Divorce does not weaken the marriage bond

Amongst the plethora of arguments being put forward by the anti-divorce lobby, one of them goes something like this: The ‘till death do us part’ promise is weakened if the couple know that they can eventually resort to divorce. One member of the ‘Zwieg bla Divorzju’ lobby even went so far as to publicly write that ‘once divorce is introduced, fewer couples choose to marry as they see less sense in a non-committal union.’

If this argument is correct, then the value of the marriage bond in Malta – where there is no divorce – is one notch higher than the value of the marriage bond in any other country wherever there is divorce. So Guzi Borg’s marriage to Mary Zammit has more value if they live in Malta than if they live in Australia.

Moreover if after marrying in Malta, Guzi and Mary decide to leave Malta and settle in Australia they would automatically – and presumably unknowingly - have weakened their marriage bond as a result of their change of domicile!

This argument assumes that Guzi’s and Mary’s marriage needs the state to prop it up by denying to all and sundry the possibility of remarrying after divorce. To my mind, this is an insult to all the couples in the world who have married in good faith, and have committed themselves to enter into communion with each other in an exercise of free choice.

If you think all this is absurd, that’s because it is. But that is the logical conclusion of the absurd argument that was made in the first place.

Carrying this argument further – in a ‘reductio ad absurdum’ exercise – this implies that marriages in Malta are superior to those abroad. That is why I find this argument presumptuous and arrogant.

This argument reflects another aspect of the current divorce debate: the way the notion of ‘marriage’ is being continually confused with the notion of ‘family’. The family is the intimate relationship two human beings from which they usually have children to whom the family gives emotional support and a loving upbringing. Marriage is the recognition of the state of that relationship and this sustains the family.

This legal recognition by the state, however, is not what makes a family what it is. That is why the state has the duty to recognise families that are formed by partners who have had the experience of an irretrievably broken marriage. Denying them remarriage does not strengthen the marriage bond but only weakens the family – the opposite of what the anti-divorce argument purports to uphold.

That is why the argument that divorce weakens the marriage bond is completely wrong