| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Marriage, European Style
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage,
This I tell ya brother, you can’t have one without the other.
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
It’s an institute you can’t disparage,
Ask the local gentry, and they’ll say it’s element’ry.
Lyrics from the song “Love and Marriage,” written
by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.
The song was a big hit for Frank Sinatra in 1955, but could
never be a hit now, contemporary sensibilities being what they
are. Whimsical pieces about the undisparagable institution of
marriage just don’t make it any more in a pop culture whose
rhythms and images are so often immersed in immodesty,
vulgarity and hedonistic promiscuity. Love and marriage,
horse and carriage? It’s all so last century.
But if love and marriage did, once upon a time, go together
like a horse and carriage, at least within the context of
whimsical song craft, in-laws did not. What I mean by that has
nothing to do with the usual squabbling that goes on between
in-laws, but rather with in-laws who fall in love and want to get
married after the dissolution of the marriage that made them
in-laws in the first place.
Confused? Okay, let’s say that Nigel marries Elizabeth and
that at some point in the future, either during the marriage or
after its dissolution, Elizabeth and Nigel’s father, Howard, fall
in love and decide they want to get married. That’s what I
mean by in-laws not usually going together like a horse and
carriage.
Well, sure, of course not, you say. The whole idea is creepy.
So why make an issue out of the obvious? Because in jolly old
England -- which heretofore never allowed such intra-in-law
jolliness to be consummated in marriage -- the winds of change
are blowing, and they’re coming from the direction of the
continent that looms just across the Channel.
It has been determined by the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg, France, that England’s prohibition on
marriages between parents-in-law and their children-in-law is
a breach of human rights as laid out in something called the
Convention On Human Rights. Of course, the European Court
of Human Rights is not to be confused with the European Court
of Justice which is headquartered in Luxembourg and serves as
the court of the European Union, which is not to be confused
with the Council of Europe, which is an international
organization of 46 member states in the European region and
whose adjudications on questions of human rights take place in
the European Court of Human Rights, which brings us back full
circle.
Yes, it all gets a bit confusing, but not nearly as confusing as
British family life may get if the idea of intimate in-laws ever
gets popular and goes beyond a handful of self-absorbed
oddballs with no impulse control, sense of propriety or concern
for the emotional damage to others.
The ruling came in a case brought by a couple who were
refused the right to marry in Britain because the man, aged 59,
was the father-in-law of the woman, more than 20 years his
junior. The British government had argued that the existing
ban on in-law marriages protected the family and morality,
prevented sexual competition between parents and children,
and shielded children from confusion, anxiety and harm.
Laudable goals, the European Court agreed, but bloody
tough luck, old chaps. Such goals simply can’t be allowed to
trump “human rights,” and when it comes to marriage, the
European Convention on Human Rights, to which Britain is a
signatory, states very specifically: “Men and women of
marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family
according to the national laws governing the exercise of this
right.” And since neither incest nor any other criminal laws
would be violated by in-law marriages, score another one for
“human rights.”
While the concept of in-laws marrying isn’t exactly the
same, it reminds one of Woody Allen and what he said in
response to criticism after he married the adopted daughter of
his longtime lover, Mia Farrow: “The heart wants what it
wants.” You know, like, end of story, get off my back?
Apparently, in Woody’s mind, the key exculpatory word in that
terse and dismissive six-word declaration was “heart.” In
other words, since the heart itself is perceived as good, then if
we’re talking about something the heart wants, how can that
possibly be a bad thing?
Well, gee, I don’t know, Woody, maybe if the heart gets any
and everything it wants, it can do devastating damage to the
hearts of others involved, like Mia, your former girl friend and
adoptive mother of your child bride. What do you suppose
their relationship is going to be like for the rest of their lives?
But hey, the “heart wants what it wants” and since there was
no blood relationship, it wasn’t illegal for Woody to marry the
adopted daughter of his girl friend -- it was merely shameful.
And it’s the same basic logic behind the European Court’s
ruling with in-laws: they aren‘t related by blood, so why
shouldn’t they be allowed to get married?
The court might ask itself, however, in view of most of
Western Europe’s current death-spiral demographics, why
legalize something that could do damage to what’s left of the
traditional family unit and from which no good can come
(unless you count the indulgence of impulsive and shameless
oddballs)? But we’re not likely to see any globally simulcast,
star-studded rock concerts for the cause of preserving the
traditional family unit, are we?
Maybe in postmodern, post-Christian Europe the
traditional family unit is destined to become as quaint and
outdated as the horse and carriage, in which case those arguing
for the British government and the continuance of the in-law
marriage ban were nothing more than a bunch of broken-down
old nags and neigh-sayers. Looks like on this matter, they got
put out to pasture.
