I blogged about the case in June; an appeal court just reversed the original decision yesterday:
A French appeal court overturned Monday a ruling that annulled the marriage of a Muslim couple after the husband discovered his bride was not a virgin, the husband's lawyer said....
His wife, who admitted to him she had had pre-marital sex, said she accepted the annulment....
State prosecutors had said they were not against allowing the split if it were possible to replace the "discriminatory motive" of loss of virginity with a more general one, such as mistaken identity....
My thinking on the matter remains what it was in June:
In principle, it seems to me that a spouse should be free to divorce the other spouse when the marriage was based on a lie. I think it's silly to care about whether one's bride was a virgin, but people are entitled to care about qualities that I think are irrelevant, as well as the indubitably relevant quality of truthfulness. Given this, it seems to me not very important whether this is called a divorce or an annulment, especially given that as I understand it French law generally allows no-fault divorce, at least when there's mutual consent.
Now I would be troubled if the law saw lack of virginity as a quality that is "essential" but other things as qualities that aren't "essential." That would be an endorsement by the legal system of the unsound view that virginity is extraordinarily important in a wife. I would also be troubled if the law encourages disputes about exactly what was said by one spouse to the other, since I suspect this would lead to lots of lying and not much truth-finding.
But if the couple agrees about the facts, and agrees that, to quote the AP's paraphrase of the court ruling, "in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite," then allowing the annulment seems to me fine. In fact, it's better for the court to focus on what was essential to the parties rather than to select which qualities are "objectively" essential and which aren't objectively essential. I'm a big believer in decisionmaking using objective standards in lots of situations — but two people's decision about what's important to them about a spouse doesn't strike me as a situation that calls for such objective standards. And, I stress again, if the parties could have gotten divorced in any event, why the strong objection to letting them get an annulment instead?
Now I understand that there is a lot of insistence on virginity in many Muslim families (and some non-Muslim ones, though my sense is that in France this insistence is likely much less common among the non-Muslim population). As I said before, I think this is a bad basis for choosing a spouse, and I suspect that a cultural acceptance of this basis leads to all sorts of emotional pain. On top of that, my guess is that the virginity rule is definitely not applied in a sex-neutral way, which makes it even more improper in my view.
But, as I said, people are entitled to choose their spouses based on any reason at all, and to my knowledge French law allows them to agree to divorce based on any reason at all (again, at least if both agree). Saying that they may also annul the marriage based on any misrepresentation that they saw as material strikes me as no different: It's an accommodation of people's choices about whom to have a tremendously important relationship with, and we should generally accommodate those choices even when we think they are partly unwise — I say partly because while the insistence on virginity strikes me as unsound, the concern about the lie strikes me as much more proper — or reinforce unsound community attitudes.
Thanks to Religion Clause for the pointer.
Related Posts (on one page):
- "French Court Reverses Virgin Annulment":
- "Outcry After French Court Rules on Virginity":
But if the court found out she couldn't cook... oh boy.
Since France like most EU countries has something very akin to "divorce on demand" - I suspect the appeal was raised by the public prosecutor rather than the parties and on public policy grounds.
There is a legitimate public interest in not granting decrees of annulment where there are not proper grounds.
I should say that I did not like the previous result--basically treating the bride like Rose 2d of Aberlone--but I like that the suit was filed.
Undoubtedly French annulment has a long (Christian) history. To what extent should the French swap arbitrary, religious based rules of annulment for another culture's arbitrary, religious based rules of annulment? It may make no practical significance which preference is adopted--and maybe they are compatible in the end--but should the French really go out of their way to make it easier for Muslim men to abandon their wives over such an idiotic issue? (At least, "idiotic" from the contemporary French point of view).
It was amusing to see that over the spring and summer, the French press kept assimilating this case to situations that are not like it. For instance, this case would be mentioned and then there would be a story on the fact that French Muslim teens who had sex while dating but--gasp!--felt they had to conceal this from their unhip parents.
Why would "religious reasons" require a civil annulment? Wouldn't any religious reasons be satisfied by getting a civil divorce and a religious annulment?
If a requirement of virginity in marriage is "unsound" then it is so absolutely. Therefore anyone who finds value in it is obviously of "unsound mind", at least with regard to this. This seems... let me say, not well thought out.
I guess the courts are saying that parties shouldn't deceive their future spouses, but white lies are OK and they will get to decide which ones are trivial ones and which ones are significant enough to grant an annulment. In the end, it is not that unreasonable. They don't want to deal with cases where the spouse says, "he told me he could bench press 200 pounds, but he lied, so give me an annulment."
