Picture this: a woman, getting beaten up black and blue by her husband for years. Years! She decides she wants a divorce. She wants to move on.
She wants to pursue happiness. Get a little slice of that good life. But no, no, no, no, no, she’s told that’s a bad thing to do.
Immoral! “That’s just the way it is,” they say, like it’s a law of physics or something. Or, “Don’t question it, ma’am, just keep taking those punches with a smile on your face! Because, you know, that’s what a good wife does.” One wonders, why? Why is divorce such a bad thing in a situation like that? There’s no logical reason.
Just a big, fat, hulking elephant in the room: religion . By that, I don’t mean just the Roman Catholic Church, which is a part of the lives of 85 million or so Filipinos. Religion.
It has this way of making people believe that staying in a toxic, soul-crushing relationship is a virtue. “Turn the other cheek,” they say. It preaches about the sanctity of marriage, but when a woman’s getting her face rearranged on a daily basis, somehow, that sanctity looks a bit tarnished, doesn’t it? And in all these discussions about the divorce bill , we tiptoe around this gargantuan elephant.
We treat it with kid gloves. We don’t want to offend the sensibilities of those whose sensibilities are already in a coma because of religion. It makes me wonder why people listen to those who get their moral compass from a set of teachings that has more contradictions tha.
