January 16, 2008
by Tess Raposas
- Philippines -
Maria was 16 when she first came to visit the Philippines from California and decided to remain here. Witty and talented, she became a popular movie icon. Then barely in her twenties, she plunged into an early marriage with an upcoming politician from the north. Nineteen years later, her body was found slumped on the stairwell of the 13th floor where she had fallen from the 23rd floor of the condominium unit where she was staying. She was only 38. Why?
Maria was also a mother of six whose life became an archetype of marital wretchedness. Even if she had wanted out of her marriage, it would have been impossible for her to opt for divorce: the Philippines is one of only two countries in the world where divorce is not allowed. (The other country is Malta, another Catholic stronghold, like the Philippines.)
• The church and fear of social rejection often pressure Filipinas to stay in abusive relationships. Photograph by Aby Arabit. •
Those in the know believe that she plunged to her death after enduring years of domestic violence from her politician husband. Before her death, she made several attempts to seek help. She placed several anonymous calls to a women’s organization hotline. “But fear always factored in and each time we would ask who she was and her circumstances,” recalls Ana Leah Sarabia of Kalakasan, a feminist group supporting women victims of abuse, “she would back off.” Sarabia’s group did their best to help her out -- but in the end, Maria dealt with her pain her way.
No Way Out
Maria’s is not an isolated case. Thousands of women suffer from domestic violence within marriage. In less than ten years, there was a big leap in the number of cases reported to police: 1,100 in 1996 shot up to over 6,500 by 2005. And those were just the reported cases of domestic violence. There are still more undocumented and unreported cases where women opt to suffer in silence for the sake of family togetherness. Violence also goes unreported due to victims’ embarrassment, not knowing how or to whom to report, or worst of all, the tragic belief that the violence was unimportant and that nothing could be done anyway. Yet these victims are wasting away from the unresolved injustice of their lives.
Of the reported cases, authorities say the primary perpetrators of violence are husbands. In 2003 the Social Weather Station, a research and survey institution in the Philippines, conducted a survey of men who admitted having physically harmed women. Thirty-nine percent had committed it against their wives; 15 percent were violent toward their girlfriends; 4 percent beat their unmarried partners. The rest of the attacks against women were committed by men unknown to them. Clearly, domestic violence or violence in the confines of intimate relationships is the most prevalent form of abuse against women in the Philippines. Combine a no-divorce policy and you get an agonizing picture of Filipino women. How they subsist and survive in this situation is hard to imagine.
On an international scale, a World Bank analysis indicates that half of the world’s women have been battered by an intimate partner. In Asia, 60% of all women have been assaulted.
The impact on children is appalling. Body Shop International estimates that 1.8 to 3.2 million children in the Philippines are exposed to domestic violence and suffer the traumatic effects for the rest of their lives. This number just escalates year after year.
Failed Attempts at Divorce
Curiously, The Philippines allowed divorce during the Spanish era, the American period and the Japanese Occupation.
Only in 1950 did a new civil code take effect, disallowing divorce under Philippine law. The 1988 Family Code adopted the same policy but it did provide for nullification of marriage on grounds of psychological incapacity.
While a few brave legislators have authored bills to legalize divorce, none of these have seen the light of day. Proposed bills regularly expire at the committee level before they can even be deliberated up in Congress.
To date, five bills have been filed in Congress, two in the Senate and three at the Lower House. Senator Rodolfo Biazon, Senator Tessie Aquino Oreta, Representative Bellaflor Angara Castillo, Representative Manuel Ortega and Representative Liza Largoza Mazaall all put bills up for a vote in their respective houses.
SB 782, Senator Biazon’s bill, sought to amend the Family Code by allowing absolute divorce and thereby granting legally separated spouses the right to remarry. The subject of scrutiny of SB 782 is the existing provision under the Family Code which allows psychological incapacity as the only grounds or basis for the nullification of a marriage. Attorney Carol Austria, a legal rights advocate notes:
“Psychological incapacity is a very limited basis but the Supreme Court describes psychological incapacity as an incurable disease. The focus must shift from psychological grounds to issues of gender inequality and freedom from unhealthy and devastating relationships. A petition for nullification of marriage is also a far cry from the usual divorce proceeding practiced worldwide.”
