More and more leaders have companions, not spouses. The social pages of the newspapers, which have returned with a vengeance apparently on the assumption that parties sell papers, are chock full of who is out with a companion, not spouse, with hardly an eyebrow raised. And even the upper echelons of government are populated with people sporting companions, not spouses.

Jamaica has never been safe for marriage. The Handbook of Jamaica for 1886-87 reported under 'Vital Statistics' that 59.9 per cent of the registered births for the previous year were "illegitimate", a one per cent increase over the year before that. In the course of the last 120 years, that percentage has risen further, not fallen.

That statistic drove a meeting of a council of ministers of religion in Kingston to present a "memorial" to the governor requesting legislative action to ensure "that as far as practicable, registration be made of the father of every illegitimate child" and for "systematically making the father of every illegitimate child responsible for the maintenance of his offspring".

The petition was aimed largely at the poor, black, ex-slave, peasant population as the governor's response made clear. The glitterati and their companions crowding out the social pages of the newspapers today wouldn't have a problem of fathers owning and maintaining their children. And we must bear in mind that there are no more bastards.

Sir Henry Norman, the governor, replied to the ministers to say: "I am of the opinion that the measures proposed for registration cannot be carried out; nor after much anxious consideration am I disposed to believe that it is expedient to introduce any law with a hope that it will reduce the number of illegitimate births.

"The peculiar circumstances of the country and the social conditions of the people during the period in which slavery existed have led to the deplorable amount of illegitimate births and to evil habits which no legislation will cure."

Casual approach

Sir Henry, English gentleman that he was, would have conveniently forgotten the fact that marriage was almost as rare among the white masters, who chose not to, as among the black slaves whose circumstances did not readily allow them to. Orlando Patterson, in The Sociology of Slavery, has thoroughly documented the systematic and savage sexual exploitation of slave women by the white masters and the fragmented family structures and fluid sexual relations among the slave population.

The first situation accounts for the large percentage of brown people in a 'black' country, and both situations together have influenced a remarkably casual approach to family and sex almost without parallel in the civilised world. Historian Douglas Hall has rescued a detailed first-hand account of the sexual exploitation of slave women by white masters in his discovery of Thomas Thistlewood's Jamaica diaries, 1750-86, and the publication of excerpts in In Miserable Slavery. Thistlewood carefully recorded all his encounters.

But it is Governor Norman's next comment which is of most interest to today's column: "I have to express my firm reliance that a continued diligent exercise of their sacred functions by ministers of religion and by a general discouragement to a life of concubinage on the part of those who have influence in the community, great and steady progress will be made in reducing the men and women who live together without marriage and in the lamentable proportion of illegitimate births."

Private affairs

The companioned among those who have influence in the community will be quick to dismiss any criticism as interference. Among the greatest social myths in circulation today is that marriage, commitment, family structure and sexual preferences are private affairs and is nobody else's business.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Human sexuality and family arrangements are very much public affairs in terms of their profound consequences for society.

Marriage is the highest commitment among humans. And society needs commitment as social glue. Companions will now glibly argue that they do have commitment. But they are calculatingly leaving a door ajar for sliding out of sticking together "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part". We should not be surprised if commitments are weak in other areas of society.

Hypocrisy is also a necessary and effective social glue. Good manners are based on it. If everybody told everybody else what they really thought about that person, the world would quickly come to an end. True, Governor Norman's 1880s expectation of a reduction in the number of men and women who live together without marriage has not materialised. The society perhaps cares less about marriage now than then. But leaders of various sorts are still obliged to set an example of marital commitment, even in a society like ours in which lascivious sex runs things.

It is not accidental at all that in civilised, prosperous and peaceful places marriage is regarded as a social norm despite all kinds of trespasses against it and within it. Its 'abnormal' status here is no small part of Jamaica's problems. Our leaders of various sorts, including all persons with advanced education, should not be adding to the problem.

We are now locked in fiery controversies over the celebration of rampant and unbridled sexuality in popular music. Way back in the 1950s, Edith Clarke observed that in one of her research communities, perhaps the one closest to most of the rest of the country, "sex was a favourite subject of conversation with both men and women ... and there was never any attempt to temper the discussion if children were present. Childish and adolescent precocity was, on the contrary, regarded with tolerant amusement and, in the case of boys, with admiration."

Greater negative consequences

Jamaican music, from mento to dancehall, has always celebrated and promoted raw sexuality Jamaica style, perhaps now more coarse and more vulgar than ever before. And so has art in any number of other cultures. The myth of the Christian society here or anywhere else has been just that. But even pagan societies have defended marriage as a normative ideal. Any further damage to the little commitment to traditional formal marriage is likely to have even greater negative consequences for the development of a country already handicapped by sexual idolatry than daggerin' music. And we, albeit hypocritically, must be able to look to leadership for leadership.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.