Catholics blame online gambling for marriage break-ups

Here we go again. Marriage break-ups are all the rage in Ireland and apparently it’s all the fault of online gambling – oh, and internet porn.

These are the conclusions of Accord, the hideously out of touch, typically conservative religious group Catholic Marriage Care Service, which claims that 15% of Irish couples are splitting up because a spouse is accessing online bongo or betting sites – which clearly are all one in the same thing, right?

Accord’s national director, Ruth Barror, has informed the Irish Examiner that “stress levels have gone up and there is more depression among people.”

“Financial problems are very much to the fore and a number of people are suffering from Internet problems like pornography, cyber sex and gambling. They are distractions in a relationship, a form of escapism.”

Well whip and burn for all eternity anyone who dares to turn to escapism. Oops, sorry, maybe not whip, then. Just burn. Burn them all! For escapism – the root of all evil. No, seriously, what are they going to criminalize next, holidays? Episodes of Murder She Wrote. What about praying, isn’t that a form of escapism?

And before I go on let me kill that online gambling misnomer straight off. As reported on this site recently, surveys have proven that internet poker is actually good for stress.

Enter: Liam Lally, acting director of counselling. “Some are using the Internet for genuine work purposes but with people bringing work home, particularly for international companies, they are not available for family life,” said Lally.

So hold on, that’s online porn, internet gambling and working from home now. Don’t work from home. No. Fuck deadlines and the mortgage, working from home is just plain wrong. In fact stop working altogether, that’ll solve Ireland’s economic crisis.

“Online gambling,” Right, so we’re back on online gambling again, “…is now quite easy to do at home and people are also getting addicted to playing games. Pornography is also a problem. It is linked with a form of infidelity because a person is getting sexual gratification from the Internet instead of having a relationship with a spouse. When a partner finds out they feel very let down. They take it as a partner rejecting them and turning to cyber sex.”

Is this guy called Liam Lally or Liam Doolally? Does he not realise that internet porn has actually saved countless marriages. Where are the figures for how many marriages would be ruined were it not for internet porn. Where are the stats revealing that if it weren’t for sites with an ‘x’ or a ‘tube’ in their name people wouldn’t be ‘working from home’ but in fact ‘working late, dear’ – having a ‘meeting with Kim from [Barely] Legal’? Oh, here they are: between 30% and 60% of married couples [in the US] will have an extra-marital affair.

Barror added that couples need to be there for each other to have a healthy marriage and of course no-one’s going to argue about that. But as per usual the bible bashers are missing the point here. It is not internet gambling, internet porn or internet anything else that is destroying marriages in Ireland.

It’s people, the choices they make – like gambling with money they don’t have, living in a country that’s been hit by one of the worst recessions in Euope or maybe just getting married in the first place. If it wasn’t the aforementioned unholy trinity it would just be something else that was carrying the can for marriage break-ups.

And before the Catholic church starts throwing stones it might want to get it’s own glass house in order first.

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