In formulating a national divorce law one must account for the existing indigenous community practices where proceedings are performed by mumbakis (indigenous priests) or tribal leaders. “Many marriages have been solemnized not in city halls, but in tribal communities. The important thing is to recognize what they deem as a practical and sensible divorce law in their own context,” she says.
In the end, these bills failed to advance beyond the filing stage and were not even calendared for reading because they were not considered “priority bills”.
The latest and most controversial of the divorce bills filed is House Bill 4016 authored by feminist-activist Representative Liza Largoza Maza. It emphasizes the need for a divorce law that defines unequivocally all the grounds and terms for terminating a marriage. “When a marriage is no longer viable, divorce should be an option because it could actually provide protection to battered women and their children from violence and abuse. Women must have the option of remedies that will pave for the attainment of their human development and self-fulfillment and the protection of their human rights. The existing law on petition for nullification of marriage as a provision in the family code is not enough to address this.”
Representative Largoza Maza’s bill was filed in 2005, but after tirades from the Catholic camp, nothing more has been heard of it. Meanwhile, those who oppose its passage spread the word against the bill, declaring it would destroy the sanctity of marriage, disintegrate the close-knit Filipino family and bring about all sorts of moral decay.
Paths Women Take
Stories like Maria’s and those of other celebrities with similar experiences are broadcast on national television. That should bring additional attention to divorce, but critically, such discussions are not sustained.
Most Filipinos take the side of the Catholic Church, although there has been no costly referendum. Anyone who advocates for divorce is judged immoral and without conscience. Staying married for the sake of the family is considered a sacrifice with heavenly rewards.
Plus, Filipino women tend to submit to society’s pressures. They dare not earn the ire and judgment of their community. The path usually pursued, which is still unpopular, is to separate, but this leaves women in a legal bind. It takes financial independence for a woman to make a successful getaway from an abusive partner. She must be able to sustain herself and her children to ward off the abusive husband who would try to harass her into coming back. The social stigma for a woman who breaks up her marriage is deep-seated, disconcerting and disempowering.
Those who have gone through annulment cases attest to just how painstakingly long and tedious the process is to prove the other person is “psychologically incapacitated”. Women who have gone through annulment claim that it eats up an enormous part of their resources, makes their lives a public show, and even then they wait for years for the court to grant them marital freedom. Others have waited in vain when the courts simply denied their claims.
Dinah, a private school teacher,finds her lack of choice tragic. She describes the man she has been married to for a decade as “a man in an iron mask”: every day he inflicts some form of abuse on her. She did not know this about him at the beginning. Dinah is now vulnerable to mistreatment by the very person who made an eternal promise to love her.
Of Choice and Repression
When will the government realize that a divorce law is not meant to advocate separation and broken marriage, but merely expands the choices of its citizenry? When the state offers no viable alternative to desperate, hopeless marriages it is tantamount to a human rights violation by the state.
Fortunately the authors of these divorce bills have not lost their fighting spirit. Divorce advocates are always looking for new venues where they can be heard. Maybe this time, the debate should not just be had in the halls of the Filipino congress but in a much larger venue with worldwide coverage. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and other international organizations must be persuaded to step in. Taken together, Maria’s story, Dinah’s, and all the other voices crying out in pain represent a systemic disgrace.
This is after all, a story about bondage and illegal confinement on a national scale, where women are both the willing and unwilling victims.
About the Author
For the past 15 years, Tess Raposas has been a freelance journalist and media and development consultant, having worked on various writing and research projects on gender and environmental concerns. She believes that every journalist must grow from being an "objective", somewhat robotic truthsayer to a socially aware and accountable truthseeker. She is based in Quezon City, Philippines.
Showing posts with label Issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Issues. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2008
Divorce - reducing marriage to a temporary sexual contract.
Many people support the creation of divorce for plain selfish reasons.
If there is such a thing as divorce, then there is really no such thing as marriage.
"When we make a law, its inner logic may lead to all sorts of consequences we can’t foresee."
But we as Filipinos can see! We can see how divorce in the so called "more advanced" countries has destroyed the meaning of their marriage, destroyed their families, and has negatively impacted their children... for two whole generations!