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage,
This I tell ya brother, you can’t have one without the other.
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
It’s an institute you can’t disparage,
Ask the local gentry, and they’ll say it’s element’ry.
Lyrics from the song “Love and Marriage,” written
by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.
The song was a big hit for Frank Sinatra in 1955, but could
never be a hit now, contemporary sensibilities being what they
are. Whimsical pieces about the undisparagable institution of
marriage just don’t make it any more in a pop culture whose
rhythms and images are so often immersed in immodesty,
vulgarity and hedonistic promiscuity. Love and marriage,
horse and carriage? It’s all so last century.
But if love and marriage did, once upon a time, go together
like a horse and carriage, at least within the context of
whimsical song craft, in-laws did not. What I mean by that has
nothing to do with the usual squabbling that goes on between
in-laws, but rather with in-laws who fall in love and want to get
married after the dissolution of the marriage that made them
in-laws in the first place.
Confused? Okay, let’s say that Nigel marries Elizabeth and
that at some point in the future, either during the marriage or
after its dissolution, Elizabeth and Nigel’s father, Howard, fall
in love and decide they want to get married. That’s what I
mean by in-laws not usually going together like a horse and
carriage.
Well, sure, of course not, you say. The whole idea is creepy.
So why make an issue out of the obvious? Because in jolly old
England -- which heretofore never allowed such intra-in-law
jolliness to be consummated in marriage -- the winds of change
are blowing, and they’re coming from the direction of the
continent that looms just across the Channel.
It has been determined by the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg, France, that England’s prohibition on
marriages between parents-in-law and their children-in-law is
a breach of human rights as laid out in something called the
Convention On Human Rights. Of course, the European Court
of Human Rights is not to be confused with the European Court
of Justice which is headquartered in Luxembourg and serves as
the court of the European Union, which is not to be confused
with the Council of Europe, which is an international
organization of 46 member states in the European region and
whose adjudications on questions of human rights take place in
the European Court of Human Rights, which brings us back full
circle.
Yes, it all gets a bit confusing, but not nearly as confusing as
British family life may get if the idea of intimate in-laws ever
gets popular and goes beyond a handful of self-absorbed
oddballs with no impulse control, sense of propriety or concern
for the emotional damage to others.
The ruling came in a case brought by a couple who were
refused the right to marry in Britain because the man, aged 59,
was the father-in-law of the woman, more than 20 years his
junior. The British government had argued that the existing
ban on in-law marriages protected the family and morality,
prevented sexual competition between parents and children,
and shielded children from confusion, anxiety and harm.
Laudable goals, the European Court agreed, but bloody
tough luck, old chaps. Such goals simply can’t be allowed to
trump “human rights,” and when it comes to marriage, the
European Convention on Human Rights, to which Britain is a
signatory, states very specifically: “Men and women of
marriageable age have the right to marry and to found a family
according to the national laws governing the exercise of this
right.” And since neither incest nor any other criminal laws
would be violated by in-law marriages, score another one for
“human rights.”
While the concept of in-laws marrying isn’t exactly the
same, it reminds one of Woody Allen and what he said in
response to criticism after he married the adopted daughter of
his longtime lover, Mia Farrow: “The heart wants what it
wants.” You know, like, end of story, get off my back?
Apparently, in Woody’s mind, the key exculpatory word in that
terse and dismissive six-word declaration was “heart.” In
other words, since the heart itself is perceived as good, then if
we’re talking about something the heart wants, how can that
possibly be a bad thing?
Well, gee, I don’t know, Woody, maybe if the heart gets any
and everything it wants, it can do devastating damage to the
hearts of others involved, like Mia, your former girl friend and
adoptive mother of your child bride. What do you suppose
their relationship is going to be like for the rest of their lives?
But hey, the “heart wants what it wants” and since there was
no blood relationship, it wasn’t illegal for Woody to marry the
adopted daughter of his girl friend -- it was merely shameful.
And it’s the same basic logic behind the European Court’s
ruling with in-laws: they aren‘t related by blood, so why
shouldn’t they be allowed to get married?
The court might ask itself, however, in view of most of
Western Europe’s current death-spiral demographics, why
legalize something that could do damage to what’s left of the
traditional family unit and from which no good can come
(unless you count the indulgence of impulsive and shameless
oddballs)? But we’re not likely to see any globally simulcast,
star-studded rock concerts for the cause of preserving the
traditional family unit, are we?
Maybe in postmodern, post-Christian Europe the
traditional family unit is destined to become as quaint and
outdated as the horse and carriage, in which case those arguing
for the British government and the continuance of the in-law
marriage ban were nothing more than a bunch of broken-down
old nags and neigh-sayers. Looks like on this matter, they got
put out to pasture.
