Redefining marriage

The pro-divorce lobby has several good arguments; but it also presents various simplistic ones.

Sometimes they present divorce as the solution for the difficult situation of a number of couples and present the opponents of divorce legislation as cruel people.

“Intom nies bla qalb” was the retort addressed at the anti-divorce lobby during a TV debate organised by the Broadcasting Authority last Wednesday.

Things are not so simple. Divorce implies a radical change in our model of marriage. Instead of a permanent union between a man and a woman, marriage becomes a union which can be terminated even at the request of one of the partners.

Marriage is not even equated to other contracts which can be dissolved by the consent of both partners. Marriage becomes a contract which can be unilaterally dissolved.

This has happened everywhere except in Malta and the Philippines. In several countries where this new model is in operation they are now even tinkering with this model of temporary marriage.

Same-sex marriages, polygamy and polyamory are three models being experimented with or implemented.

Last year, in an article in the Boston Globe, Nancy Polikoff, a family-law professor at the US university Washington College of Law, praised the benefits of polyamory. This is the practice of being intimately involved with more than one person at a time, with the consent of all involved.

One argument used in favour of recognising these relationships is that with more than two parents, even if there is a split in the family, the children will still have at least two parents left.

Polygamy is a model which has been in operation in various countries for several centuries. There is currently a court case in British Columbia to decide if polygamy should be legal in Canada.

It is interesting that this case for another change in the model of marriage is being made only five years after Canada accepted a more radical change to the model of marriage. In 2005 Canada legalised same-sex marriage.

The Irish are fast learners as well. Together with Malta they were the last countries in Europe not to legalise divorce.

After the second in a series of two referenda they opted for a temporary marriage instead of a permanent one.

The recently elected governing coalition of the Fine Gael and Labour parties have committed the government to examine the issue of same-sex marriage. This could mean that same-sex parents would be given the same rights as married couples.

The Irish bishops had called on parliament to defend the family. Public policy should support the common good, they said in a March 3 statement. I could not check whether the bishops were accused of using Nazi arguments due to their reference to the common good.

Same-sex marriage is very much in the news in the US. The Obama administration has thrown its weight behind the same-sex marriage lobby. The administration decided not to defend in the courts legal challenges to the Defence of Marriage Act that limits marriage to heterosexual couples.

The arguments for this movement to change and change again the model of marriage are always the same: the rights of the minority; and the right of the individual to do what he or she wants with his or her life; the belief that all lifestyles are equally valid and correct; the hard cases of individuals facing problems because of their life/love style.

Will we learn from what is happening all around us?

I acknowledge use of ideas and information from the article ‘Pressure continues to allow same-sex marriage’ by Fr John Flynn, LC, published by Zenith.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt