Jesus may love you more than you will know (apologies to Simon & Garfunkel for literary license), but if you've got Alzheimer's it's "See ya!" from your beloved hubby, Rev. Pat Robertson:
USA Today
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his 700 Club viewers that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's is justifiable because the disease is "a kind of death."
During the portion of the show where the one-time Republican presidential candidate takes questions from viewers, Robertson was asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.
"I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her," Robertson said.
This is a man who says that marriage equality is the first step to child molestation, will lead God to destroy America, and will even lead to "angel rape". (Maybe I misunderstood Pastor T. in Catechism class, but I thought angels were asexual anyway.) But if your beloved spouse gets hit with Alzheimer's, it's okay to dump him/her in favor of a new model with mental faculties intact.
Makes me wonder, what's next on Pat's "okay" list? Late-stage cancer? (That takes Newt Gingrich off the "naughty" list for at least one of his divorces.) How about serious dementia? We went through that with my father-in-law just last year; it was pretty brutal on my mom-in-law. Would have been far easier on all of us if we could have just stuck him away in a corner somewhere and gotten on with out lives. In the olden days, men could "put away" their wives for "barrenness", not producing offspring (to be specific, a male heir). Maybe we could go back to those days, even though it's the man who's at fault.
Dealing with any terminal illness, especially when it involves someone you deeply love, is heartbreaking. I remember the summer of 2008 sitting in a doctor's waiting room waiting for the surgeon to finish my spouse's cancer surgery -- and the relief a few weeks later when the doctor said they'd gotten all of it and it had not spread beyond the affected area. I remember the pain in my mother-in-law's eyes as she saw the gentle, caring man she married turn into an angry stranger, threatening to divorce her (she was panicked till the doctor assured her it wasn't going to happen). And I saw how my father-in-law, until his final descent into dementia, cared deeply for her after failed scoliosis surgery that left her in a wheelchair; he was her primary caregiver, making sure that she was okay, helping her dress in the morning and undress at night, and fighting with insurance and other authorities to make sure she was getting the proper care. (Much of the latter I didn't learn until after his death, when I was going through the oceans of files left behind.) I'm not here to judge anyone for the decisions they make. I've known people (male and female) who have had discreet relationships while remaining married to spouses with debilitating illness, justifying that it was better to remain married (especially if insurance coverage would be an issue) and fulfill one's sexual needs outside the marriage than it would be to divorce and cast the partner out on the streets. Each person has to make up their own mind in conjunction with their own conscience and religious beliefs.
My issue is the hypocrisy -- a supposed man of God, who claims that the "sanctity of marriage" means limiting that institution to the chosen few that meet his standards of purity, says it's not so "sacred" that you can't dump it when things get tough. Then again, since he belongs to a party that seems to think it's okay to let someone die if they can't afford insurance, and that cheers the execution of human beings purportedly created in God's image, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything that comes from this guy's black heart.
Here endeth the rant...