Amending the Affinities

The 400-year-old "Table of Kindred and Affinity" in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is still the basic framework of Britain's complex marriage and divorce laws. Adapted from John Calvin's zealous compilation of Mosaic laws and medieval mores, it stipulates who may not marry whom.

One category in it that particularly rankles Britain's Tory Lord Mancroft is the prohibition of marriage to a brother-in-law or sister-in-law. Not until 1907 did Parliament pass a law permitting a man to marry his deceased wife's sister; not until 1921 could a woman marry her deceased husband's brother. Lord Mancroft has been trying since 1949--against the Established Church--to go even farther. He wanted to make marriage to a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law legal even while the first spouse, though divorced, is still alive. Last week he tried again. Urging that his bill would eliminate the "great hardship" of perhaps 1,000 Britons presently living in "irregular unions" with in-laws, his lordship argued that "if a man cannot be forced to marry his sister-in-law, it may even encourage him to commit adultery with her."

"I regard the whole idea as revolting," the Bishop of Lichfield told the House of Lords. The Archbishop of Canterbury argued that "if it is possible to look forward from the fulfillment of a still hesitant desire to an actual remarriage to a sister-in-law, that desire is more likely to grow unchecked, and even to be subconsciously encouraged." Disregarding the churchmen, the Lords overwhelmingly voted approval of Lord Mancroft's bill.

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