When I mentioned censorship, I was referring to film censorship (sorry, I should have been specific and yes, I do remember the movie “Raid on Entebbe” being banned in Malta on political grounds by the Mintoff regime). I do not differ much from what you stated as regards Mintoff generally.

I only said that he did some good things too – is it possible you only see the wrong he did (which is admittedly, a great deal)?

[Daphne – I’m not the kind to say of murderers or drug-dealers “Oh, but he gave a donation to charity” or “He was nice to his mother.”]

And no, I do not assume that conservatives sit only on the government side: where did I say that? I think it would be a good idea if you do not assume that critics of the present administration (as regards certain aspects like civil rights) are necessarily Labour supporters.

[Daphne – I don’t assume that. But I find it extremely disturbing how easily people absorb Labour’s propaganda, now as in 1996. Muscat’s repeatedly calling the Nationalists ‘conservative’ has worked wondered in obscuring the fact that the conservatives are mainly on his side of the house. So everyone discusses the conservatives in the Nationalist Party and nobody discusses the fact that the Labour Party is packed full of them]

I repeat that I do not agree that Mintoff decriminalized adultery and sodomy (here I think even this term used by you is not quite right because sodomy is not necessarily between homosexuals or persons of the same sex…) [Daphne – Precisely: sodomy was illegal even when performed by a man on a woman. The law was against sodomy because you cannot – and surely you can see this – make it illegal for a person to be homosexual. That’s like making it illegal for a person to have green eyes.] just to spite the Catholic Church and you have not demonstrated that.

[Daphne – I don’t need to demonstrate it. He followed the same principles used by extreme left-wing dictatorships everywhere: liberalise the ‘sexual’ laws – to undermine the authority of the ruling religion, as religions always concern themselves with sex and marriage, while tightening the noose round people’s freedom in every other respect and not respecting individual dignity or human rights.]

In any case, what do Mintoff and Muscat have to do with the government’s adamant refusal to enact divorce?

[Daphne – The government does not enact legislation. Parliament does. Our legislators are our MPs, on both sides of the house. For a divorce bill to pass into legislation, a majority of MPs has to vote in favour. If both political leaders give their MPs a free vote, it is my understanding that there will not be enough Labour and Nationalist MPs voting in favour to get the thing through.]

If you can live with considering yourself as liberal (if such is the case) and yet support an absence of certain civil rights, so be it.

[Daphne – I really don’t know what gave you the impression that I “support an absence of certain civil rights”. You clearly haven’t read much of what I’ve written over the years.]

It is useless mentioning Joseph Muscat; he is not power.

[Daphne – On the contrary, because as an MP he is a legislator and as party leader he can use the whip. There is nothing to stop him putting a divorce bill before parliament as leader of the opposition and using the whip with his MPs. Then all he’ll need is a couple of votes from the other side of the house and we’re done. Strange how everyone’s forgotten that it’s parliament which legislates, not government. Government is thought to be the legislator because it has the majority of MPs and so can get its legislation through – except in some high-profile incidences.]

Who said liberalism is about sex? Not I, for sure. We are talking of divorce not sex.

[Daphne – Divorce, marriage, gay rights…they’re all essentially about the regulation of sex and the consequences of sex.]

In any case, sex is one aspect which touches liberalism. Liberalism is not only about free trade either. And yes, divorce and liberalism are not necessarily connected – you’re right there. In fact, even in totalitarian regimes, divorce exists. Indeed, it exists everywhere except in Malta. So what do you suggest? That we accept the present state of affairs in silence?

[Daphne – Silence, eh? That’s an interesting observation about somebody who spends her life shooting her mouth off.]

The thing is that those who consider this issue of prime importance have been driven to consider any proposal from whichever way it comes. And what’s wrong with persons who have a vested interest in divorce airing their views?

[Daphne – Nothing’s wrong as such. It just weakens their argument, that’s all. And that’s not useful when you are trying to persuade others.]

I do not consider it logical to say that those who want divorce want more regulation. The two are separate issues.

[Daphne – By definition, those who want marriage, divorce, partnership rights, cohabitation rights, gay marriage, are people who favour the regulation of relationships. All others just live together.]

That’s what lobbies are about. It does not follow that if one wants divorce, one wants more regulation or that one is aiming at marrying a partner, if that’s what you mean. I do not understand the bit about the “barunijiet tan-novecento” — forgive me but I must be missing something here.

[Daphne – It tends to be a subject that fascinates lots of gay men in Malta, the sort who call themselves liberal because they favour divorce and gay marriage, but who would much, much rather take a time-capsule back to a grander age.]

Gerald conveniently forgets that Kurt Sansone was an AD candidate in several general elections.

