Pat Robertson strikes again:
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his "700 Club" viewers that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's is justifiable because the disease is "a kind of death."
During the portion of the show where the one-time Republican presidential candidate takes questions from viewers, Robertson was asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.
"I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her," Robertson said.
The chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which airs the "700 Club," said he wouldn't "put a guilt trip" on anyone who divorces a spouse who suffers from the illness, but added, "Get some ethicist besides me to give you the answer."
Actually, he raises an intriguing issue, and I think his position has some merit. I started thinking about it several years ago when a new reporter came to town who was engaged to someone back home. Her fiance had had an accident that resulted in not having any oxygen for an extended period, and he ended up quite a different person. How obligated should his fiancee be to not break the engagement, and how much guilt should she feel if she does break it? Should she commit to spend a lifetime with someone who's not really the person she fell in love with?
Then there's the sad but somehow uplifting story of Sandra Day O'Connor, whose husband with Alzhemier's fell in love with another woman who was in the same nursing home he was. O'Connor didn't raise a fuss over it, even when her husband began courting the other woman. What would the point of anger be? It was the same man she married, and he didn't even remember her.
If you start thinking along those terms, it isn't too great a leap to get where Robertson is. Morality is how we treat other people. If it doesn't matter so much how we treat them, because they're not really there, how does that change the definition of moral? Or are we still tied to that person, even if that person has become an empty vessel, so that we should be held to the same moral standards we apply to anybody else? Robertson's position isn't without its cringe factor, but it's at least defensible.
Comments
I hate to agree with Robertson, because of his weird history of blaming natural disasters on homosexuality, but he's right about Alzheimer's. My mother is in her 12th year.
She threw my father out of their bedroom a year before his death because she didn't know who he was. She hasn't recognized me in 10 years.
There is absolutely nothing to be done for an Alzheimer's victim than to institutionalize them. My father tried to take care of Mom, despite his own medical problems, but he spent his days following her around turning off the stove, closing the freezer door and explaining to the police that no, he wasn't an intruder, his wife just liked to call 911 on family members. It's truly hell.
It'd sure be a shame to take "in sickness and in health" seriously, wouldn't it?
My wife - incidentally, she suffers from vascular dementia - introduced me to friends who knew Terri Schiavo and her husband before they moved south. After her brain liquified, Michael started seeing a relationship and a family with another woman, but he remained married to Terri, in order to have legal standing to fight for her to have some dignity as she died, instead of being treated like some sort of a biological experiment.
As I get older, I find more and more examples of people forming families that don't meet the Ozzie & Harriet mold, but meet their needs, and they seem to be people bound to each other by love. Somehow, I don't find those relationships at all threatening - but I am aghast that Pat Robertson would advocate abandoning a wife in her hour of need. Has he no decency?
The Ten Commandments are the only part of the Bible that purports to have been written by Yhwh himself, and they don't prohibit fornication, but they sure do emphasize the importance of integrity. Honor your father and mother. There's no prohibition on oaths, only in taking oaths lightly, in vain. Don't fail in your commitment to your spouse. Keep the Sabbath (which is Friday night and Saturday day) as a memory of the covenant you have with God. Don't commit perjury.
Gee, you'd think a man's word is his bond, wouldn't you?
I have new respect for Sandra Day O'Connor - and I appreciate the fact that Robertson realized that his answer may not be correct.
But the answer seems simple to me. If both man and wife agree that a marriage is over, it's over, but when you unilaterally decide not to honor your promises, you're not a man. You're just an animal that knows how to use a flush toilet.