Marriage in the so-called "more advanced" countries has been reduced to the level of legalized fornication. Contraceptive culture has reduced heterosexual sex to the level of Sodomy... so much so that homosexuals now feel emboldened to claim their own "right" to redefine marriage to include homosexuals!
Do you still want to follow the so-called "more advanced" countries on the their proven self-destructive laws that deconstructed the very concept of marriage?
Would You Sign This Employee Contract?
"An employer can, at any time, dismiss an employee, without justification, and have that employee imprisoned if he objects too strongly to his dismissal. For example, if the employee raises his voice in anger he may be arrested for 'violence'. In any event, an employer can dismiss an employee regardless of the circumstances, and at his sole discretion. He can fire him from his job, whenever he wishes, no matter how long the employee has served with the company, and even if the employee has done absolutely nothing wrong. Further, the employer can insist that the employee is evicted from his own house, and never allowed to re-enter it. An employer may further demand that the sacked employee must, under threat of imprisonment, forfeit part of any future income to the employer for some considerable time into the future."
Now read this. It is the Lovers Contract. The Western Marriage Contract.
"A woman can, at any time, dismiss her male partner, without justification, and have that partner imprisoned if he objects too strongly to his dismissal. For example, if he raises his voice in anger he may be arrested for 'domestic violence'. In any event, a woman can dismiss the man regardless of the circumstances, and at her sole discretion. She can fire him from his jobs as father and partner, whenever she wishes, no matter how long he has served the family, and even if he has done absolutely nothing wrong. Further, the woman can insist that the man is evicted from his own house, and never allowed to re-enter it. If she has children, a woman may further demand that her sacked partner must, under threat of imprisonment, forfeit part of any future income to the woman and her children for some considerable time into the future - and this is the case even if her children turn out not to be his."
In the West, these ARE the terms and conditions of marriage!
(This is a big big reason why western marriage is collapsing, this is a big big reason why we in the Philippines must never merely copy laws from other countries, and a big big reason why divorce should never be legalized.)
Taken from the work of Angry Harry
Legalize Divorce?
The Filipino family is threatened with extinction. Loose sexual mores, a birth control mentality, open homosexuality, new age philosophies and economic distress are only a few of the pressures that come to bear on families. Certain social, political and economic forces, both local and global, are threatening the venerable institution of the "domestic church" - the father, the mother and their children.
According to the World Congress of Families, "slogans such as modernity, globalization, progress, and the concept of civil society, are the forces that have weakened the bonds between husbands and wives, parent and child, and the generations.
These ideologies deny the natural origin and status of the family, the equal but complementary roles of men and women, the miracle of human fertility and procreation, the dignity and worth of every human person and the autonomy of family itself. The family, which develops and sustains not only individuals but also larger communities, has been subordinated to the agendas of pressure groups and government decision-makers and subjected to social experimentation.
One such manifestation of this appalling low regard for the family unit is the proposed enactment of four house bills, termed by pro-life and pro-family advocacy organizations. These are:
HB 6993 or the "Legalization of Absolute Divorce" filed by Congressman Manuel Ortega of La Union that allows married to separate and remarry, both the aggrieved as well as the guilty spouse.
HB7165 or the "Lesbian and Gay Rights Act 1999" filed by Congresswoman Bellaflor Angara Castillo of Aurora Province, which will make same marriages legal. HB 173 which seeks to "establish a new population policy strengthening the Population Commission" initiated by Congressman Heherson Alvarez, requiring bigger budget and foreign funds for population control activities, distribution of contraceptives and sex education.
The Family Code of the Philippines gives two alternatives to people who want to get out of failed marriages: A relative divorce in the form of legal separation and annulment. Under our present laws on marriage, legal separation does not dissolve the marriage bond between legally separated spouses The law therefore, forestalls them from pursuing marital ties with others.
This is mainly the reason why proponents HB 6993 or the absolute divorce bill insist on its enactment. They claim that absolute divorce is necessary to free couples from impossible marriages such as in the case of battered women. By allowing remarriage for separated spouses, HB 6993 supporters say they are giving a chance for separated couples to "possibly succeed in attaining a stable and fulfilling family life."