[Daphne – I don’t have to demonstrate it myself. There is 16 years’ worth of newspaper reportage to document the incontrovertible fact that Mintoff was neither liberal nor democratic, but rather the opposite. Hence, he cannot possibly have decriminalised adultery and sodomy (not homosexuality, because sexuality can never be a criminal act) or introduced civil marriage in the name of democracy and liberalism, because he didn’t give a stuff about that. Do you think it’s a coincidence that these three matters he chose were all linked to Catholic teaching on sexual behaviour? If he were liberal and democratic, he wouldn’t have shut off access to higher education, ruined schools, suppressed the free press, turned state broadcasting into a ‘socialist tool’, and controlled every last area of everyone’s life, bar bedroom activity.]

One should not let one’s dislike for Mintoff cloud one’s judgement.

[Daphne – My god, my god. What sort of reasoning is this? People didn’t suddenly decide to dislike Mintoff for no reason at all. That dislike – make it contempt, please – is based on real-life events and his actions, and not on the fact that, say, he wore hideous belts or cuckolded his own brother (though that too….).]

I am no Mintoff fan (though I can appreciate some things that he did) but the MLP was much more liberal than the PN where it concerned civil liberties – one case was the reform of censorship.

[Daphne – I almost give up. Really. Praising Mintoff’s Labour Party for being liberal, in favour of civil liberties and reforming censorship! What on earth are you talking about? Mintoff presided over gross human rights abuses, pretty much making the career of the man who now represents Malta in the European Court of Human Rights. He presided over the burning to the ground of the newspaper house which published the only (and they were very timid) anti-government views. We lived in a society where nobody spoke out or put his or her name to a newspaper article for fear of the consequences. Instead of going to the police for protection, we sought protection from the police. You praise Mintoff for faffing around with ‘censorship’ while ignoring the far more salient fact that he actively stamped on all opposing views and the people who promoted them. You are really unbelievable.]

I doubt very much the PN would ever have enacted civil marriage which, in the 1960s, was one of the famous “sitt punti” over which fire and brimstone were unleashed during the fulminations of Archbishop Gonzi.

[Daphne – I think you’ll find that hundreds of thousands of the dead and the still living would gladly have sacrificed civil marriage for the chance to live in peace, civility and prosperity, with respect for human rights and a free press, in those 16 years of utter hell between 1971 and 1987. Speaking for myself (though probably also for most of my generation), normal life only began for me when I was 23 years old, and that’s a terrible tragedy because, unlike my parents’ war-torn and post-war upbringing, it was entirely avoidable and unnecessary. My son commented earlier this evening about how sad it is seeing what’s happening in Iran, knowing that there is no solution for the people his age who have no opportunities and whose youth has been wasted. And my response was: that was my experience. We, too, knew nothing else and thought that it would never end.]

The Catholic Church in Malta always held that civil rights which have existed in other countries, including Catholic ones, for generations are not suitable for us. It was so with civil marriage in the 1960s and it is so today with divorce. The Church is always wary of anything “new” (for Malta) as it fears losing temporal power which it craves. The Church’s battle with Mintoff was in more ways than one a re-enactment of the Church’s battle with Lord Strickland in the 1930s.

[Daphne – The Catholic Church was a problem in the 1930s and the 1960s, but it wasn’t the problem in the 1970s and 1980s. During those years, it was the Labour Party that was the real threat to society. It turns out that the bishops were right all along about Mintoff and the evil he represented: what they predicted came to pass. We would all have been better off without him instead of having to wait until the late 1980s to join the normal world.]

Some of our present politicians, especially some most influential in the PN, look at their political life as being at the service of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church teaches that a Catholic politician cannot go against Catholic teaching in his political life and, at the time of the enactment of laws, he must vote according to Catholic principles. I am afraid that some of our most prominent Catholic politicians feel conscience-bound by this rule even if it means denying certain civil rights to the Maltese, Catholic or non-Catholic.

[Daphne – Yes, but the mistake you make is to assume that these MPs are all sitting on the government side. They’re not. Joseph Muscat’s free vote on divorce will reveal that there are just as many conservative Catholics on the Opposition benches, if not more.]

When such politicians say that they look at the “common good”, what they mean is that they will act according to what their church prescribes because only that church knows what is good for the whole of humanity. I contend that those Catholic politicians who fear for their soul should quit politics. We have heard recently that the Pope had told a leading Maltese politician that Malta is to be a beacon of Catholicism in Europe.

Imagine: when such former Catholic strongholds like Spain and Italy are now centres of secular government, tiny Malta is to quixotically ride a white steed all over the continent and carry the banner of Catholic defiance in Europe. This is why the present administration will not bring a bill about divorce before parliament.

