It is, by now, pretty obvious that most people have already made up their mind as to how they will vote in the divorce referendum. The two opposing sides are entrenched in their respective positions, as are those who have declared that they will not bother to vote at all because it does not concern them.
The people who will be staying at home on 28 May have various reasons for completely washing their hands of the whole thing. Some genuinely don’t care, others want to register their protest at the fact that this law is being put to a referendum rather than legislation through Parliament, while still others want to avoid making a decision which will eat away at their conscience. Whether divorce is introduced or not, this percentile of the population can then honestly say, “I had absolutely no part in it.” It’s very similar reasoning to those who refuse to vote in general elections because they have lost faith in all politicians and want to deliberately disengage themselves from the whole process.
There is also another non-voting percentile to consider: I doubt how many of those who live and work abroad will bother to fly back home and vote on this issue. This is no EU referendum so they can forget about any government subsidised cheap flights.
As with the elections, a decision will be taken regardless, and as with elections it all hinges on bringing out the vote.
From what I have seen so far, while the pro-divorce lobby has had by far the better speakers when it comes to TV and radio debates, it seems to me that the anti-divorce lobby has a much better organised strategy. By that I mean it has connections everywhere and is using them in a very clever way by playing on a combination of fear (“married men will run off and remarry younger women”) and religion (“people who remarry after a divorce cannot receive Holy Communion or go to confession.”).
The fear factor being used on women is especially telling: they are being emotionally manipulated as if they were helpless damsels in distress from Pride and Prejudice waiting for Mr Darcy with his £10,000 year to marry them and save them from a life of poverty. (The truth is that for every man who walks out on his wife because of another woman, there is a woman who has filed for separation because she has had enough of her husband’s lack of affection).
One thing which has become quite clear is that, even though 50 years have passed since the infamous 1960s, we should never underestimate the power the Church still holds over this country. I’m not saying the Church should not voice its stand in all this (although this is a moot point, as we all know exactly where it stands). But the Bishops, may I remind you, told us at the outset of this debate last August that they did not wish anyone to embark on some kind of crusade. Well, as it turns out, someone seems to be crusading, judging from those leaflets that were distributed to each household. This bit in particular sounds like a rather menacing statement to me: “If you abstain it means you don’t care about your family and other families, as well as your children. If you know and agree that Jesus doesn’t want divorce, and divorce brings much harm to Maltese society and the family, then you must go vote and show that you don’t agree with divorce.”
Even if those leaflets had not plopped through our mailboxes however, the Church has enough priests, oops I mean politicians, in Parliament who speak as if they had been ordained rather than voted in. If I want to listen to a sermon I will attend Mass, but I don’t expect to hear sermons when listening to a Parliamentary debate. I heard parables and anecdotes about Jesus and analogies to Ferraris and wanted to bang my head against the wall that this is the level of argumentation in the highest institution in the land.
The inability of some of the speakers to discuss divorce as a purely civil rights matter is reflected in the reams of socio-religious articles and letters to the press which have been written. Everyone seems to have a hotline directly to God these days it seems, speaking in His name and telling us exactly what He thinks. (Incidentally, you would think that, with all these people being on quick dial with God, this nation of Christians would treat each other much more nicely instead of being so ruthless, back-stabbing and spiteful…).
Some will argue that a country which declares itself as Catholic in its Constitution can hardly leave religion out of it on such a thorny issue as divorce, in which case I wonder why we are bothering with a referendum in the first place. If “we are all Catholic” then “we should all be against divorce” as a matter of principle. But the fallacy of this conclusion is evident in the very non-Catholic way people lead their lives and in the way they compartmentalise their own behaviour. “I don’t care what the Church says about having a child out of wedlock, but damn it my baby will be baptised with the others!”
Annulments run into their thousands in this land without divorce, a statistic which I always find wryly amusing. How is it possible that we have all these people getting married in the Catholic Church who don’t know what they are doing, or who have hidden something fundamental from their prospective spouse? It’s patently obvious that people ‘go for an annulment’ because that’s their only chance of remarrying. As others have pointed out before me though, I really wish someone would explain why it is better to tell children that their parents’ marriage never took place, rather than that their parents simply don’t get along any more? Ah, but annulments are in the grip of the Church aren’t they, so that makes it all right.
The problem for the pro-divorce lobby is that it really has only one argument in order to bring out the vote: do you want to give separated couples the right to close the chapter on a failed marriage and to remarry if they wish?
Unfortunately, as in a general election, too many people will be voting (or not voting) depending on whether there’s anything in it for them.
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