Can you add to the mix that he is part of the push-backs government and tough talk on immigration? So now we have a xenophobic, eurosceptic, homophobic government all wrapped into one.

Homophobic acts would be for example a direct verbal abuse. When you take intimate photos of a partner and deliberately send them out to your former partner`s boss and colleagues the intent is to have them fired, have them suffer economical loss (loss of job and being unable to find a new one), tarnish reputation or most likely drive them desperate to do something much more dramatic.

And some people would for example self harm. Homophobic is the last thing we can say about Cyrus here – it was a malicious attempt to hurt and degrade a person, which could turn very tragic.

[Daphne – I disagree with you, Malicia. He selected photographs designed to trigger homophobic disgust in the recipients. Your average person, man or woman, does not recoil at the sight of photographs of men in the nude, even if they are posing provocatively or engaged in sexual activity with a woman. But most do recoil, even if ever so slightly, at other sorts of photographs.]

Unfortunately, throughout the years, (self-representing) Maltese gay role models have been people such as Felix tal-Yada, Albert Gauci Cunningham and Cyrus Engerer, besides various cooks, hairdressers, make-up artists and stylists on television.

Although there many who are more intelligent, qualified and successful, in jobs and careers not stereotypically associated with (camp) gay men, they have never been in the public eye and nor have they wanted to – and rightly so.

There are two direct social consequences to all this.

1. The prejudices towards gay people will (understandably) increase.

2. As you rightly said, acts of homophobia between members of the LGBT community themselves will be ‘justified’ ‘ghax Cyrus hekk ghamel u kwazi ma gralu xejn’.

This is a dangerous precedent and Cyrus must walk away from public life immediately.

As I’ve previously commented, individuals in the public service with a suspended prison sentence would have their contract terminated immediately. Has Cyrus Engerer been given the sack, this morning? The taxpaying public ought to know.

As if.

On the basis of what?

He might try it as a distraction until the elections to draw sympathy towards him, but really the facts of the case speak for themselves.

If he suggests that politics was the reason for action against him, couldn’t one ask if politics would have been the reason why action would not have been taken against him?

It says more about the defence lawyer than about Cyrus Engerer. The defence plan was certainly not the work of one individual.

When that defence lawyer is Franco Debono, everything takes on a whole new meaning and can be seen from a new perspective altogether.

Seems incredible, I grant you that, but with these people in charge, you never know!

Which means that it could really have been a “homophobic attack”. In which case it begs the question: Why would a gay person believe that a homophobic attack on another gay person is universally seen as most damaging?

Obviously a gay person would know that a homophobic attack causes great distress to the person being attacked, because s/he’d probably been on the receiving end of it too.

I think that the homophobic theory doesn’t hold water. But for completeness’ sake, I think it’s appropriate to bring to the fore a maxim attributed to Sun Tzu, who wrote (brushed?) The Art of War. To know what frightens your enemy, observe that with which he tries to frighten you.