But Archbishop Oscar Cruz, D.D. Canon lawyer and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has this to say: "For those desirous only of doing away with an impossible relationship with no intention to remarry, the recourse is legal separation not divorce. Regarding anomalous relationships such as in the can of psychiatric persons or behavioral deviants, once proven by experts that any of these have been existent at the time of the wedding, then civil marriage annulment is the recourse, not divorce."
So many people have been intrigued by the bill end have taken a strong stand against it that a primer entitled "PERILS (which stands for Psychological, Economic, Religious, Identity, Legal and Social Aspects) of divorce is being circulated in Metro Manila.
The primer branded the bill as anti-women, anti-children, anti-society and a violation of our present Constitution. Listed here are some of the arguments presented in the PERILS primer.
All human beings believe in specific ways to attain happiness in life. In the past decade, some groups in society have emphasized personal happiness in marriage as a priority over responsibilities to spouse and children. Today, unhappy marriages are commonplace and divorce is accepted as an easy solution to marital problems. What has become more prevalent seems to be the unwillingness of people today to work through the stresses inevitable in every marriage.
The divorce bill currently pending in Congress contemplates remarriage for separated spouses to ''possibly succeed" in family life. A weight of evidence however does not support this hope. The bill is just seen as an endless entry-exit revolving door, which will likely result in a divorce spiral following that of the American society whose values becomes so easily assimilated into the Filipino culture. Look at the following U.S. numbers and draw your own conclusions:
YEAR------- MARRIAGES (M)------- DIVORCES (D)-----------%OF (D) TO (M)
1900---------- 709,000--------------------56,000---------------------- 8
1930---------1,127,000------------------196,000----------------------17
1960---------1,527,000------------------395,000----------------------26
1975---------2,126,000----------------1,026,000--------------------- 48
The belief that divorce equals happiness is utterly false. Cormac Burke, a noted authority on marriage and the family says: "If in divorcist societies, up to 50 percent of persons who fail to find happiness in marriage, where are they going to find it? I n a second marriage? The statistics say No. The divorce rate, among divorcees who remarry, is three or four times higher than among those who marry for the first time.
"Divorce does not tend to make for happiness. Divorce tends to make for divorce; and divorce always marks the final collapse of a hope for happiness. Divorce, it is frequently argued, is only meant for the hard cases, for those persons whose marriages have in fact failed, so as to give them the chance to start again. The evidence, however, is becoming massive that the remedy is worse than the illness," he adds.
The financial and economic resources of a family are generally divided upon the onset of a divorce. The father, who unusually initiates the separation in the Philippines, must now support two families which will require two homes, two sets of furniture and appliances, and subsequently two sets of children. Conflicts arise over money, property, custody and maintenance. This deepens bitter feelings between the spouses, children and in-laws.
As well as becoming impoverished, single mothers often become lonely, afraid and exhausted. Divorce has not made women equal to men but has only caused hardship in many ways to them and to their children. Statistics show that women generally fare worse in divorce because of maintenance default and raising children on reduced incomes. A U. S. study in 1985 made by the Stanford University found that mothers and children average a 73 percent decline in their standard of living the first year after divorce, while men's increased 42 percent.
Thus, many women and children find themselves needing public assistance and undergoing many changes in lifestyle and socioeconomic status. Then, too, the difficulty of raising children alone, causing many family problems.
Divorce is fundamentally a moral, not a legal issue. Were it not for its moral dimension, the issue would be totally within human competence and freedom. The reality is that the Catholic church, comprising about 85 percent of the Philippine population is absolutely against divorce as a universal error and a serious violation of God's law. And this is based on the clear teachings of Jesus Christ, who raised matrimony from a sacred contract to the dignity of a sacrament.
Divorce results to a dysfunctional home. This kind of home is hardly the breeding ground for a psychologically stable and emotionally mature person.
In divorce, the needs of children for parents are disrupted and their development process hindered or impaired.
Thus serious problems occur which usually lead to runaway teens, drug problems, alienation, prostitution, low self-esteem, depression and even suicide.
Moreover, long-term physical and emotional burdens are often placed on children which endure long after the divorce; These frequently take the form of post-adolescent fears of commitment or betrayal, lack of goals and feelings of not being in control of their life.
