Divorce on planet Zog

The opinion pages are awash with dismay and sprayed with contempt at the way the divorce debate is being conducted. But much of the criticism of the principal lobbies has been aimed at their respective emotional appeals. Turning away from the billboards and the confessionals to fact-checking shows something interesting: the Church hierarchy turns out not to have informed its conscience properly; the Yes to Divorce movement, the self-styled scourge of hypocrisy, is a slacker when it comes to practising what it preaches.

You might call it poetic justice. I call it the problem of living on planet Zog.

On planet Earth, divorce laws are elbow-deep in what’s best, worst and simply mediocre about human society. It could not be otherwise since divorce laws are connected to fundamental social arrangements to do with distribution of wealth and property, children’s well-being and gender equality. Unless you’re a marriage libertarian, any rational case for or against divorce calls for nuance.

Not so on Zog, the planet where everything is either black or white. Once you decide to use planet Zog arguments for a human society, you’re bound to suppress some facts or conveniently fail to inform yourself adequately about a pet argument.

Let’s take a look at a few of the Zogian arguments made in Malta.

First, do divorce laws simply respond to demand or do they themselves contribute to raising rates of marital breakdown?

The Yes to Divorce movement has yet to admit that divorce laws (specifically, no-fault divorce) do generally contribute to raising breakdown rates. Yet, the point was earlier acknowledged in the Today Public Policy Institute report written by Martin Scicluna, today a member of the yes movement. Was it simply forgotten?

The impact of divorce laws has been raised by the anti-divorce lobby, of course. In the (first) divorce Q&A pull-out, distributed in the national parish magazine Flimkien (April), the answer to Q9 concludes: “Research shows that with a divorce law marriage breakdowns increased by 20 per cent.”

No, it shows no such thing. The reference is to a sophisticated statistical study of 18 European countries, which concluded: “Overall, we estimate that the legal reforms (the authors mean principally no-fault divorce) account for about 20 per cent of the increase in divorce rates in Europe between 1960 and 2002.”

There is a huge difference between saying that divorce laws increased breakdowns by 20 per cent (as Flimkien states) and saying that they account for 20 per cent of the increase. Flimkien is saying that marital breakdowns will go up from (say) 100 to 120 just because of a divorce law. The cited research actually states that if breakdowns go up from 100 to 120, the divorce law will account for four out of 20.

Is the anti-divorce lobby being mendacious? I doubt it. The evidence suggests they are simply ignorant about key areas of the historical sociology of the family they so confidently pronounce on.

But it is a degree of ignorance that is culpable. Can one really responsibly state (as the answer to Q7 in Flimkien does) that rates of marriage decreased and rates of cohabitation increased “in all the countries where there is divorce, after divorce was introduced”?

All countries, eh? The answer to Q12 refers to “no country in the world where divorce was introduced”. Even Muslim ones? And how would one know what the rates for African and Asian countries were before divorce was introduced, given that, generally, divorce has been established there as long as records have been kept?

As for cohabitation in contemporary western societies, independent factors that are often cited by professional historians, sociologists and anthropologists include: widely available contraception, the spread of an experimental sexual culture and important changes in the status of women (less dependent on marriage for status, more aware of the raw deal that marriage often deals them – throughout the 20th century, barring two short exceptional periods, the majority of petitions for divorce across western societies were filed by women).

The problem with many members of the anti-divorce lobby is that they wax long on “information” but fall short of adequately informing themselves. With the divorce lobby, one finds the excoriation of any sweeping of the facts under the carpet even as some facts are brushed away.

Deborah Schembri’s take on the success rate of second and third marriages is one example. Given the theme of “second chance”, it is significant that, statistically, such marriages have a markedly higher failure rate. There is a broad sociological consensus that such rates should be taken at face value, that the high rate of breakdown from a small pool of marriages indicates the fragility of such marriages (given the difficulties of dealing with step-parents, stepchildren and former spouses); but Dr Schembri simply brushes aside the professional consensus.

Pointing out the shortcomings of both lobbies is not an argument for agnosticism; I will be voting (for a divorce law). But the quality of our debate will have post-referendum consequences, no matter the result.

Arguing in terms of planet Zog but legislating for planet Earth means the social consequences will not live up to the referendum promises. That is a recipe for social bitterness and feeling cheated. Hardly the right environment in which to address the nuanced problems we will have to face, whichever way the referendum goes.

ranierfsadni@europe.com