JC:
We are joined by the writer and activist Julie Bindel who says that marriage is a Conservative institution which curtails women's freedom and still with us is Paul Coleridge previously a High Court judge specialising in family matters and now founder and chairman of the Marriage Foundation. Paul Coleridge, first of all, why does marriage provide a better foundation for bringing up children than just having two loving parents who aren't married?
PC:
Because it lasts. It is as simple as that. The statistics are absolutely overwhelming that people who get married for all sorts of psychological reasons which we can discuss stay together longer than people who don't who have children and the overwhelimingly important factor in the upbringing and development of children as one of your commentators in your film made clear is the stable relationship of their parents and anything that provides that stability - which is what the Marriage Foundation is all about - anything that reinforces that stability is a good thing from the point of view of the children.
[I would have made it short and snappy eg "Married couples are more likely to stay together than unmarried parents and single mothers are the cause of all of the social problems you can think of, including teen pregnancy and paedophilia."]
JC [turning to JB]:
You are going against the statistics, the evidence, that being married is better if you are going to have children and have a family.
JB:
No, because we don't know because we don't uphold to the same extent those couples who don't live in non-wedded relationships and in fact they are increasing though there is a slight rise though the OLS [?] show in marriage more and more heterosexual couples are veering away from choosing not to even share the same household. Many children are being raised in non-traditional families and are far better off for it. [Prove it.] My concern about the way marriage is being
peddled as a great institution is that we are not looking at the number of wome who instigate divorce - the majority of divorces - which is that 1 in 2 divorces at the moment are instigated by women and the majority of the reasons given are either their husband's infidelity or domestic violence. Now many children who grow up in marriage environments are very badly affected by domestic violence and by child sexual abuse and by very unhappy relationships. That's not the stability that should be forced on children.
JC:
You've seen plenty of that in the Family Division so do you accept, or are you advocating that couples should stay together even in those circumstances, that marriage above everything else is more important than in terms of raising a family whatever is going on in that family?
PC:
No, I am not advocating that. We have never advocated that. What we are advocating is much more thought before breaking your relationship whether it be a married relationship or an unmarried relationship because what we do know from very recent literature by experts is that however you dress it up, the separation of parents - the breakup of a parent's relationship affects the children for the rest of their lives so everything that can reasonably be done to keep relationships reasonably happy - and not just have a fairy tale idea of a long term relationship whether they be married or not - should be done, and the current level of family breakdown as you rightly say is miles too high needs to be addressed and tackled and the government, all of us, individual organisations like ours, need to focus people's minds on the damage they are doing to their children.
[I would have said : "Marriage should be regarded as an agreement to bring up the children of the marriage together to adulthood and should be regarded as a long term business partnership instead of the romantic pink and fluffy idea of living happily ever after that so many infantililsed adults now have of it . It is now time to stigmatise those who do not marry before they have children and also those who married in haste and are now repenting at leisure, who made their beds and who now refuse to lie in it. At the very least ending up divorced means you have married the wrong person and that your judgment must have been defective in your choice of spouse. Those who did not even marry before having children had even more defective judgment than those who took the trouble to marry and found out they married the wrong person. The kindest thing to do now would be to discourage unmarried parenthood and stigmatise those who are not discouraged. Prevention is better than cure and the nettle of unmarried motherhood must be grasped now. These irresponsible women are the ones who bear responsibility for the criminals and under-achievers of tomorrow, and we already have quite enough of them today in the here and now.]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031952/Fewer-couples-divorce-infidelity-main-reason-falling-love.html
JB:
I can think of nothing worse than staying in a relationship for the sake of staying in that relationship.
JC:
Do people leave too easily? Do they walk away from it more easily? If there was more pressure being put on people, more agencies working with people to keep people together, would that not be better?
JB:
I think that's the worst possible thing to do for women and their children in particular. Many women are coerced into marriage. We just have to look in the UK, never mind elsewhere, where we see early marriage, child marriages, forced marriages, where women are trapped because of religious obligations in very unhappy or violent marriages. Where the state or legalities are involved in a marriage of course it is far more difficult for women to leave and the last thing we should do is piling more pressure on them, and I think that any institution that is based on inequality, property, ownership and the view that women are shackled to that household has to be very bad for the children.
[No opportunity was given to PC for rebutting this farrago of nonsense and taking it apart bit by bit and throwing it hard back at Bindel. The Marriage Foundation only concerns itself with marriage for white middle class people, and to suggest that middle class Englishwomen are the victims of early marriage, child marriage or forced marriage who are trapped into it because of religious obligations is just laughable.]
JC:
Paul Coleridge, what about this idea of single parents in this whole debate are going to feel that you and the Family Division don't regard them as being able to provide a loving relationship and a loving stable home and that actually the only option is the institution of marriage?
PC:
We have never said that, I have never said that ...
JC:
That is the inference or implication.
PC:
Well, I am very sad that it is because single women do a fantastic job ...
JC:
Or single men for that matter!
PC:
Or single men for that matter, yes, but it's mostly single women but of course they do a fantastic job and those of us who have brought up children know what an extraordinarily arduous task it is over many many years and it is very much more difficult to do it on your own so of course they should be given every plaudit for doing so.
[Sir Paul wants to give plaudits to SLUT SINGLE MUMS!!!! Utterly disgraceful. Never ever say single mums do "a fantastic job" of bringing up their bastards, even if they are. They are the agents of degeneracy and bastardy.]
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=417696111659379&fref=ts
JC:
Are you advocating judicial activism though? You wanted to be released from your work to talk about this more. Do you think it is right for a judge or for someone in that position to be advocating a moral standpoint?
PC:
It isn't a moral standpoint, it's got nothing to do with morality, I'm not interested in people's morals. If they don't have children they can have as far as I am concerned three new relationships a week. That is nothing to do with what we are about. We are about children and the best outcomes for them and the best outcomes are in married stable relationships.
JC:
And Paul Coleridge would know, wouldn't he, Julie Bindel, because he has worked in the Family Divsion and he has experience of the misery that is caused. Is it not worth listening to?
JB:
But he still wants people to stay married despite the misery and interestingly, your organisation was against equal marriage for lesbians and gay people, when I think that the reason why they have been invited to join the insitution was because it is a failing one with numbers dwindling. For me, we have to look not just a child sexual abuse and domestic violence as the cause of many divorces and unhappiness for women and children but as Bea Campbell found in her new book on the failures of equality legislation the fact thta men within marriages are doing so little housework and childcare than they ever were: one minute per day per year for the last three decades increased. That is a disgrace and no wonder so many women are so unhappily married.
[If I had been given a chance respond to this rubbish, I would have said: 'May I ask a question? Are either you or your parents married? Do you have children? So you are a lesbian feminist living with your partner and your partner's children and you write for The Guardian? Then this explains your hostility towards marriage. I think that is all anyone listening needs to know about your "facts" and your "arguments".']
JC:
Julie Bindel, thank you very much for coming on. [She didn't thank Sir Paul, I noticed.]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04b9q64/daily-politics-15072014
Sir Paul Coleridge from 44th minute
How it should be done:
http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/transcript-of-what-i-said-on-victoria.html
http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/claire-khaw-on-peter-levy-show.html
http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/httpwww.html
I am aware that I have problems with fluency, but I suspect the stuttering and stammering and the hesitation and the false starts have the effect of increasing the tension. The point is to make one's points clearly and not to be on the defensive and not be apologising. Surely Sir Paul with all his legal training can do that next time he is on air?
