Bavarian Politician Proposes Seven-Year Limit on Marriage

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

20.09.2007

Bavarian Politician Proposes Seven-Year Limit on Marriage



Not your average conservative politician: Gabriele Pauli

In a wild-gamble election bid for the leadership of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), a two-time divorcee who put the kink back into conservative politics, suggested that marriages should dissolve automatically.

"I propose that marriages lapse after seven years," Gabriele Pauli told reporters in Munich on Wednesday, Sept. 19, announcing her platform for the upcoming party congress. "This would mean that one will only commit for a fixed period and will actively have to renew your vows if you still want to continue."

With statistics showing that almost 38 percent of Germans who marry today are likely to get divorced, Pauli believes that putting a time constraint on the sacrament of holy matrimony would save many people the trouble and drudgery of filing the divorce papers.

But making marriage sound like a business investment with an exit strategy just as the seven-year itch sets in does not win you brownie points with party officials in a center-right, Catholic-dominated party.
"That's an absurd idea and totally contrary to the program of the CSU," said German Agriculture Minister and CSU member Horst Seehofer, who is also wants to become party leader.

"We are not in a circus," he said. "With ideas like that, she should give up her candidacy."

Controversy, here I come



Although not all CSU members wear lederhosen, the party is largely conservative


Whether earning one's bread as a politician is altogether that different from working in a circus is a moot point. But Gabriele Pauli, district administrator in the Bavarian suburban county of Fürth, is no stranger to controversy.

If anybody ever decided to write a "How Not to Become a Leader of a Bavarian Conservative Party for Dummies," they would make the manual very useful alone by highlighting all the things that Pauli did over the past year.

She emerged from obscurity at a party congress by saying out loud what most people don't even dream of telling their priest in confession: that Premier Edmund Stoiber -- the towering giant of Bavarian politics -- had become a liability and that he should really think about retirement.

She then posed for glossy magazine Park Avenue wearing long black latex gloves that looked like they came out straight of your friendly German S&M studio next door or stretched provocatively on a massage bench.
Finally, she attacked one of Bavaria's holy cows -- the institution of marriage -- and party leaders for having an outdated view of what marriage is like.

"For me, family is a different type of formation than for the CSU," Pauli said. "Maybe people live better outside of marriage."

What next?



Could Gabriele Pauli be the next Edmund Stoiber?


It is safe to assume at this point that Gabriele Pauli's future in the pious CSU does not look very promising. But Pauli is a professional. With her PhD in political science and no shame when it comes to media exposure, Pauli could move on to bigger and better things.

One never knows what to expect from vampy conservatives. For all we know, Gabriele Pauli could dye her hair blond, become the next spokesperson for St. Pauli Girl and launch a new marketing campaign under the motto "That Kinky German Beer."

Or she could become the mascot of FC St. Pauli -- a German soccer club with a gay president based in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, the city's fun zone -- introducing the team to tight black latex jerseys and fishnets, a fashion move that could revolutionize the sport.

Gabriele Pauli is here to stay.

[source]

[Almost a Christian]

Go to Holland and she'll make monarch. It's good to see that this article pours cold water on what presumably is Pauli's perverse and enigmatic sense of humour..

[Strengthandhonour]

How low has Europe sunk that we are now taking marriage this way..

[Carnyx]

Maybe she needs help?

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The Marriage Institute

[Savorgnan]

Originally Posted by Strengthandhonour

How low has Europe sunk that we are now taking marriage this way..

It's even worse! The institution of marriage don't exist any more (at least in France). Since a few years you can divorce unilateraly and without fault. The ferocious liberal lobbying of the last decades has finally paid off. It's more like a telephony contract nowadays, you can join or leave when you want to. Bavarians conservatives should kick out this undercover "bloodyberal" Gabriele Pauli.

[Céleste]

I think her idea is not that wrong; what's actually perverse, is that people forget the value of marriage. Today every dumb-ass gets married without even thinking about it, and after a few weeks / years "love" is over and the marriage dissolved.
With such a law people maybe THINK before they get married.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Céleste

With such a law people maybe THINK before they get married.

Actually, with such a law you make it official that marriage is worthless.

[Céleste]

Such a law is like a mirror of society; it reflects the morals of the population. In Germany 1/3 of all marriages are dissolved. These people signalise that marriage is worthless.

