrong on this count.

If divorce becomes legal, such words as ‘responsible divorce’, ‘conservative divorce’ in effect will mean nothing since there would be no way to stop a divorce from taking place whatever the motion presented by Labour and the divorce Bill might say.

After four years of physical separation, no amount of ‘reasonable hope for reconciliation’ may stop a ‘no fault divorce’ such as that contained in the Bill. All that needs be stated is that one side considers the marriage has irretrievably broken down. That is it.

The bond therefore does not loosen itself on its own. In fact the opposite is the case; the person who wants divorce even if for no tangible reason takes away any bargaining leverage the other person may have in opposing divorce and this with the complicity of the state.

To my mind there is absolutely nothing liberal about proposing divorce leaving society powerless to prevent the undesired its effects.