In his second installment in the series of articles on whether divorce is conducive to strengthening the family, Austin Gatt wonders whether it is the common good or personal interest that is the real motivation of the pro lobby.

I, for one – and I know there are others – am not quite clear whether the societal argument is the real motivation of the Maltese pro-divorce lobby. Could it be the real motivation is simply personal? Simply put, my marriage has broken down, why should I not get a second chance?

Mind you, I have no problem at all with this argument and consider it perfectly legitimate as far as an argument goes, after all, many countries accept it and base their legislation on it but the argument is obviously the opposite of the “strong society” argument.

If the motivation for the reform is “personal” then let’s ignore the effects of divorce on marriage, on society at large. On the contrary, if the motivation is “society” then the “personal” has to bow to the common good even though the person involved may think he has a “right”! Both motivations cannot really stand together!

It is certain statements of the pro-divorce lobby itself that fuel my suspicion. When the pro-divorce lobby starts talking of divorce as a “right” (some idiotically equating it to a “fundamental right”) as something we Maltese (and the Philippines) “lack” in contrast to the whole world, that it is “unfair” to allow the recognition of foreign divorce decrees but not have local divorce or talk of divorce as the key to personal happiness for separated couples, then I start suspecting the motivation is much more personal than anything else. But let’s give the pro-divorce lobby the benefit of the doubt and assume their aim is to have strong families.

The pro-divorce lobby argues it is only by having the right to remarry and establish another family that one can achieve the aim of what even the anti-divorce lobby maintains should be the aim of society: a strong family relationship. In other words, the pro-divorce lobby (in Malta) is arguing that, for people who, for serious reasons, have experienced an irreversible breakdown in their original marriage, divorce is the only way to achieve the aim of a strong family unit at the base of society because only divorce provides the possibility of remarriage. At least, this argument has the value that it proposes the achievement of a noble aim even if I may not agree on how to go about it!

A seemingly perfect union of aims, therefore, but diametrically opposed views on how to achieve it! In both cases, divorce, or the lack of it, is the means to an end not an end itself, which is very good. This is very, very important because it follows that the question we should really be asking ourselves is not whether we are pro or anti divorce but two very different questions. I propose that those questions are:

Have the traditional marriage and family concepts in Malta reached such a disastrous state that divorce is actually required in order to promote strong, stable relationships within an orderly society?

In the context that the aim of both lobbies is a strong family relationship where marriages succeed, will Maltese society achieve that aim better by concentrating on pro-family programmes or will it achieve it better by introducing divorce in addition to such programmes? Presumably, we all agree that one does not, in principle, exclude the other?

But before answering those questions I think we need to clear the air of some misconceptions that are proving to be serious distractions to the main debate and which, unfortunately, are being raised more by the pro-divorce lobby than by anyone else simply to sidetrack from the main issues that need to be determined.

Tomorrow: Taking out what is irrelevant.