Tom Heneghan at FaithWorld reports:
A court has declared France’s “virginity lie” couple to be legally married, despite their appeal to annul their nuptial vows because the wife turned out not to be the virgin she had claimed to be. The case caused an uproar a few months ago because they were initially granted an annulment on the grounds that she had lied about an “essential quality” necessary for the marriage contract. The case was argued as if the issue were simply about a business contract where one party had lied about the goods being delivered, and the first court accepted it on those grounds.
But the background—that the two were Muslims of North African origin and the man considered her virginity a condition for marrying the woman—sparked off a loud debate about whether the court was allowing Muslim traditions or sharia provisions to creep into French jurisprudence.
Read the full post at FaithWorld, and read the Associated Press report here, in which Xavier Labbee, the lawyer representing the husband, called the ruling a “forced marriage,” arguing it represented “the intrusion of the notion of secularism into the most intimate parts of family life.”