MARRIAGE REFERENDUM.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 December 1924, Page 13

MARRIAGE REFERENDUM.

OBJECTIONS TO THE WORD “OBEY.” A crusade for the alteration and revision of the marriage ■ service in the Prayer Book is being undertaken by the League of the Church Militant, which is canvassing the opimpns of women in all parts of the country. Mrs Marston Acres, an official of the league, in an interview with a representative of the Daily Express said: “The marriage service as it stands now is the application of the 16th Century ideas of a woman to the 20th Century. It implies a distinct inferiority both of position and of intellect in the wife, and in the homily that begins , the service the reasons given for the [ state of matrimony are not only materialistic, but distinctly imply that celibacy is a virtue and marriage an expedient. ‘ ‘ln nearly every letter . I have received objection is made to the word ‘obey.’ In a happy marriage there is no question of obedience on either side; things are done by mutual consent. In an unhappy one it is out of the question. “I have received other letters in which it is pointed oiit that if women j object to obeying, men . might object to i the phrase ‘with all my worldly goods »I th.ee endow.’ It would be more ; sensible •to substitute ‘and all my .worldly goods I with thee share.’ “A more sensible service would have a tremendously minimising effect on divorce.”