This week Gabriela Party-list refiles a bill legalizing divorce in the Philippines. According to them, the bill (if passed to law) would give “married couples in irreparable marriages another legal remedy that they can resort to in addition to the country’s existing laws on legal separation and annulment...and help put an end to domestic violence still prevalent among married Filipino couples.” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 12 August 2010)
Then my legal mind started to wonder, how then would Congress treat this bill? Isn't it that our very Constitution protects "Marriage as an inviolable social institution for it is the foundation of the family and shall be protected by the State" (1987 Philippine Constitution, Art XV, Sec 2)?" Realizing also that the people we elected in Congress are human as they are, would they espouse the common good or would they would again 'twist' the concept to espouse their own personal beliefs? It seemed to me that our lawmakers are not yet contended with the remedies provided by our existing laws. Isn't Psychological Incapacity as provided by the Family Code as a ground for declaration of nullity of marriage fully-stretched and abused enough to sever the relationship of troubled husbands and wives? Aren't we burdening the Judiciary of too much personal problems?
If this bill becomes a law, is our society now promoting a non-committal culture? What then are we telling our children? Have we been too westernized that we want to live life casually talking about our ex-wives/husbands and have children who calls each other 'half'? Where now are the values of Family (which by the way, very Filipino), Integrity, and Responsibility?
I am not afraid of change nor do I resist it. On the contrary, I always desired for growth. Looking at this Divorce Bill now, I do not see any resulting growth on the persons of the parties concerned and as a society as a whole. I see this again as a quick-fix to the issues that people want to escape from. True, there really are "irreconcilable" differences but I do believe that married people should put in their best efforts to reconcile them. Divorce isn't as simple as opting for separation pay in case of severed relationships of employers and employees if reinstatement is no longer viable. Didn't husbands and wives vowed to each other: "For better or for worse; For richer or for poorer; In sickness and in health; UNTIL DEATH DO US PART?" Too much? Yes.
People who read this may think that I am not in the right position to speak about marriage because I have not been married myself, hence I do not have the first-hand experience of the gruesome (if you may) truth about marriage. Yet, I speak from the hopeful heart of a young individual who believes that commitments should be revered; That marriage, a vocation, is something that you owe to yourself, your partner and to the One who put you together. Being a commitment, marriage is a decision that one makes prior to indulging into it--a decision that should have well been discerned and prayed about. I speak because I know of real-life stories of people who despite of their "irreconcilable" differences had managed to stick it through--more so lived a happy life together. Not by chance, but because they decided to turn their situations around. I also speak because I think of my generation whose lives are just starting. Some of my friends have just began their married lives and I do not want them to just give up on their decisions of loving each other and living and building their lives together. I also speak because I know that our culture have been becoming permissive and I do not want to wake up one day seeing my future children getting married every five years. I want a life of conviction.
Gabriela Silang fought for the Philippines against the colonialism of the Spanish. Gabriela, the party-list, veers our culture to westernization of values toward marriage. Ironic, is it not?
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