[Menydh]

That's very unfair for those people who believe that the union through marriage is something worth to be preserved. Why would they have to remarry every 7 years? Their vows and bonds are not broken and, besides, they already have the wedding aniversaries to celebrate.

It is those who break their vows and bonds who must make it official, not the other way round.

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by Céleste

Such a law is like a mirror of society; it reflects the morals of the population. In Germany 1/3 of all marriages are dissolved. These people signalise that marriage is worthless.

Yes, Celeste, you are partly right. However, if marriage is to gain in value and weight in the future, it cannot be forced mechanically, by some law, but the mentality of people must undergo a radical change.

Moreover, a law sanctioning a probation time for marriage on seven years, can only bring about further devaluation of that institution. In the European civilization, the ideal of marriage was always that of life-long commitment and monogamy. Certainly, that ideal is hard to keep, but it has been basis of all societal life in Europe for centuries. And we haven't yet invented anything better that could replace it. If people are divorcing all too often, it more probably means that there is something wrong with those people than with the institution of marriage. Of course, people are part of the society and they act in accordance with the impulses they receive from the media, from the education etc. There is much manipulation at work. I also think there exists an agenda against marriage and family in Europe and the rest of the marvelous "West". Economic conditions also play a role in the dissolution of family or even in not founding it at all.

So a combination of personal responsability and objective factors causes the downfall of marriages.

But mechanical solutions will not help because inter-human relations are not mechanical. Seven-year limit on marriage would mean a surrender to a bad trend, not the solution of the problem.

[Céleste]

Laws are not institutionalised to solve problems ( or maybe they are, but fact is that they don't solve many problems). They show how morbid and decadent and degenerated society is. In my opinion you cannot help those people. Thus to a certain extent human relationships have become mechanical, which is very sad, but irreversibele. By the way, until 1968 marraige was holy; but as people claimed to be "free" and liberal, morals depraved, and almost everything lost value.

[Menydh]

So you think that to punish those who are not that decadent by declaring their matrimonies broken after a period of 7 years, is the right thing to do?

[Céleste]

I think people who are not decadent do not set value on a state with such laws. They know what marriage means to themselves:Moreover they do not have to remarry after 7 years; they can simply lenghten their marriage. Though; it's quite ridiculous anyway^

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Savorgnan

It's even worse! The institution of marriage don't exist any more (at least in France). Since a few years you can divorce unilateraly and without fault. The ferocious liberal lobbying of the last decades has finally paid off. It's more like a telephony contract nowadays, you can join or leave when you want to. Bavarians conservatives should kick out this undercover "bloodyberal" Gabriele Pauli.

Do agree.

The problem lies in the fact that most people today divorce for trivial questions: they do not want to adapt their personality to living in common with another person even when it is a matter of just avoiding frictions without renouncing anything important of one's personality.

I think I will end up divorcing but just because of the fact that mine and my wife personality clash every day and no love is left among us.

Apart from severe situations like mine there should be no place for easy divorce.

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Originally Posted by Savorgnan

It's even worse! The institution of marriage don't exist any more (at least in France). Since a few years you can divorce unilateraly and without fault. The ferocious liberal lobbying of the last decades has finally paid off. It's more like a telephony contract nowadays, you can join or leave when you want to. Bavarians conservatives should kick out this undercover "bloodyberal" Gabriele Pauli.

In most European countries today there are laws that make unilateral divorce possible and it is, somehow, considered a "civilizational achievement". The only possible exceptions are Malta, maybe Ireland...

In Croatia, for example, we have all these "advanced" and "progressive" laws that make divorce (even unilateral) very easy, but I cannot say that the institution of marriage does not exist any more. Not many people get divorced, inspite of the legal possibility to do so, although there is more and more divorce every year. Especially marriages contracted in the Church, "in front of the altar", seem to have greater stability than the "civil" ones.

The monogamous marriage has been one of the most stable institutions in the European history, which has not only Christian, but also pre-Christian, Roman roots. Even the civil marriage, since its inception in France in the nineteenth century, retained all the essential characteristics of the Christian marriage of old (even if it - unlike the Catholic marriage - allowed divorce). Communism in Eastern Europe did not manage to destroy marriage and family. It was only the anarcho-liberal Capitalistic dictatorship of the last decades and the indoctrination combined with it (media, education etc), that almost destroyed the family and marriage structure. It is really the most monstruous system in history.