Divorce fallacies and falsehoods

Hitler’s infamous Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, coined the dictum: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” As we listen to the statements in Parliament from some Nationalist politicians, as we read with increasing irritation and incredulity the 9,000-word verbiage in this newspaper by a senior Nationalist politician and as we listen to the self-serving and tendentious arguments by the leader of the Marriage Without Divorce movement, thinking members of the public might be forgiven for concluding that an attempt is being made to subject the Maltese people to Goebbels-like slurs big enough and often enough to force belief.

Goebbels said that: “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over again.” The arguments of those who are against remarriage after legal separation are now focused on three main themes: to link the introduction of divorce with every social ill they can think of and blame it on divorce; to say that divorce causes marriage breakdown; and to argue that divorce creates a “divorce mentality” that undermines society.

Let us take each of these three in turn and see whether they stand up to cold logic and rational argument.

“The introduction of divorce,” we have heard it alleged, “leads inexorably to abortion, higher rates of illegitimate births, increased cohabitation, fewer marriages, greater marriage breakdown and every social ill you’d care to mention”. But such assertions are as credible as the statement made to me that “the introduction of divorce in these countries is the reason their economies are so much more successful than ours!” That statement is as ridiculous and illogical as the earlier one.

There is absolutely no causal link between the introduction of divorce in such countries and abortion or any other kind of social ill. Nor is it tenable to argue that cohabitation is higher in countries where divorce exists or that lower marriage rates occur in those countries as a result of divorce legislation. It is statistical and logical nonsense to argue thus. One might as well claim these are countries where alcohol and drug abuse are high because they have divorce or that they are economically strong for the same reason.

Every objective assessment of these problems shows clearly there is a multiple array of cultural, social and economic causal factors – most of which are different from those obtaining in Malta as well unique to each country. When Malta looks to other western societies it sees a widespread collapse of marriage when measured by the incidence of divorce. But this is caused not least by the tendency in such countries to make divorce easier to obtain, which is palpably not what is now being proposed in Parliament by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s and Evarist Bartolo’s far-seeing Bill.

Blaming any of these ills on the introduction of divorce is utterly misleading on grounds of logic as well as fact. The fact is that when we look around us in Malta we also find this collapse in marriages, and its grim consequences for families, to be prevalent, if not rampant, here as well. The only difference is that the collapse here has to be measured in broken marriages, not in divorce applications, as exemplified by the high and escalating number of annulments and legal separations.

To say, secondly, that divorce causes marriage breakdown, rather than offering a legal remedy for the collapse, is distorted logic. Marriage breakdowns occur well before divorce. It is not divorce which causes the marriage to break down. Marital discord and marriage breakdown come before legal separation and divorce – often by several years. To argue otherwise is to put the cart before the horse.

Thirdly, the argument that divorce laws give rise to a “divorce mentality” is disingenuous and null in a context where cohabitation is both possible and prevalent. And, moreover, it is the rankest form of hypocrisy and illogicality, coming from those Nationalist politicians who support the introduction of cohabitation laws (in the Church’s eyes condoning adultery) which, by the most perverse logic – since cohabitation encourages the very instability they seek to address – they are prepared to support as a means of preventing people from remarrying after separation.

To argue that divorce transforms marriage into a temporary contractual arrangement is a grossly cynical and wrong-headed view of why couples enter into marriage. Marriage is indeed a contract. But to argue that because a contract can be dissolved inevitably leads any person seeking marriage not to commit himself or herself fully in the first place is unacceptable, wrong and reprehensible.

Goebbels also said that “the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie”. The fallacies and falsehoods being peddled by some Nationalist members of Parliament and the Marriage Without Divorce movement need to be exposed for what they are: the scaremongering and canards for which there is no justification in logic or fact.