The Civil Marriage Debate in Lebanon: Power Politics and Communicative Rationality

Abstract

Beginning of 2019, the civil marriage debate emerged in Lebanon through a media statement by Minister of Interior Rayya al-Hassan. This thesis looks into the civil marriage debate that occurred then, analyzing the argumentation and the political power-play surrounding the issue. I took 300 randomly sampled arguments for and against civil marriage from various media sources and analyzed them using the Lebanese socio-political reality within the framework of the Habermasian public sphere. Patterns of conspiratorial thinking and doubt of CSOs emerged, with interpretations of religion being at the center of the debate, and little arguments for hardline secularization. Power-politics dominated over the healthy debate and led to its eventual elimination, with no institutional follow-up on the public demand. The debate highlights serious risks to Lebanese democracy such as the erosion of institutions and of public inter-communal trust.