Marriage Debate | Peter Hitchens | Opposition

Sybilla being in syria unexpected our lives unwanted opponents some of the people holy incomprehensible and on top of that very grave difficulty working out who to bomb and who not to bomb and whether to bomb anybody at all I can't myself work it out Jane was calling earlier on forum herself to be allowed to marry in church I believe that she will achieve this objective in fact I've long felt that the we will know that our society has finally disappeared up its own contradictions when the lesbian Archbishop of Canterbury marries that lesbian Archbishop of York in Canterbury Cathedral it will come and so what I'm so sorry I'm not being heckled by the way I don't know quite where they were they were handing out leaflets outside saying all kinds of untrue things about Mitch I was anxious to correct and I don't need to bother the terms of the motion seems to me to be largely ignored this evening I don't blame people for ignoring them but they have been no one has even bothered to define recognition it seems to me that the whole point about recognition is that it is a recognition by the state of a territory controlled by somebody else and not by itself this is not a matter of the state taking over marriage it is a matter of the state recognizing that there exists in the country private life not as a right handed down by the state as in European conventions and UN HCR clauses but as something which exists a piece of ancient Lewis II which we possess in which we conduct our private life and I'd like to take as my text some words by D H Lawrence who most of you will probably think of as the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the apostle of sexual liberation nonetheless this is what he wrote in his essay apropos Lady Chatterley's Lover it is marriage perhaps which has given man the best of his freedom given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the state given him his foothold of Independence on which to stand and resist an unjust state man and wife a king and queen we were two subjects in a few square yards of territory of their own this really is marriage it is a true freedom because it is a true fulfillment for man woman and children and he then warned make marriage in any serious degree unstable dishonorable destroy the permanency of marriage and the church Falls witness the enormous decline of the Church of England the reason being the church is established upon the element of union in mankind break it break it and you will have to go back to the overwhelming dominance of the state which existed before the Christian era the Roman state was all-powerful I think that this was a prophetic and extremely important piece of work and it was prophetic so much so the prophecy was fulfilled not long after D H Lawrence it's actually rather appalling book was freed for general publication in the late 1960s when almost every major Western country passed legislation which destroyed marriage it's almost a waste of time for us here to be discussing this because of what happened marriage had previously been a contract between two people a very important element of it being that it was lifelong and there was no breach to it once it was made it did mean whatever Jemaine said it did mean till death us do part it didn't mean so long as you both shall live and this was very much the case in the England in which I grew up what the laws passed the divorce law Reform Act of 1968 in this country similar legislation in the United States what it meant was that if one party to that marriage one party to that solemn mutual oath of lifelong partnership if you like if one party decided that they were no longer prepared to hold to that oath the state would burst into their home if necessary and dragged away the person who wanted to keep the earth anyway this is an extraordinary position in any other area of law if two people make an agreement to do something to sign a contract and one of them breaks it they go to the court in the state to enforce it but since 1968 what the state has done is actually actually actively intervene to force that contract apart and to break it this is an enormous interference and interruption in private life by the state it's had huge consequences which I shall come to in a moment but fundamentally what it is meant is that the state's interference in private life has grown immensely and the one institution hated by the way by the Soviet Union in the communist countries before the fall of the Berlin Wall the one institution which actually stood outside the state and provided a huge area of private life and independence has been under immense attack it's not surprising if you examine the statistics of marriage carefully now that so many people no longer get married at all it is increasingly common for people to cohabit without marry it's very common for those marriages which which do exist to break up in divorce many of the marriages which do take place are remarriages of divorced persons there is actually a very very serious enduring decline in marriage in any western country and why shouldn't the me what advantage is that in it for either of the parties if it cannot actually be supported by and will not be supported by the law if the law actively intervenes to destroy not just to destroy it but I answer all important judgments which date back to the 1940s it's also the case now any form of blame against the person who breaks up the marriage is abolished when it comes to the distribution of the marital property particularly the house and indeed who gets the care of the children there is no longer in English law any reason why anybody can go to court and say look I am the wounded party here I should get the house I am the deserted person here I should get the house I am the deserted person here I should be the person who looks after the children the law sex no account of it at all you're simply left on your own and the law barges into your house and will ultimately send you to prison if you resist the laws absolutely fervent attempts to make you break your contract this is where we are and it's going even further because again I had forgiven me for quoting but it's so important mrs. Justice Hale as she then was now the first woman on the Supreme Court did much in her legal career to remove the idea of blame from divorce law and in 1982 again prophetically in an article called the Utah see of marriage is a legal institution she pointed out whether it would have been possible to remove the inequality between the sexes improve the protection given to the weak and at the same time promote lasting marriage we shall never know instead the efforts of English law to remove the defects of the marital package deal have succeeded not only in virtually destroying whatever value it has as a stabilizing or restraining force but also in an ever closer approximation of the legal consequences of marriage and extramarital cohabitation in such circumstances the piecemeal erosion of the distinction between marriage and non-marital cohabitation may be expected to continue logically we have already reached a point at which rather than discussing which remedies should now be extended to the unmarried we should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purposes that from one of the cleverest and most far-seeing judges and lawyers in our country marriage in this country is legally dead it exists as a ghost and what anybody proposes to do to defend it I have no idea it would be nice I have to say because of the enormous importance of it is the foundation of a free society in which people can bring up their children as they wish teach them the ideas that they wish to pass on to them passed on in fact everything which was which was given to them by their forebears and continue this as a society rather than just a collection of people living in the same place it would be nice if that could if that could have continued it would be nice if the state hadn't mounted a 40-year assault on it it would be nice if anybody purporting to be conservative had at any time since this terrible mistake was made try to undo it but nobody has and nobody will if you feel like it vote against the motion it's a good thing to do it won't make any difference I have no other point to make

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 168,395

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University, Marriage, state, religion, Germaine Greer, Peter Hitchens

Id: 5e2vFc1AIOA

Length: 8min 43sec (523 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2016