[Daphne – For the zillionth time: whether the government or the opposition puts a bill before parliament (and Joseph Muscat from his seat in the opposition can do it without waiting to become prime minister) is utterly irrelevant. A divorce bill, whoever places it before parliament, is nothing more than an empty gesture unless the party whips are used to secure a vote in favour. If MPs are left to vote as they please, the bill will fail.]

It is a matter of Catholic principle. It also means that there is no effective separation between Church and State in Malta. And not only – the powers-that-be do not believe in such separation because for them being a politician means being a Catholic politician in obeisance to the Church. How one can claim to be liberal and accept this kind of position on the part of the present administration escapes me. This much seems crystal clear.

[Daphne – Liberalism is not about sex. And if you were to look clearly, you would see that there are as many, if not more, bigoted Catholics on the Opposition benches. What is Joseph Muscat’s promise of a free vote on a divorce bill if not subservience to the Catholic bigotry among his MPs? “Don’t worry: I won’t force you to vote in favour if your Catholic beliefs won’t allow you to defend a civil right.” The fascinating thing is how he actually managed to put this across as something amazing and liberal rather than as yet more submission to the bigots. Rather than using his whip, he’s letting the conservative bigots use their whip on him. Few people who describe themselves as liberals really are so here. They are either homosexuals with a vested interest in gay rights but otherwise extremely conservative and traditionalist, as so many Maltese gay men tend to be especially when they are bound to their mother’s hip, or people whose marriages are on the rocks and who have a vested interest in divorce, and more of the same. And over and above that, I think it’s highly amusing that the liberals here define themselves by a desire for MORE regulation of relationships rather than less (divorce, gay marriage, cohabitation rights). The desire for a regulated relationship makes a person a conservative not a ‘liberal’. People with a liberal attitude to relationships don’t want the state regulating those relationships. But try explaining that to your average Maltese liberal iffissat fil-barunijiet tan-nove cento.]

I’m not saying whether divorce or gay marriages are right or wrong or whether these benefit society. My point is discussing electoral strategies.

In my opinion the haemorrhage of liberal voters from the PN to Labour is pure speculation. Moreover, electoral results everywhere in the world show that it is the economy that matters most. Gay lobbies have always been sore losers at the polls. No single referendum, not even in ultra-liberal California and Florida were won by gays. Obama knows this and he is shrewd enough to steer his way among opposing camps by promising everything to all and giving nothing in return. Does this strategy work?

It takes an amateur journalist to defend another one. You really made Sansone’s day by defending him, since you are both of the same ilk – morphing an opinion piece into a news article.

Where do you achieve your reporting skills – during the Super One lunches at Mamma Mia with Charlon Gouder, Sansone and Joseph Muscat?

Gerald, why does Kurt Sansone need defending? If he can write what and how he wants, surely other people can comment about it. You imply that criticism impedes the freedom of the press and that therefore nobody should dare discuss and judge journalists. Since you are also a journalist – of sorts – I suppose this goes for you too. You’re saying that we cannot criticise you (I just have) as it would go against the freedom of the press.

Ganni, Mintoff undermined the Church because he saw it as a rival and an obstacle in creating that “socialist generation” (a Wistin Abela phrase) he wanted. He is despised because he was a cowardly dictator and will so be remembered in history books.

See first article, http://www.clsgbi.org/newsletter144.htm

[Daphne – Come now. Be specific. Recognised by who or what? At that time there were many thousands of British people living here, and the vast majority of them would have been married by the Anglican rite or in a registry office. So who or what wouldn’t haven’t recognised their marriages?]

[Daphne – My point is that there is no such thing as a ‘pro-church’ party in Malta anymore. There are only individual politicians who can’t separate the secular from the religious, and then it’s up to voters to choose them or not. Pippo Psaila wasn’t chosen precisely because the typical Nationalist voter in his socio-economic group and in the district on which he stood rejects that kind of thinking. I am not in the least bit religious, never have been and probably never will be, yet I find the Nationalist Party far more attractive than any of the other current options precisely because it is hugely tolerant and its approach is to liberalise and to open things up. Labour, on the other hand, is rife with creeping intolerance, which becomes overt when it is confident of power.]

Personally I don’t really care which party, PL or PN, is pro-church.

[Daphne – You should, because you’re either going to be governed by the one or the other. I would say that neither party is ‘pro-church’, but both parties are heavily laden with MPs who would, for example, vote against a divorce bill, which is why a free vote is such a lousy idea, and why Joseph Muscat’s insistence that Gonzi also allows his people a free vote is embarrassingly brainless – or a deliberate ploy to have the bill defeated. He can’t very well insist that Gonzi uses the whip for a vote in favour, because that would beg the question as to why he doesn’t do the same himself.]

Confessional politics is used in English but rarely so. It is more common in Italian which refers to political parties with very close ties with the church, such as the old Democrazia Cristiana.

[Daphne – That would explain it, then. I’m not really au fait with Italian thought processes.]