Maybe I’m just disagreeable, but I don’t see anything wrong with this story:
The annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage because the bride was not a virgin has caused anger in France, prompting President Sarkozy’s party to call for a change in the law.
The decision by a court in Lille was condemned by the government, media, feminists and civil rights organizations after it was reported in a legal journal on Thursday.
The case, which had previously gone unreported, involved an engineer in his 30s, named only as “Mr. X,” who married “Ms. Y,” a student nurse in her 20s, in 2006.
The wedding night party was still under way at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin. He could not display the blood-stained sheet that is traditionally exhibited as proof of the bride’s “purity.”
The husband went to court the following morning and was granted an annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage. The woman then acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse. She did not oppose the annulment.
Critics ran out of superlatives to condemn what they depicted as a dangerous aberration. Valérie Létard, Minister for Women’s Rights, said that she was “shocked to see that today in France the civil law can be used to diminish the status of women”.
Requests for annulments have risen sharply to nearly 2,000 a year in France, but experts could recall no case involving non-virginity.
The rub for me is emphasized above…Now, I wouldn’t want to be a Muslim, and I WAS a virgin when I married, but…who are people to complain? Is this affecting someone else’s life? Hell, considering what happens in Muslim countries in cases like this (not that I condone that at all) in terms of “honor” killings. I think an annulment of a marriage is pretty tame. What’s your thoughts?
I’m very excited about the upcoming debate this afternoon from UM-Dearborn. I’m glad that Fred Thompson is finally IN, and can be tested instead of the free ride he’s been enjoying since he announced. It should be interesting how Romney, Rudy, McCain, and Thompson fare. I hope it’s not like a lot of the other debates that we’ve seen though where no one really gets any time to speak because there are so many people involved. I hope that Romney punches his way through, and takes command like he did at the first debate in California.
It’s nice that it’s in my homestate of Michigan, I read that the car makers are really going all out for the event both by showing off some of their newest cars and by donating $10,000 each back to UM-Dearborn to counteract costs of the debate.
This debate is about economics and Michigan is one state where the economy is in complete and utter disarray. Hopefully Romney can really talk up his business background, and his ability to turn things around and that it will greatly appeal to the desperate voters of Michigan. By desperate I don’t mean they are desperate at a personal level, I mean that they are craving leadership…competent leadership. Too bad they didn’t vote in DeVos!
Feel free to post comments!