Why marriage is more than just a piece of paper
The President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, is said to have speeded up his wedding to the stunning Ms Carla Bruni so as to spare Queen Elizabeth any embarrassment next month when he pays a state visit to Britain.
A certain amount of speculation had been gathering as to whether the queen might have to offer Mr Sarkozy and girlfriend a double bed at Windsor Castle while the couple were not yet legally wed.
I dare say the queen has faced greater crises -- Suez, the Cuba missile affair, the prospect of civil war in Northern Ireland come to mind -- but some of the stuffier courtiers will be relieved that correct form has been observed.
Some of them still remember that until 1968, divorced persons were barred from entering the royal enclosure at Ascot.
De Valera only omitted divorce from his Constitution. He never stopped divorcees going to the races.
But Sarkozy's decision to bring forward his nuptials shows that, when all is said and done, there still is a difference between cohabiting partners and legally wed spouses.
That 'piece of paper' scorned by cohabitees may only be a piece of paper, but it is as significant as the piece of paper which grants you the deeds to your house, or the piece of paper which licenses you to drive a motor vehicle. Bits of paper matter in custom and law, for they signify the legality of contract.
Sarkozy also entered into his third marriage for the sake of the French electorate, who are reported to be fed up to the back teeth with public stories of his cavortings.
It is not that the French disapprove of a person's sex life -- but it is a French tradition that a person's sex life is a private matter.
Whatever they do in the bedroom is their own business.
The reason why French political sex scandals were so rare in the past is that the linen thereof was never laundered in the public gaze.
Men in high places might have mistresses, but they never publicly divorced -- because that would mean bringing everything into the public realm, where it did not belong.
Even upright and morally conservative French statesmen adhered to this code. When a civil servant reported to General de Gaulle -- an impeccably faithful husband to his very Catholic wife, Yvonne -- that a certain cabinet minister was too frequently entertaining his mistress, De Gaulle replied laconically: "He is doing what men do", (or, more precisely "il fait son metier d'homme".) and told the bureaucrat to refer to it no more.
Sarkozy has changed all this by bringing his busy sex life into the open: but the opinion polls in France now show that what the electorate wants is a period of silence and reticence about his personal life.
In other words, a little more old-fashioned decorum and discretion, please: what the president does in the bedroom is his own business.
And it is interesting to see that in Ireland, something of the same spirit prevails. A surprisingly large number of people questioned for the Sunday Independent Millward Brown IMS poll have declined to say how often they have sexual relations -- 48 per cent said they were "not willing to answer". Fifty per cent said they were "not willing to answer" when asked "when was the last time you had sex?"
Does this show that the 'new, transparent' culture of being 'open' about sex -- as promoted by so many celebrity TV shows -- has not yet caught on?
Or does it mean that most people take the civilised view that the French electorate has traditionally taken -- that is, what people do in the bedroom is their own business?
Perhaps this so-called 'reticence' is a healthy resistance to the vulgarity of blatant intrusive prying -- and the danger, behind it, of the state monitoring private sexual conduct.
Civil libertarians view with alarm proposals being drawn up by the British authorities to ask citizens in the next national census: "What is your sexual orientation?"
Local authorities have already started putting this question on job application forms in England and Wales.
A relation of mine who works for an English local authority was examining these application forms recently, and was rather gratified to see that a large number of applicants refused to answer: and some wrote, spiritedly, "Mind your own business!"
The governments and municipalities claim that they are only asking this question "so as to be able to provide more services for sexual minorities".
I dare say.
But it will also provide no end of busybodies and nosey parkers with private information about private life.
Marriage is a public, social contract: but sex -- unless it involves an illegal act with a minor, rape or assault -- is a matter for consenting adults in private.
Both the French electorate and the Irish public clearly want to keep it that way. And you know what?
The springs of desire are a heck of a lot more romantic in private places than in public exhibition.
