Drive-thru religion: McAnnulment proposed in Colmenares's House Bill 3952

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If you think drive through lanes for McDonalds was a bright idea, consider then what Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares might be on to. Colmenares is filing House Bill 3952 which seeks to make marriage "annulment" in the Philippines easier. The Philippines has always pretended to be a society that takes marriage seriously. As such, the Law (perhaps one that exists under the watchful eye of the local Catholic Taliban) would rather see an untenable marriage "treated as if it never existed" rather than recognise the truth about its existence and untenability and simply terminated.

Divorce in the Philippines masquerades as annulment, presumably to keep our humourless men-in-robes happy. Annulment in the Philippines is de facto divorce. And that is why those who seek it require lots of money -- to pay for lawyers who need to navigate the complexity weaved into the fabric of our society, all but institutionalising pretentious morality.

Coming up with an affordabe express lane for the millions of hapless Filipinos imprisoned by the dogmatic bullying of the legal framework by the Catholic Church under the guise of an "easier" annulment procedure -- one that (by George!) recognises "spousal violence, infidelity and abandonment as presumptive psychological incapacity" as legitimate grounds for annulment -- is I suppose the next best thing to the far simpler approach of implementing a proper divorce law.

Indeed, the rich and powerful themselves struggle against this theocratic idiocy. As I lamented a poor-little-rich-girl's plight when I explored the impossibility of the concept of "annulment" on AntiPinoy.com...
Poor Kris [Aquino]. Flushing her marriage with James Yap down the crapper is not as simple as pushing down on a lever. Like the national economy, the landscape of options available to her in a backward theocratic society such as the Philippines is poor.

It's time we focus on the Truth and make things simple. The Truth is that marriage -- specially dysfunctional and oppressive ones need not be forever. The idea that that it ought to be "forever" is a relic of primitivist days when lies were routinely considered sacred.

Comments

  1. Jih1:19 am, January 19, 2011

    I had thought before that the Philippines had its state and church separated, but when I discovered that there was no divorce here, it surprised me.

    For a Muslim, divorce as a last resort when nothing else works between couple is something t...aken for granted as it is permissible, but has suddenly become a privilege that only the Muslims among the Filipinos can enjoy, and the rest of the Filipinos cannot- which is fine if they are devout Catholics who do not believe in 'divorce', but what about the many cases of miserable wives who are beaten by their abusive husbands? They run from, to their miserable states with no option to run elsewhere.

    But if a Muslim lawmaker were to introduce such a bill supporting divorce for all Filipinos, it would be interpreted by the Church as undermining its teachings and the Catholics.

    So I guess it should just be left as a case of you have your religion, and I have mine.

    I should note that in Islam, marriage is seen as a contract, not a union.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9:48 am, January 19, 2011

    It's not about the Church. It's about the corrupt Pinoy government bureaucracy that profits handsomely from this apparatus. The Church is not gaining financially from this legal shakedown, your obvious anti-Christian bigotry notwithstanding.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10:10 am, February 12, 2011

    It is a universal fact that marriage is Highly Sacred and that the wife must be ETERNALLY loyal to her husband and he, in turn must also be ETERNALLY faithful, why blame the Catholics only?

    Note that even in Fascism, marriage is highly regarded as sacred.

    Divorce will have to be strictly be construed against the one who is filing the petition should it ever be made into law. Thus, being consistent with our traditions and history.

    ReplyDelete

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