Hypocrisy and the law

Why it should take legislators so long to scrap senseless and unworkable Law No. 1/1974 is almost beyond comprehension. Who really cares what the state thinks about interreligious marriages when they are clearly none of its business? Anybody with any common sense has been ignoring the law for decades and will continue to do so until it finds its way into the dustbin of history.

Who cares if the state thinks that our children are born out of wedlock, especially in a country that has a massively hypocritical attitude when it comes to sex, full stop? Here is a country where men, to their heart's content, can say three times, "I divorce you," before going off to marry a younger, more attractive girl, or simply take another wife if they can't get rid of the first one.

On the other hand, here is a country where, for a few thousand rupiah, you can get a certificate for anything you like, and be anything you want. So let's all pretend we are Martians, or a university professor, or, better still, a qualified brain surgeon.

Where are the realists in this country, and where are the people with common sense and wisdom? Try and look at it this way. If you cannot get an ordinary motorist to stop at a red light when driving his car (I believe that is the law) then how do you expect to get people to abide by a discriminative law that is clearly against personal freedom, religious freedom and the right to marry whomever they wish?

DAVID WALLIS Medan, North Sumatra