The referendum question refers to marriage breakdown in two ways, either where separation has been already obtained or where the spouses have been living apart, meaning that the two have lived under separate addresses for at least four years.

The concept of marriage breakdown as the main reason for divorce is not new. It was introduced for the first time by Hitler in the Marriage Law of July 6, 1938 where the existence of an “objective marriage breakdown” was enough to trigger legally-sanctioned divorce. The same law further specified that a different political party affiliation sufficed as ground for an objective marriage breakdown. Hitler portrayed himself as a progressive social activist and believed that Nazi couples would not pose an obstacle to the schemes he had in mind.

The proposed divorce law in Malta is more progressive and allows one to move in with a new partner from the first day after leaving spouse and family. This will speed up sufficient evidence of his change of address. Instead of slowing down the breakdown of marriage, our proposed “responsible” divorce Bill unintentionally speeds up the demolition and wreckage.

In a way divorce as proposed, appoints us as judges in cases where we assume to have our own vested interests. A marriage breakdown can be arbitrarily brought about by one single spouse who ultimately decides that it has irretrievably broken down. In all other legal spheres we would cry foul because of the evident conflict of interest.

Divorce goes even further to change our legal concept of marriage into a car scrappage scheme where individuals are empowered to separate from their “non-worthy” marriage partners to marry new “worthy” ones.

Just as poverty, unemployment and other social problems can be eliminated through a manipulation of their definition, marital problems would be trivialised through a legally watered-down definition of marriage.