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France to appeal fake virgin annulment

THE French government says it will appeal against a court decision to grant a marriage annulment to a Muslim man on the grounds his wife lied about her virginity after the verdict sparked a public uproar.

Justice Minister Rachida Dati has asked state prosecutors to file an appeal against the ruling handed down in Lille in northern France, the justice ministry said.

"The annulment of a marriage by the high court in Lille has sparked a heated social debate. This private affair reached beyond the scope of two people and concerns all citizens in our country, particularly women," it said.

News of the ruling, which was handed down in April but revealed last week, sparked an uproar among French politicians and women's rights campaigners, but also French Muslim figures.

French Urban Affairs Fadela Amara, a Muslim and women's rights activist, called it "a fatwa against women's emancipation".

The man suspected that his new bride, also a Muslim, was not a virgin on their wedding night in July 2006 because the bedsheets were not stained with blood. The woman later admitted to him she had had sex before their marriage.

The court granted the request after ruling the man had been "mistaken about the essential qualities" of his wife-to-be.

Speaking on an internet talk show, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said he would take the case to France's high court of appeal if necessary to prevent creating a legal precedent for annulling a marriage on grounds of virginity.

"This is a very, very sensitive affair, one that shocks a great many French people because it seems to take us back to a time long past," he said.

"I do not wish for people one day to be able to make virginity a constitutional element of marital consent."

"Under these conditions, it is right to ask for a new judgment and, if necessary, to ask the Court of Cassation to issue a ruling to prevent this from setting a legal precedent for all judges in our country."

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French court annuls Muslim’s marriage because wife not a virgin

Sharia law has sneaked in through the back door of France’s High Court in a judgement that allowed a Muslim man to annul his marriage because his wife lacked certain “essential qualities” - namely that she was not “pure” (i.e. a virgin).

… his wife had previously affirmed to him that she was pure, an essential value for him, however the man discovered the evening of their wedding, on July 8, 2006, that she was not and had announced it to his close relations at 4 in the morning.

The father of the husband brought the young woman back to her his parents, considering his family “dishonoured”, according to the account published in a legal review and quoted by the daily newspaper, Libération.

The husband, an engineer of about thirty years, had decided the following day to separate from his wife …

This is the first time in living memory that French law has been used to annul a marriage on these grounds. The law itself was crafted in order to allow people to annul their marriages if their spouses had lied about their nationality, their criminal records, or if they had previously been divorced.

The French political class is in arms over this:

Jacques Myard member of UMP (right) expressed “his indignation to this shocking decision that validates an archaic integrism” the PS (socialist party) denounced an scandalous judgement which goes is undermines woman rights”

Women’s rights group, ‘No Whores, No Submission” said that this decision was a regression and they expressed sadness that in France virginity could be considered an “essential quality” of a woman.

There’s nothing on this in the English-speaking press, but you can read the rest here (in French)

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Promises of ‘purity’ should be to self, not parents

At first I suspected it was just media-generated hype, but apparently the trend of so-called “Purity Balls” is real — and growing. Last week, The New York Times described an elaborate father-daughter gala hosted in Colorado Springs: “After dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant ‘before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.’ … The evening was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.”

In other words, the girls who attend these balls (and, by the pro-chastity Abstinence Clearinghouse’s own estimates, there are hundreds hosted every year), pledge their virginity to their fathers until they are safely in the custody of husbands. In fact, according to a February 2007 article in Glamour magazine, Randy Wilson, who founded the Christian ministry that sponsors Colorado Springs’ Father-Daughter Purity Ball, has given each of his five daughters a charm necklace with a lock. He keeps the keys, which he plans to give to his sons-in-law on their wedding days.

There are plenty of constructive ways to promote abstinence among teens, but something tells me this is not among them. That’s not just because (at least to me) describing sexually abstinent girls as “pure” is gag-worthy. And it’s not because research shows that most people — around 90 percent — who “pledge” virginity until marriage eventually break that vow. Anyone who cares about the young girls in their lives should be dismayed by the growing popularity of Purity Balls for two reasons: It places all of the responsibility on girls, and it teaches them to view abstinence as something they commit to for another person’s benefit.

I agree with the Purity Ball organizers that abstinence is the best choice for teens, boys included. Earlier this year, I was hired by Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of the book Unprotected, to be a researcher for her second book, You’re Teaching My Child What?, which is about sex education in middle and high schools. I spent hundreds of hours researching the subjects of abstinence and teen sex — including the nutty, sleazy and often dangerous messages kids get from the media and self-described “sex-positive” educators.

There’s no question that there are many physical, psychological and moral benefits for avoiding early sexual activity. Besides the obvious threats of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, it’s an easily measurable fact that teen girls who say “no” to sex are happier, better-adjusted and less dependent on peer approval than girls who do it at a young age. (For anyone interested in reading more about this topic, Dr. Grossman’s book comes out in July.) Therefore, I don’t blame parents for encouraging their daughters to practice abstinence.

But many go about it in the wrong way. First, Purity Balls and many other programs designed to promote abstinence are aimed only at girls. There is simply no male equivalent — which gives girls the distinct impression that the responsibility is all theirs. One poster distributed by a Christian abstinence group declares, “You are like a rose. Each time you engage in premarital sex, a precious petal is stripped away … Don’t leave your future husband holding a bare stem.” It seems not to occur to them that a future wife might not want a husband who’s had dozens of sexual partners, either. One abstinence-education program, “Reasonable Reasons to Wait,” tells teens “the girl may need to put the brakes on first in order to help the boy.” It’s no wonder that the organization Legal Momentum described such programs as “contain[ing] harmful and outdated gender stereotypes that cast women as the gatekeepers of aggressive male sexuality.”

Second, many religiously based abstinence programs encourage girls to sign away their sexuality to a suitable guardian — first to their fathers, then to husbands. Of course, there are the requisite warnings about teen pregnancy and STDs, and the possible risks to a girl’s confidence and sense of self-worth if she engages in early sex.

But the very idea of a public “virginity pledge” implies that the real danger comes in disappointing the person you made the pledge to. It gives the girl no personal reasons to practice abstinence. She is encouraged to focus not on protecting her own health and well-being by abstaining from sex, but on living up to someone else’s standards and doing what they want.

What might happen when these two forces collide? What if a girl who’s been trained to please others meets a boy who believes it’s her job to enforce abstinence? If he wants sex — and she temporarily craves his approval more than her own father’s — she’s likely to sacrifice her values and break the pledge.

And she’s less likely to be smart about it. As the Glamour article on Purity Balls noted, teens who take virginity pledges are actually less likely than their peers to use contraception when they start
having sex.

It might comfort a parent to hear his daughter pledge abstinence until marriage. But she’s unlikely to reap any benefits of her promise — so long as she made it for his benefit rather than her own.

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Doctor held for hymen surgeries

Sharjah - Police in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrested on Wednesday a German doctor of Arab descent for performing hymen reconstruction surgery and illegal abortions.

Police investigations indicated that the 61-year-old gynaecologist carried out the surgery to restore broken hymens for about US$1 000 dollars, according to a police statement.

The surgery known as hymenoplasty is illegal in many countries in the Middle East and the Gulf where women are required to prove their virginity when they get married.

The surgery is usually done under local anaesthetic.

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