Whatever legal route the proponents of a divorce law in the Philippines may take, it will end up running smack against the 1987 Constitution, which provides that the family is an inviolable social constitution. (Art. XV, Sec. 2).
Other provisions regarding the family in our 1987 Constitution are:
Sec. 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. (Art. II, Ibid.)
Sec. I. The State recognizes the Philippine family as the foundation of the nation. Accordingly, it shall strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its total development. (An. XV, Ibid.)
The social costs of divorce, as experienced in the United States, are also frightening. Divorce is essentially a social explosive that, in time, will go off in the form of sexual aberrations, acts of violence, drug addiction and other detrimental signs of social maladjustment.
Consider these facts:
"Most victims of child molestation come from single-parent households or are the children of drug-ring members." (Los Angeles Times, 9-16-85)
"Due to the significant drop in their income, mothers and their children often have to move to less expensive housing after a divorce or separation. Thus, each move which brings a change in friends and neighborhoods, frequently adds stress to an already high level of stress within the family." (Larson, Sawyers and Larson "Of the juvenile criminals who are a threat to the public three-fourths come from broken homes. (Ramsey Clark)
In a study of 72 adolescent murderers and 35 adolescent thieves, researchers for Michigan State University demonstrated that fully 75 percent of those charged with homicide had parents who were either divorced or had never been married at all." (Cornell, et. al.)
A habitual wife-beater, divorced and remarried, is not likely to morph into a tender, loving lamb with his second or third wife. Both goodness and evil have multiplier effects. It, therefore, makes enormous sense not to make it easy for persons to exit from and reenter into marriage.
A stable family is built upon the combined parental love and unified parental force of the spouses. In order to make children grow into mature, responsible and upright persons of society, strengthening of the family is needed. But this rests on no one else but the family itself. If God is at the center of the family unit, trust that the bulwark will weather all the storms in life.
For more information, go to:
ALLiance for the FAMILY Foundation Philippines Inc.
http://www.alfi.org.ph
If there is such a thing as divorce, then there is really no such thing as marriage.
"When we make a law, its inner logic may lead to all sorts of consequences we can’t foresee."
But we as Filipinos can see! We can see how divorce in the so called "more advanced" countries has destroyed the meaning of their marriage, destroyed their families, and has negatively impacted their children... for two whole generations!
Marriage in the so-called "more advanced" countries has been reduced to the level of legalized fornication. Contraceptive culture has reduced heterosexual sex to the level of Sodomy... so much so that homosexuals now feel emboldened to claim their own "right" to redefine marriage to include homosexuals!
Do you still want to follow the so-called "more advanced" countries on the their proven self-destructive laws that deconstructed the very concept of marriage?
Would You Sign This Employee Contract?
"An employer can, at any time, dismiss an employee, without justification, and have that employee imprisoned if he objects too strongly to his dismissal. For example, if the employee raises his voice in anger he may be arrested for 'violence'. In any event, an employer can dismiss an employee regardless of the circumstances, and at his sole discretion. He can fire him from his job, whenever he wishes, no matter how long the employee has served with the company, and even if the employee has done absolutely nothing wrong. Further, the employer can insist that the employee is evicted from his own house, and never allowed to re-enter it. An employer may further demand that the sacked employee must, under threat of imprisonment, forfeit part of any future income to the employer for some considerable time into the future."
Now read this. It is the Lovers Contract. The Western Marriage Contract.
"A woman can, at any time, dismiss her male partner, without justification, and have that partner imprisoned if he objects too strongly to his dismissal. For example, if he raises his voice in anger he may be arrested for 'domestic violence'. In any event, a woman can dismiss the man regardless of the circumstances, and at her sole discretion. She can fire him from his jobs as father and partner, whenever she wishes, no matter how long he has served the family, and even if he has done absolutely nothing wrong. Further, the woman can insist that the man is evicted from his own house, and never allowed to re-enter it. If she has children, a woman may further demand that her sacked partner must, under threat of imprisonment, forfeit part of any future income to the woman and her children for some considerable time into the future - and this is the case even if her children turn out not to be his."
In the West, these ARE the terms and conditions of marriage!
(This is a big big reason why western marriage is collapsing, this is a big big reason why we in the Philippines must never merely copy laws from other countries, and a big big reason why divorce should never be legalized.)
