Looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The problem isn’t too many divorces. It’s too few marriages.

Jun 9, 2020 by Jill

by Paul Goodman, Conservative Home:

The Government’s proposed Divorce Law reform bill, which was debated yesterday in the Commons, has three strangenesses about it.

The first is that, although it has been labelled a No Fault Divorce measure, that form of divorce already exists in law – after two years, if both parties consent, and five years, without the respondent’s consent.

The Government wants to sweep away all five present grounds for divorce – two of which we refer to above – and make it automatic on a petitioner declaring that their marriage has irretrievably broken down.

This gives rise to the second oddity. The demand for justice is everywhere; see the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. Good and evil and right and wrong are woven into the very substance of law.

So it will seem curious to some for it not to apply to how husbands and wives treat each other (or husbands and husbands or wives and wives).

Where would our soap operas be, our EastEnders and Coronation Streets, without viewers taking sides in rows between partners?

This leads to the third weirdness – namely, the falling-out of pro-marriage groups about the Government’s Bill. The Marriage Foundation is for it. The Campaign for Marriage is against.

Read here