The smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning....

An odd debate is beginning to break out in Uganda. The debate revolves around the question "Can a man rape his wife?" You would think this is a no-brainer and you would be right-there are few brains involved here. Infact these days plain old hysteria is considered a sound debating tool.
It seems the Ugandan parliament is contemplating the recognition of marital rape as crime but quite a few people have come out strongly in opposition. A reverand was recently asked to give his views on the topic and he threw out a Corinthians quote which suggests that the wife is her husbands property. To be fair what else would you expect a reverand to quote from? Certainly not The Simpsons. However the whole thing set me off thinking- a dangerous activity I admit, but one I engage in from time to time to keep me from becoming senile before my time. Three things occured to me:
1. Uganda-like many other right-thinking countries- is a secular state. This means the church and state are separate from each other. If we are going to run to the bible to sort out legal issues, it completely undermines the whole concept. If followed to its logical conclusion, we might also end up stoning people who work on the sabbath and that would make social interractions a bit uncomfortable. The bible cannot be brought to bear on the constitution on issues like this. Plus if we turn debates into bible quote-a-thons then intellectual discussions will suffer gravely.
2. Women do not suddenly lose their rights once they get married as some people have suggested in the debate. 'Two become one' might be a nice romantic notion, but its not a legal or pragmatic one. To assume that a woman's rights become subsumed under her husband's now 'superior' rights is sheer fantasy. If marital rape is not considered illegal and normal rape is, then surely the law would be suggesting that a woman's constitutional rights are drastically reduced once she gets that ring on her finger? And if beating your wife is a criminal offence then how can having sex with her without her consent be okay? Strangely enough it was only in the eighties that the English Courts finally recognized marital rape showing that even enlightened legal systems can be a bit retarded.
3. A guy wrote in from Tanzania saying he disagreed with any attempt to criminalize marital rape. He said it would lead to more divorces which would undermine the moral fabric of the society. I ask you which is the real moral outrage- divorce or women being raped? Its this kind of Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning thats introducing gray areas into a debate which really should not have any (Our friend from Tanzania suggested that this kind of law would keep him from marriage. I feel that anything that will keep him-and others like him- away from the gene pool can only be a good thing)
There's a concept called cognitive dissonance-its the mental discomfort someone faces once he tries to internalize something that conflicts strongly with a deeply-held view on his part. If you argued with someone who opposed this law and forced him to concede the full nature of a married woman's rights(and also to concede that divorce as a moral problem is a bit far down the pecking-order) it would be fascinating to see how he would try to crowbar this into the framework of his views.