Taken from the work of Angry Harry
Legalize Divorce?
The Filipino family is threatened with extinction. Loose sexual mores, a birth control mentality, open homosexuality, new age philosophies and economic distress are only a few of the pressures that come to bear on families. Certain social, political and economic forces, both local and global, are threatening the venerable institution of the "domestic church" - the father, the mother and their children.
According to the World Congress of Families, "slogans such as modernity, globalization, progress, and the concept of civil society, are the forces that have weakened the bonds between husbands and wives, parent and child, and the generations.
These ideologies deny the natural origin and status of the family, the equal but complementary roles of men and women, the miracle of human fertility and procreation, the dignity and worth of every human person and the autonomy of family itself. The family, which develops and sustains not only individuals but also larger communities, has been subordinated to the agendas of pressure groups and government decision-makers and subjected to social experimentation.
One such manifestation of this appalling low regard for the family unit is the proposed enactment of four house bills, termed by pro-life and pro-family advocacy organizations. These are:
HB 6993 or the "Legalization of Absolute Divorce" filed by Congressman Manuel Ortega of La Union that allows married to separate and remarry, both the aggrieved as well as the guilty spouse.
HB7165 or the "Lesbian and Gay Rights Act 1999" filed by Congresswoman Bellaflor Angara Castillo of Aurora Province, which will make same marriages legal. HB 173 which seeks to "establish a new population policy strengthening the Population Commission" initiated by Congressman Heherson Alvarez, requiring bigger budget and foreign funds for population control activities, distribution of contraceptives and sex education.
The Family Code of the Philippines gives two alternatives to people who want to get out of failed marriages: A relative divorce in the form of legal separation and annulment. Under our present laws on marriage, legal separation does not dissolve the marriage bond between legally separated spouses The law therefore, forestalls them from pursuing marital ties with others.
This is mainly the reason why proponents HB 6993 or the absolute divorce bill insist on its enactment. They claim that absolute divorce is necessary to free couples from impossible marriages such as in the case of battered women. By allowing remarriage for separated spouses, HB 6993 supporters say they are giving a chance for separated couples to "possibly succeed in attaining a stable and fulfilling family life."
But Archbishop Oscar Cruz, D.D. Canon lawyer and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has this to say: "For those desirous only of doing away with an impossible relationship with no intention to remarry, the recourse is legal separation not divorce. Regarding anomalous relationships such as in the can of psychiatric persons or behavioral deviants, once proven by experts that any of these have been existent at the time of the wedding, then civil marriage annulment is the recourse, not divorce."
So many people have been intrigued by the bill end have taken a strong stand against it that a primer entitled "PERILS (which stands for Psychological, Economic, Religious, Identity, Legal and Social Aspects) of divorce is being circulated in Metro Manila.
The primer branded the bill as anti-women, anti-children, anti-society and a violation of our present Constitution. Listed here are some of the arguments presented in the PERILS primer.
All human beings believe in specific ways to attain happiness in life. In the past decade, some groups in society have emphasized personal happiness in marriage as a priority over responsibilities to spouse and children. Today, unhappy marriages are commonplace and divorce is accepted as an easy solution to marital problems. What has become more prevalent seems to be the unwillingness of people today to work through the stresses inevitable in every marriage.
The divorce bill currently pending in Congress contemplates remarriage for separated spouses to ''possibly succeed" in family life. A weight of evidence however does not support this hope. The bill is just seen as an endless entry-exit revolving door, which will likely result in a divorce spiral following that of the American society whose values becomes so easily assimilated into the Filipino culture. Look at the following U.S. numbers and draw your own conclusions:
YEAR------- MARRIAGES (M)------- DIVORCES (D)-----------%OF (D) TO (M)
1900---------- 709,000--------------------56,000---------------------- 8
1930---------1,127,000------------------196,000----------------------17
1960---------1,527,000------------------395,000----------------------26
1975---------2,126,000----------------1,026,000--------------------- 48
The belief that divorce equals happiness is utterly false. Cormac Burke, a noted authority on marriage and the family says: "If in divorcist societies, up to 50 percent of persons who fail to find happiness in marriage, where are they going to find it? I n a second marriage? The statistics say No. The divorce rate, among divorcees who remarry, is three or four times higher than among those who marry for the first time.
