According to the media commentary on the Joyce affair, most politicians agree that private lives should remain private.
Sounds plausible, right?
Except, if we really believed this, we wouldn’t do the following:
- Have a national debate last year on the right to legislate same sex relationships as marriage.
- For that matter, marriages wouldn’t need to be registered and legislated in the first place.
- We wouldn’t require witnesses to the act of marriage.
- Courts and magistrates wouldn’t be involved in dissolving a marriage.
Furthermore, regardless of fault and blame, nobody really believes that it doesn’t matter whether someone can keep serious promises. It matters too when they are broken. And it matters how people continue to act after the breakdown. Character is not divisible into private and public parts.
Marriage is the joining of communities, not simply two individuals, which is why the fall out ripples into many lives.
The dissolving of a marriage is a sad thing, a complex thing, and an embarrassing thing, but it is not a private thing.
St Paul’s Anglican Church meets on Sundays at 9am with kids church. All welcome.
