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.
