I have been reading many letters in favour of divorce and not so much in favour of cohabitation legislation as an alternative. As if one depended upon the other! Cohabitation is not marriage. It is the state’s recognition of a couple of either sex who for some reason or another do not wish to or cannot get married, but wish to live together and expect the state and society to give due recognition for this choice. It also ensures that any children born into this type of arrangement form part of a familial society which has certain obligations to them.

So I see a need in society for both marriage and cohabitation legislation, especially in a state that does not yet recognise divorce in spite of the fact that it may do so in the future.

However, there is a lot of obviously orchestrated reasoning going around that seems to me to be incoherent to say the least. Many compare the inadequacy of cohabitation legislation compared to divorce legislation but use a logic that remains fundamentally incongruent. They remind me of Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of ethics in a post-modern society in his After Virtue, where he compares modern ethical decision making as made up of incoherent pieces of past ethical knowledge which makes no sense when actually put together. The telos or end of the ethical argument had been lost. This is analogous to a recording being made up of bits and pieces of sound bites from different electronic recordings which when played together turns out unintelligible sounds.

Many laud the advantages of divorce over cohabitation because a divorce allows one to re-marry and the institution of marriage is by its nature a permanent one, granting advantages to both spouses that cohabitation may not. There is an irrational howler here for everybody who is able to look things in the face. Marriage is meant to be permanent so we should opt for divorce legislation that renders it temporary! So by rendering what, I agree, is a contract of a permanent nature into one that can become temporary if only one of the parties decides to render it so, we would obtain rights for individuals that are of a more permanent nature than those given by cohabitation rights, that is until the next divorce renders the whole concept temporary again.

Do not get me wrong, I am not arguing against divorce in a democracy. I sincerely believe that when the overwhelming majority of people in a democratic state think that divorce would be in the interest of the common good, then that state should introduce divorce even if in effect it absolutely may not be the case of being in the interest of the common good, as we have seen from other countries which have approved it and destroying the concept of the family in the process. I am also thinking about those women (or men) who have devoted themselves to their families at the expense of their own personal professional development who risk much more with divorce than many may think. My position on divorce is clear, I do not believe that it is in the interest of the common good but I am ready to accept it if a majority of others want it.

Please spare me some pork-barrel hogwash of a party political manifesto published on the eve of a general election. This issue is of such importance that it merits individual attention in a referendum. Also spare me arguments that are so obviously sophist in nature. Maybe we do need to rediscover MacIntyre’s communitarian concept of virtue in our modern world and find the telos of our existence and actions.

Dr Michael Asciak MD

BIRKIRKARA