In the end, what was she thinking? I figure it is fairly easy to figure out she was not a virgin and easy to guess that if he cared about it so much, he would actually pay attention.
From Tatil:
Part of the problem is that triviality is in the eyes of the beholder. In this case, neither party argues that this was trivial, and given widespread views in some religions and in many traditional societies, I think one can argue that this is differentiable from a question of physical strength.
Now, suppose, someone had important interests in marrying someone of considerable physical strength and was duped into marrying someone who did not. Would that still be trivial?
I guess what worries me is the article:
I am not sure how this sets a dangerous precedent from a real public policy perspective (but then again, I am not French). In fact, by allowing religious fundamentalists some level of legal protection in their views, it seems to me that one robs people of a persecution mentality which gives rise to some level of extremism.
Of course, this doesn't prevent France from enacting measures (for example, prohibiting religiously mandated clothing in public schools) which would be seen as unconstitutional here. It seems to me that the only danger of the precedent is that it undermines the hostility that the French government seems to have towards Muslims, and perhaps religious thought in general.
I know and I am not saying that this was a trivial matter, but it does not sound inconsistent for the courts to interfere in this case, as I am pretty sure they have been making these kinds of calls in annulment applications for a long time.
Well, I do. Not wanting kids affects lives of both parties in the future, but being a virgin does not, as loss of virginity is about an event in the past. I don't know if "deciding not to have kids after the wedding" is grounds for annulment, but if it is, I wouldn't see that as an inconsistency.
You figure wrong.
I can't figure out why the wife would accept the annulment over a divorce - does it perhaps erase the taint of non-virginity in her culture? That would make sense where virginity is required, but a later-annuled couple had consummated.
Please describe the legitimate public interest that is served.
I can't figure out why the wife would accept the annulment over a divorce - does it perhaps erase the taint of non-virginity in her culture?
I believe I read in earlier accounts that it's easier for the wife to remarry later if she gets the annulment. A non-virgin who has never been married [her status if she gets the annulment] has an easier time finding a Muslim spouse than a divorcee does.
But again, why woukld this prospective spouse look to see if the woman has had a civil annulment? Wouldn't it enough to say "it's a dovorce by civil law, but our religion considers the marriage to have been annulled"?
Unsurprising, really.
it most definitely affects the groom.
if, for whatever reasons (religious or secular), the virginity of one's spouse is important to him, then finding out he had been lied to, defrauded so to speak, and was married to a person who was not whom she claimed ot be would likely affect him physically, emotionally, etc.
sex matters. for pete's sake, our society practically revolves around sex, and it's supposedly a trivial matter whether or not one's spouse lied about being a virgin?
cmon.
marriage is a contract. if you are going to enter into a contract based on outright lies about matters that were clearly important to the other party, that is not a trivial thing.
My guess is that she's either irrational (or a liar), or felt as if she could not tell him the truth. If he's the type to run about harassing women who don't bleed (which, if I remember the facts of this case correctly, is what happened), would she really want to tell him that she had premarital sex - and run the risk that he would blab her business all over France? to her family, when that would result in anything from ostracism to honour killing?
As for the virginity thing itself: it sounds as if some of you are saying that it's only important on the wedding night (after which, neither party is a virgin, even if such were not the case the day before). To other commenters, the virginity issue is about much more than that. Now, I have my gripes with the chastity movement, and the prime one is this nonsense about one's virginity being a gift to a future spouse - as if the gift is losing it, rather than adding to the marriage. The gift is not one's virginity, but oneself, in a unique way that one has never done before. The gift that chaste spouses give each other is a unique dimension to their marital relationship which separates it, sexually, from every other dating relationship they've had.
I note that under Catholic canon law, you have grounds for annulment if one party deceived the other in order to obtain consent to the marriage, and the other party would not, in fact, have consented if they had not been deceived.
well put.
Is a woman a virgin if she was raped at age 10 but has never had consensual sex? Is she a virgin if she does not bleed on her wedding night? Is she a virgin if she has never had vaginal sex, though she has had oral sex? Is a man a virgin on similar grounds? If virginity requires a hymen, as it would for religious reasons accepted by the Muslims in this case above, then it's a fundamentally discriminatory concept. It's not relevant or even determinable whether men are virgins, then, because they don't have the necessary physical equipment! If it doesn't require a hymen, then what does it require? Does penetration by a finger count? Does sex with a member of the same sex count? Honestly: how would you define it?