Op-Ed: French Court 'Virginity' Ruling a Blow to Women's Liberation, and Love

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This is one couple who won't always have Paris.

The latest, from Brietbart via Drudge and AP:

The bride said she was a virgin. When her new husband discovered that was a lie, he went to court to annul the marriage—and a French judge agreed.

The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union has stunned France and raised concerns the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities.

The decision also exposed the silent shame borne by some Muslim women who transgress long-held religious dictates demanding proof of virginity on the wedding night.

In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.

But in treating the case as a breach of contract, the ruling was decried by critics who said it undermined decades of progress in women's rights. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa, using the Arabic term for a religious decree.

The outcry has been unrelenting since word of the April 1 decision in the closed-door trial in Lille was made public last week by the daily newspaper Liberation.

In its judgment, the tribunal said the 2006 marriage had been ended based on "an error in the essential qualities" of the bride, "who had presented herself as single and chaste."

Maybe she should have gotten hymen repair surgery.

Better yet, maybe she should have found a man who really loved her for who she was.

And I used to think men married the women in their lives because they loved them, not because they could wave wedding night sheets at their sick relatives like a bloodstained victory flag.

Granted, if you found out your new bride was an axe murderer, or had made the rounds of NFL locker rooms as League Party Girl, that's one thing.

But okay, there you are on your honeymoon, and you find out the love of your life isn't a virgin.

So what?

Did you marry her because you loved her more than any other, or did you marry her because you thought she was unspoiled meat, and not being so is a deal breaker?

And if you really want to get into the subject, just how pure are you?

Call me a hopeless romantic in an age severely lacking, but that is what the question comes down to for me, and I'm sure for a lot of women as well.

It's really crazy. In Saudi Arabia, a man who has already married four other women can demand his fifth bride be a virgin.

Hell, Iran has even allowed temporary marriages to relieve the lust of youth.

Male youth, that is.

If you're a woman, the story is a bit different.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

As for the bloodstained sheets part, that seems to me a tradition both barbaric and supremely embarrassing to the bride.

As I recall, it also was a tradition Greg Smart carried on with his sexy new wife Pamela.

I think we all know how well that marriage worked out.

You know, men around the world are known for being total sex hounds with respect to women. With all those those raging hormones, gifts of roses and chocolates and promises of eternal love in the heat of the moment, in an age of totally open and perverse sexual revolution, how many virgins do think there are left?

A poem from Jaws comes to mind:

Here lies the body of Mary Lee,
Died at the age of one hundred and three,
For fifteen years she kept her virginity,
Not a bad record for this vicinity.

In my experience, marriages of people I've known that were based on anything but true love didn't last. And I've known a few.

But that's just me. My ideal marriage is that of me Mum and Dad, which lasted through 62 years and nine children until my father passed away three years ago.

That love is still not dead.

It's just Love, Interrupted.

Yet look how quick it took love to die in the heart of a French Muslim because his bride wasn't pure. If he ever loved her at all, that is.

I wonder if all those in the City of Love raging against such offensive and hypocritical Muslim traditions that treat women like chattel and worse are now going to join Brigitte Bardot on the Hate Crimes docket.

Happy Valentine's Day, Paris.

Way things are going, you may not always have it.