The obsessive need to control other people’s lives
This is my column in The Malta Independent today.
Somebody remarked to me earlier that the No and Yes camps in this referendum have brought together some pretty odd bedfellows. My response was that there is no Yes camp. There is only a No camp, and this regardless of the numbers involved.
Those who don’t think that the Maltese should remain the only 400,000 people in the world without divorce legislation are not a ‘camp’. We hold the normal, universally accepted, standard view. You cannot even call it a view or opinion, because it is a fact. States need divorce legislation.
The only people with an opinion, rather than an acceptance of a state of affairs, are the naysayers. Theirs is an opinion because it is at odds with the fact that states need divorce legislation.
They are like the people who believe that Elvis is still alive somewhere in Graceland, or that there is human life on Mars.
You can no more call those who plan to vote Yes ‘a camp’ than you can describe as a ‘camp’ or special interest group those who accept mandatory education for children as the norm. A ‘camp’ would be those who believe, contrary to the rest of the world, that there should be no schooling for children.
And so it is with those who believe that these islands should carry on without divorce legislation. They are the odd-balls, the strange fish, and the ‘camp’. Their views are abnormal, unacceptable and unaccepted in a non-isolationist context, weirder than the Rosicrucians.
It is only the peculiar abnormality of Malta that makes us think of the abnormal as normal. The situation is so freakish that people stand up and say that there should be no divorce legislation, and they are completely unembarrassed to do so. Would they do the same elsewhere? No, because they understand that they would be thought of as off-the-wall. It is only in Malta that they can give voice to abnormal opinions without feeling abnormal. Because Malta itself is weird.
The referendum, and all this talk and campaigning, have allowed us to believe that divorce legislation is an option. It isn’t. It is a must. We shouldn’t be discussing whether or not to have divorce legislation but what form that divorce legislation should take.
The Yes campaign was weakened by its desire to justify divorce for this or that reason: beaten wives, giving love a second chance…all rubbish. There is only one reason why Malta should have divorce legislation, and that’s because you cannot have marriage legislation without it.
If you’re going to ban divorce then you also have to ban marriage and have a completely unregulated situation. But you cannot have a partially regulated situation, as the confusion in Malta now shows.
Meanwhile, the No camp has struggled to justify the unjustifiable, confusing emotional with legal reasoning and making no sense at all. Each of its arguments can and has been torn to shreds, because none are built on reason. But the No camp doesn’t think this matters because its plea is primarily to the emotions. Emotions make for very poor laws and even poorer decisions.
All the arguments the No people use against divorce can be used equally against marriage and having children: whether people can afford it, whether they are responsible, whether they are committed, blah blah blah. All I know is that you can meet somebody today and marry him within the month, because all that is required is that you give enough notice for the marriage banns, and nobody is going to come along and tell you that you’re not allowed to get married because you’ve only just met or because you can’t afford it or because you might not be able to support the children you still haven’t had.
You should no more prevent people from divorcing because they might not be able to afford it than you should prevent people from marrying and having children because they might not be able to afford that.
And after weeks and months of telling us that they are adamantly against divorce because it is wrong and intrinsically bad, the spokesman of the ‘Marriage Without Divorce’ movement told reporters yesterday that he is not against divorce as such, but only against the proposed bill and the referendum question.
So why didn’t he say so before?
Those reporters had to prise it out of him, repeatedly telephoning him with questions, until finally he came out with it. No, Arthur Galea Salomone is not against divorce in general – and this after we have been given a very different impression during the campaign.
If the divorce is consensual, then he’s fine with it (I should ruddy well hope so, too – given that it would be none of his business or anybody else’s).
But then where does that leave all of his movement’s impassioned pleas about the plight of the children involved? What are all those billboards about? So if both parents agree to divorce, rather than one divorcing the other, then suddenly the children are not an issue.
The lack of logic defies belief.
The bottom line to all this is that the private life of other adults is not Arthur Galea Salomone’s or Andre Camilleri’s business. This is a basic principle of democracy, which demands that we do not interfere or seek to control even where we do not agree.
That is why adultery and sodomy were decriminalised. That is why promises to marry have long since ceased to be enforceable at law.
That is why people are not made by the police to live in the same home as their spouse when they want to leave. That is why only 400,000 people in the world (discounting those crackpots in the Philippines) don’t have divorce legislation.
Just as I have absolutely no desire to interfere in whether Arthur Galea Salomone’s and Andre Camilleri’s wives divorce them and marry somebody else (I think it important to put it that way round because of their apparent belief that weak and vulnerable wives are there to be divorced by randy and irresponsible men) so they should have no desire to interfere in what I and others do.
And yet they want to control even the decisions of generations still to be born. I just cannot understand why this group of people have such an obsessive and driven need to control the lives of others.
Dr Galea Salomone is right when he says that maintenance cannot be guaranteed after divorce. But he is utterly wrong to use this as an argument against divorce legislation. As with all the arguments against divorce, this one can be used to argue against marriage.
A woman – for yet again, in the No camp’s world it is always men who fail to earn money for their families or who run off and leave the other parent to cope alone – has no guarantee that she and any children she might have will be maintained during marriage, that she will not have (or want) to work to pay some of the bills or even most of them.
But do I hear Dr Galea Salomone and Dr Camilleri say that we should not allow people to marry because husbands might refuse to work and leave their wives dependent on social assistance, or because husbands can spend the food money on cigarettes and scratch cards, and oblige their wives to take low-paid and arduous work to pay the supermarket bill?
No, I do not.