"Divorce does not tend to make for happiness. Divorce tends to make for divorce; and divorce always marks the final collapse of a hope for happiness. Divorce, it is frequently argued, is only meant for the hard cases, for those persons whose marriages have in fact failed, so as to give them the chance to start again. The evidence, however, is becoming massive that the remedy is worse than the illness," he adds.
The financial and economic resources of a family are generally divided upon the onset of a divorce. The father, who unusually initiates the separation in the Philippines, must now support two families which will require two homes, two sets of furniture and appliances, and subsequently two sets of children. Conflicts arise over money, property, custody and maintenance. This deepens bitter feelings between the spouses, children and in-laws.
As well as becoming impoverished, single mothers often become lonely, afraid and exhausted. Divorce has not made women equal to men but has only caused hardship in many ways to them and to their children. Statistics show that women generally fare worse in divorce because of maintenance default and raising children on reduced incomes. A U. S. study in 1985 made by the Stanford University found that mothers and children average a 73 percent decline in their standard of living the first year after divorce, while men's increased 42 percent.
Thus, many women and children find themselves needing public assistance and undergoing many changes in lifestyle and socioeconomic status. Then, too, the difficulty of raising children alone, causing many family problems.
Divorce is fundamentally a moral, not a legal issue. Were it not for its moral dimension, the issue would be totally within human competence and freedom. The reality is that the Catholic church, comprising about 85 percent of the Philippine population is absolutely against divorce as a universal error and a serious violation of God's law. And this is based on the clear teachings of Jesus Christ, who raised matrimony from a sacred contract to the dignity of a sacrament.
Divorce results to a dysfunctional home. This kind of home is hardly the breeding ground for a psychologically stable and emotionally mature person.
In divorce, the needs of children for parents are disrupted and their development process hindered or impaired.
Thus serious problems occur which usually lead to runaway teens, drug problems, alienation, prostitution, low self-esteem, depression and even suicide.
Moreover, long-term physical and emotional burdens are often placed on children which endure long after the divorce; These frequently take the form of post-adolescent fears of commitment or betrayal, lack of goals and feelings of not being in control of their life.
Whatever legal route the proponents of a divorce law in the Philippines may take, it will end up running smack against the 1987 Constitution, which provides that the family is an inviolable social constitution. (Art. XV, Sec. 2).
Other provisions regarding the family in our 1987 Constitution are:
Sec. 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. (Art. II, Ibid.)
Sec. I. The State recognizes the Philippine family as the foundation of the nation. Accordingly, it shall strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its total development. (An. XV, Ibid.)
The social costs of divorce, as experienced in the United States, are also frightening. Divorce is essentially a social explosive that, in time, will go off in the form of sexual aberrations, acts of violence, drug addiction and other detrimental signs of social maladjustment.
Consider these facts:
"Most victims of child molestation come from single-parent households or are the children of drug-ring members." (Los Angeles Times, 9-16-85)
"Due to the significant drop in their income, mothers and their children often have to move to less expensive housing after a divorce or separation. Thus, each move which brings a change in friends and neighborhoods, frequently adds stress to an already high level of stress within the family." (Larson, Sawyers and Larson "Of the juvenile criminals who are a threat to the public three-fourths come from broken homes. (Ramsey Clark)
In a study of 72 adolescent murderers and 35 adolescent thieves, researchers for Michigan State University demonstrated that fully 75 percent of those charged with homicide had parents who were either divorced or had never been married at all." (Cornell, et. al.)
A habitual wife-beater, divorced and remarried, is not likely to morph into a tender, loving lamb with his second or third wife. Both goodness and evil have multiplier effects. It, therefore, makes enormous sense not to make it easy for persons to exit from and reenter into marriage.
A stable family is built upon the combined parental love and unified parental force of the spouses. In order to make children grow into mature, responsible and upright persons of society, strengthening of the family is needed. But this rests on no one else but the family itself. If God is at the center of the family unit, trust that the bulwark will weather all the storms in life.
For more information, go to:
ALLiance for the FAMILY Foundation Philippines Inc.
http://www.alfi.org.ph
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