Thirty years ago, if in Malta you mentioned the expression “the right of remarriage” many people practically jumped on you, which explains why some people can hold on to an opinion soul and body, as opposed to body and soul. This was a time when the definition of “family” was somehow mixed with a love for godfatherly excitement.
Today, the few conservative politicians on the left (Conservatives on the left? Incredible but true. To what bizarrerie has ideology evolved!) and the many on the right are aware that percentages have developed and, thus, their political future has started a lovely free fall to limbo. Their clutch at the last straw, however, is the possibility of manipulating a referendum question leading to an artificial result where minority personal sentiment is given a lying coating of majority rule.
There are all types of reasons and persons opposing the right of remarriage.
Some possess this hostility simply out of their aggressivity towards the happiness of others. In fact, this is seen not only in marriage matters but in everything else. You have a new car, they hate you. You have a new house, they hate you. You have a new job, they hate you. You have a new child, they hate you. And so they will if you have a new husband or wife. It’s just a morbid attitude but life would be boring with only wholesome attitudes.
Some are hostile to remarriage out of mouldy confessionalism. Indeed, you will sooner or later see, at the bottom of this article, a few good, calm, rational comments and a few hysterical ones which (once more) jump at your throat at the least mention of remarriage and threaten you with eternal damnation and the hottest of fires down there. (No pun intended.) These people have a great love for humanity and if they are intolerant to the happiness of others, it’s for their good. So why condemn altruism?
Some fundamentalist politicians were not happy to have offered, in marriage matters, power to religious structures and abdicated political power drawn from the people. Thus, they think that, once you have given them some trust, they have the right to pass on this trust to others as if trust were a theatre ticket. They intend to keep doing this until they make sure the robe will lie comfortably and arrogantly in bed with couples.
It seems the Philippines, while refusing the right of remarriage to their citizens, also refuse it to those who have obtained it from abroad. Some call this lack of hypocrisy.
Malta, of course, cannot copy the Philippines as, for example, we would have Good Friday processions with real people nailed to real crosses with real nails. So, because Malta is a humanitarian state, it gives the right of remarriage following a divorce obtained abroad.
I understand it takes some great financial liquidation to do this but the state must prove it is democratic and humanitarian and, thus, it gives certain rights to rich people only. You may say this is rich but is a little democracy not better than no democracy at all? Of course, there are those who say that partial democracy cannot exist but in every country you find pessimistic political scientists.
Other cultures, like that of the Talibans, also deserve respect and consideration. For example, some people have the bad habit of calling all fundamentalists Taliban as a kind of mockery. However, they totally ignore the fact the Taliban have divorce in their culture and pro-divorcists calling anti-divorcists “Taliban” don’t know what they are talking about.
I have seen debates where hysterical people from tiny political grouplets kept telling politicians to take a position. This was mentioned so many times that, instead of saying to oneself “point forwarded”, they droned on and on making sardonic viewers associate this obsession with the positions advocated by eastern promoters of erotic psychosomatic harmony.
Sometimes, when some people speak tearfully about the family, they dryly forget to mention they are actually thinking about the comfort of their own personal family. To them, the family as a concept or structure is just an excursion to distant cousinry in the unevolved and underdeveloped village behind the mountains. Listening to them, however, makes you unsure of who is really behind the mountains.
Indeed, behind the mountains I have seen people sitting pretty (and some less than pretty) who condemn divorce as an attack on the family. After a drink or two they admit their partner, who is sitting anxious, wants to get married if their concubine obtains divorce. So the selfish concubine crusades in anti-divorce movements in solemn defence of the right of the family to remain solid and wholesome.
Dr Licari is a researcher in multiculturalism.