Do I hear them say that people cannot be trusted to behave responsibly and have only as many children as they can afford, and so the state should have a say in the number of children we are allowed to have, based on how much money we earn and how many loans we still have to pay off?
No, I do not.
Dr Galea Salomone and Dr Camilleri probably – I say probably because going on what has been said in public I have doubts – would see this an unacceptable degree of control. They might even laugh in disbelief at the suggestion.
Well, in that case they then know why, when they say people shouldn’t be allowed to divorce, others laugh in disbelief at them.
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Stunning piece of work, Daphne!
But I think you will hear from the ambassador to the Philippines.
Daphne, looks like you might have a typo in the second paragraph, where I believe you are missing the word “NOT”:
“Those who think that the Maltese should NOT remain the only 400,000 people in the world without divorce legislation are not a ‘camp’. We hold the normal, universally accepted, standard view. You cannot even call it a view or opinion, because it is a fact. States need divorce legislation.”
[Daphne – Thank you. I’ve just fixed that.]
The same error is on The Malta Independent too.
The lovely irony of that logic is that – if the state actually intervened BEFORE the marriage, it might really solve more social problems than keeping divorce out.
Just to be clear: I don’t think it should. The more the state keeps out of people’s personal lives, the better for everyone.
Excellent closing argument before the referendum, Daphne. I also read the Archbishop’s article in The Times today, in which he also exhibited the ‘obsessive need’ of the Church to control the 400,000.
Even sadder is that we have the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance leading the NO “camp”!
Consider this scenario: young working mother of four minor children, father lazy and abusive and violent, cheats on wife, wife finds out, threatens to leave with kids, father vindictively opens separation proceedings followed by divorce, and holds custody and matrimonial home due to the matrimonial home beloinging to the father’s family, abused wife has to leave her matrimonial home and leave her children behind while abusive father keeps the matrimonial home, the children and his new wife.
True story. This will be the pattern of Maltese society for the next generation. Divorce will give enormous power to the abusive spouse, especially the typical Maltese man.
“I just cannot understand why this group of people have such an obsessive and driven need to control the lives of others.”
They will be the last to admit it but in the end it’s driven by self-gratification.
The last debate about to begin with Bishop Arthur Galea Salomone of the NO camp.
Very clear reasoning. I would also add that the State and the Church should be responsible for marriages that fail; if not by providing the right to divorce then to financial or emotional support.
Ah, so now my tax money is going to support failed marriages? Fair enough – don’t let them get married: “You should no more prevent people from divorcing because they might not be able to afford it than you should prevent people from marrying and having children because they might not be able to afford that” or offer a remedy for failed marriages (divorce).
Where is Andre’ Camilleri? He’s completely vanished from the No campaign in the last few days.
What an article Daphne…..prosit !
What next in this country …moral police like in some dictatorial Muslim countries? Those who stone women for adultery probably believe that it is for the good of society as the Le group believe that their stance on divorce is.
Some of the banal arguments I have heard from them were when they said that people marry with divorce in mind and the cherry on the cake was that couples divorce on a whim, and this when divorce has been compared to the trauma of death in a family.
Also with courtship plus marriage time and separation time by the time one marries three times as they said people will, one will live beyond 100 ..maybe they believe in the miracle of medicine.
Daphne, excellent work but mark my words that on Sunday we will still be the 400,000 people in the world without divorce legislation. Next Sunday it will be a Black Sunday for Maltese society and God only knows when we will have that chance again.
Joyce Cassar and Anna Vella should have written another letter addressed to husbands on the following lines.
If you want to secure your wife’s “NO” vote, please release the remote control.
“And so it is with those who believe that these islands should carry on without divorce legislation. They are the odd-balls, the strange fish, and the ‘camp’. Their views are abnormal, unacceptable and unaccepted in a non-isolationist context, weirder than the Rosicrucians. ”
I am convinced that Daphne has no obsessive need to control our lives. I am also convinced that only those who do not agree with her dudu-tal-art-opinions want to obsessively control our lives. God is wrong, Daphne is right.
All said and done, I would never put a man or my happiness before my children’s security and happiness. To be quite frank everyone can do as they wish, the effect on their children is their problem not mine.
But I am voting Yes because I do not believe under any circumstance that I should further upset my children by getting married again. Anyway can we not be completely happy if we are not married? God some people need a life.
Brilliant. Absolutely spot on, Daphne!
I wonder why the Church has ALWAYS spoken openly against divorce. Is it perhaps, as stupidly suggested some time ago, that the Church would lose money in the annulment procedure? Absurd, I should say.
@ Daphne
“Do I hear them say that people cannot be trusted to behave responsibly and have only as many children as they can afford, and so the state should have a say in the number of children we are allowed to have, based on how much money we earn and how many loans we still have to pay off?”
…. Just love that!
Great article as usual. I still cannot understand how this country turned divorce into such an issue. It’s another case of Only in Malta ……and Philippines.
Abortion is legal in several countries. So what?
So 7 billion people can’t be wrong.
I feel that the most interesting aspect of the divorce debate was the apparent awakening of the many who gradually began to understand the true value of liberty and freedom above all other philosophies. We have to come to reaslise that every regulation is put in place by government and other institutions specifically to favour special interest groups at the expense of the general population.
Though many might disagree, there are only cosmetic differences between PN, PL, AD and the rest. Their ultimate desire is control of the masses. Sadly, the EU has turned out to be no different.
If the video below doesn’t shock you to the core, don’t know what will. Watch it till the very end for a very interesting remark from Hans-Gert Pottering.
Václav Klaus stands up for Freedom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljAANHPkrAE