RIGHT OF DIVORCE

In no age has the danger of the breaking-up of the family and the evil side-effects that arise from it been the object of so much attention as in ours, and in no age were human beings involved in this danger and in the evil consequences springing from it as they are in this age.

Law-makers, jurists, psychologist, — all of them try, with all the means in their control, to further strengthen, stabilize and render indestructible the structure of marriage, but all effort have failed and have instead aggravated the disease. Statistics show that year after year the number of divorces increases, and that there is imminent danger of the breaking up of many other homes.

Usually, whenever some disease attracts attention, and material and intellectual efforts are expended to combat and defeat it, the number of cases decreases as a result and very often the disease is eradicated; but in the case of divorce it is just the opposite.

The increase of divorce in modern life:

In the past little thought was given to divorce, its evil effects, the causes of its occurrence and increase, and the ways of preventing its incidence, while at the same time there were fewer divorces, fewer broken homes. Certainly the difference between the past and the present is that now the causes of divorce are on the increase. Social life has assumed a form in which the causes of separation, disunion and the breaking of the ties of home life have been multiplied, and that is the reason why the efforts of the experts and the well-intentioned have not as yet been at all successful. Unfortunately, in the future it is likely to become more serious.

On February 13th 1967, Newsweek published an article under the title: “The Divorced Woman - American Style” (later translated into Persian and printed in Zan-e ruz (no.105), there it was written: “Getting in and out of divorce is almost like getting in and out of taxis.”

It also writes that American people have an expression: “The worst reconciliation is preferable to the best divorce.” This expression was first coined by the Spanish writer Cervantes in 1600. Another saying, this time from 1960 and contrary to first one says: “Love is lovelier the second time around”, and comes from the pen of one Sammy Kahn, songwriter.

From the text of the article it appears that the second saying is now being realized in America, for it writes: “The allure of the marriage-go-round has grown so potent that it is attracting not only teen-agers and young marrieds but more and more of their mothers. The U.S divorce barometer is not on the rise; in fact, it has hovered around the 400,000 a-year level in World War II. . . Nearly 40 per cent of all ruptured marriages today have lasted ten years or more and 13 per cent have survived more than twenty years. The median age of the U.S’s two million divorcees is now 45. Furthermore, belying the myth that progeny preserves marriages, some 60 per cent (vs. 42 per cent in 1948) of todays divorced women have children under 18 at the time of their breakup.”

The article continues: “Yet for all her privilege and plenty the divorcee — mature or not — is hardly gay. Her tristesse is revealed in the incidence of divorced women seeking psychoanalysis, in their rate of alcoholism, (one in four) and suicide (three times that of married women)….In short, once outside the courtroom, many a newly divorced woman discovers that things are not what she deemed… . The partnered world has yet to form a cohesive set of attitudes towards the female ex-partner. She may be respected, admired, even envied — but she does not fit snugly into other people’s private lives.”

The magazine then goes on to ask whether the cause of speedy divorces is disharmony and the absence of sexual compatibility between husband and wife. It writes: “To judge by court records, money, sex and incompatibility are still the prime reasons for divorce among all ages and classes. What underlies the failure of so many marriages is not a new form of friction — but a new unwillingness to tolerate the old frictions. In the age of the pill, the sexual revolution and the feminine mystique, the notion that happiness takes precedence over family solidarity has clearly captured the female imagination.”

“A wife today,’ says Unitarian minister Rudolph W. Nemser, of suburban Washington, D.C., ‘is less willing to tolerate incompatibility without questioning her situation. The husband, by contrast, is more likely to accept the fact of a bad marriage and will persevere with it.’ According to Psychiatrist Wahl, women are becoming more demanding of sexual gratification and more intolerant of sexual incompatibility”

Divorce in Iran:

The rise in the divorce-rate is not confined to America. It is a universal disease of the times. Wherever western manners and customs have influenced the lives of people more, the number of divorces has also gone up. If, for example we consider the case of our own Iran, cases of divorce are found more in cities than in the country. In Tehran, where western manners and habits are more wide-spread, divorce cases occur in greater number than in other cities.

In issue no. 11512 of the daily newspaper Itila‘at, a short statistical record of the marriages and divorce in Iran was made. It was mentioned that “more than a quarter of the number of divorces recorded are entirely connected with the area around Tehran, that is, twenty seven per cent of the divorces recorded occurred in Tehran, in spite of the population of Tehran being ten per cent of the total population of the country. On the whole the percentage of divorces in Tehran is higher than the percentage of marriages. Marriages in Tehran account for fifteen per cent of all the marriages of the whole country.”

The environment in divorce-infected America:

Let us leave aside now the fact that talk of an increase in divorce first arose in America, and as it was said in Newsweek, an American woman prefers her own enjoyment and pleasure to the well-being and safety of her own home, and let us precede a step further and see why the American woman has become like this. Certainly it is not related to the nature of American woman; it must have some social cause. It is surely the social environment in America that has created this mentality among American women. Our worshippers of the west try to direct and push the women of Iran onto the tracks along which American women have passed. If their wish is fulfilled, there can be no doubt that the Iranian woman and Iranian family-life will meet the same fate as the American woman, and the Iranian home will become like the American home.

In issue no.66 (4.5.1344.SH), the weekly Bamshad wrote: “See how far matters have gone! The voice of French people is raised in protest. ‘The Americans Have Perpetrated Another Outrage.’ This heading is from an article in the French newspapers France-Soir which says that in more than two hundred restaurants and cabarets in the State of California female attendants work topless. In that article it is written that a special skin-tight costume like a bathing-costume, which does not cover the breasts, has been officially recognized as a working dress in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In New York city a considerable number of cinemas show only those films which are based upon sex, and the naked pictures of women at their doors confront the eyes. These films are called ‘Wife-Swapping’, The Vice-Girls’, ‘Revealing Panties’ and so on. In the shop-fronts and book-stalls there may be very few books on the front of which there is no picture of a naked woman. Even the classics are not exempted from this rule. In the midst of these books one can find a large number of books with titles such as: “The Sexual Behaviour of American Husbands”, The Sexual Behaviour of Western Husbands”, “The Sexual Behaviour of Youths under Twenty Years of Age”, “New Methods in Sexual Behaviour on the Basis of the Latest Surveys”.

“The writer of the article in France-Soir, surprised and thoughtful, asks himself at this stage: ‘To what extent does America want to go.’

At this point Bamshad writes: The truth is that it will go anywhere it wants to…….only my heart aches for these people of my country who think that they have found an ideal standard to follow, and are completely confused in this path.”

So it is clear that if an American woman has become playful and prefers her own pleasure to faithfulness to her husband and her home, she is not very much to blame. It is the social environment which has struck the destructive blow at the roots of the household. It is strange that the leaders of our times are continuously giving encouragement to the social causes of divorce and the breaking up of the family. Amongst themselves, they try to excel each other in their attempts in this direction, and then raise cries of woe and wonder why divorce is so frequent. With one hand, these people add to the causes of divorce, and with the other, they want to repress it by force of law. It is like asking for the impossible.

Assumptions:

Now let us begin discussing the subject at its roots. Firstly we should see whether, in principle, divorce is a good thing or a bad thing. Should recourse to divorce be entirely unrestricted?

If divorce is a good thing then every circumstance that increases the already increased occurrence of divorce is quite all right. Or maybe the way to divorce should be completely barred, and union by marriage should be forcibly kept intact for ever, and every circumstance and innovation which causes slackness in the sacred union of marriage should be strictly dealt with. Or there is the third course, the proper course to be adopted, which is as follows. The law should not entirely bar the way to divorce to man and woman, but rather it should leave the way open to it in those cases in which it is deemed necessary and unavoidable. When the law does not completely ban it, society should simultaneously take adequate steps to bring about such conditions that the causes of dissension between husband and wife should not occur. Society should take a firm stand against the causes which are the source of the disunion and separation of husband and wife, and the loneliness of children. If society itself furnishes the causes of divorce, no legal prohibitions can be fruitful.

If it is considered proper that the law should keep the door of divorce open, then under what conditions and in what way, should it be left open? Should it remain open only for the husband, or only for the wife or else for both of them? In the case of the latter alternative, should the door be kept open for both husband and wife in the same way? Should the law allow the husband and wife to step out of marriage both in the same rnanner, or is it preferable that for each one, the husband and the wife there should be different procedures for dissolving this tie.

In all there are five angles from which the problem of divorce can be discussed:

1 The unimportance of divorce, and the lifting of all moral and legal checks and hindrances for the control of divorce.

2. Those people support this view who consider marriage only as a source of sexual pleasure, and do not imagine it to have an aspect of inviolability, and do not consider the integrity of the family to be an asset or society. They think, in accordance with the saying ‘the second love is more enjoyable’, that the sooner that a new, different marriage is entered upon, the greater a source of sexual pleasure for woman and man it will be. In this point of view both the social value of peace of the home has been ignored, and also the joy, purity, cordiality and happiness which is found in a continuous married life; and the occurrence and recognition of the unity of two spirits as if has been disregarded. This point of view is the most superficial and the most frivolous.

2. Marriage is a sacred pact. It is a union of heads and souls, and must always remain intact and secure. The word “divorce” should be dropped from the vocabulary of human society. A wife and a husband, who many each other should know that nothing except death can separate them from each other.

This view is the one the Catholic Church has maintained for centuries and is not prepared to relinquish at any cost.

The supporters of this view are on the decrease in the world. Except in Catholic Italy and Spain, this law is not enacted these days. Time and again we read in newspapers how the wailings of Italian men and women are raised against this law; they attempt to get the law of divorce officially approved so that many unsuccessful marriages be prevented in their troubled country.

Some time back, in one of the current daily newspapers, the translation of an article from the Daily Express was published under the headline “Marriage in Italy-Slavery of women”, and I went through it. In this article it was said that at present in Italy because there is no divorce, many people enter into illicit sexual relations. According to the article “at present more than five million Italians believe that their lives are nothing, but sheer sin and illicit relationships”.

In the same newspaper it was quoted from the French Le Figaro that the non-availability of divorce is the cause of great distress among the Italian people. There are many persons who have given up Italian Citizenship for this very reason. One Italian institute at last sought the opinion of Italian women as to whether the introduction of the provisions of divorce was against the principles of religion or not. Ninety-seven per cent of the women gave their replies in the negative.

The Church persists in its view, and argues all the more in support of the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage pact.

The sanctity of marriage, a necessity for its inviolability and indestructibility is of course acceptable, provided that the relationship of the husband and the wife can be securely maintained in practice; but there arise occasions when compatibility between the husband and the wife is impossible. On such occasions it is not feasible to keep them tied up together by force of law and call it the union of husband and wife. The discarding of the opinion of the Church is certain. It is not unlikely that the Church may revise its belief, so it is not necessary to scrutinize and discuss further the viewpoint of the Church.

3. Marriage may be dissolved and terminated by the husband. As for wife, it is not dissoluble at her discretion it all.

May be in former days this view was entertained, but at present I do not think that any supporters will be found for this view. At any rate, it too requires no further discussion and criticism.

4. Marriage is sacred and the peace of the family to be respected, but recourse to divorce on special conditions for both husband and wife should be possible. Moreover, the way to step out of this blind alley should be the same for both.

Those who support the identicalness of the rights of man and woman in family affairs, and who misrepresent this as equality of rights also support this view. In the opinion of this group all those conditions, requisites and limits that apply to the wife should also apply to the husband, and the very same way that the man has to get out of this blind alley should be the right of the woman as well. If there is any difference, there will be cruelty, discrimination and injustice.

5. Marriage is sacred and the peace of the family to be respected, and divorce an unpalatable and detestable thing. Society is responsible for removing the causes and incentives to divorce, but at the same time the law should not bar the way of divorce for incompatible marriages. The way to get out of the bond of marriage should be kept open for the husband as well as for the wife. The door by which the husband is to come out of this situation is different from that which the wife is to use. One of the matters in which a man and a woman have different right is divorce.