Referendum day is also Widows' Day

Today, June 23rd, is Referendum day here in the UK. Every year and everywhere it is also apparently International Widows' Day: http://theloombafoundation.org/international-widows-day/. This recognition of the plight of widows worldwide was launched in 2005 and recognised by the UN in 2010. We've all heard of International Women's Day, but widows don't get much of a look in, which is probably why I'm assuming hardly anyone has heard of this particular day, as indeed I hadn't until earlier this week. Widowhood is by definition unsexy and nobody really wants to know. Whereas widowers are the most likely men to remarry (according to a study a few years ago), the re-marriage prospects of a widow, especially one with children, are among the lowest. In developing countries the very social status of widows is basically next to nothing. In advanced Western countries we still benefit from the enlightened, Bible-based view that widows and their children (i.e. orphans) are worthy of special care and protection. I for one, widowed in 2000 at the relatively young age of 37, with two very young children, am extremely grateful  for the state assistance I have received. I fear, however, that its continued existence is merely the last gasp of a formal regard for the family. It could all too easily be swept away by continued devaluation of traditional marriage and motherhood and especially by the new sanctification of  non-gender-specific notions of marriage and parenting. Is the surviving partner in a lesbian marriage a widow? Is she a widower? Is the surviving partner in gay marriage a widower, or perhaps a widow? Much easier to eliminate the category altogether than deal with this logistical tangle, in the same way that the words 'husband' and 'wife' are being eliminated from official documents. How the hard-won, Judaeo-Christian attitude to the care of widows and orphans will fare in such a society we will have to wait and see. But the current climate doesn't bode well for Western widows and orphans or for those of developing nations, for whom the repercussions of our ideological upheavals are likely to be even more severe.