Burgensis outlined each and every axiom of Muscat’s philosophy, or what passes for one, in his arguments.

When will these people realise Labour projects its misgivings about life, the universe and everything to create an alibi for its existence?

They will move from one argument to the next using Mintoff’s words to justify preconceptions motivating their reasoning.

Homosexuality as exclusively male, and that due misogyny, Islam and Christianity as mutually inclusive, read God is male, and finally, Inglizati.

As if one of the official languages has to be seen solely for the sham it becomes when used to hide one’s background.

Muscat opened a can of worms when he decided to dabble with gender, minority and subsequent social ‘issues’. The PN has an ideal space where to ram home his limits, ramshackle foundations upon which Labour is built and consequently, the dead end Joseph will become.

It’s utterly ridiculous but expected for exponents of his creed, Gauci Cunningham, Natius, Cyrus and the one from Australia, to take on shrill, aggressive, violent tones in the name of some unity and social pact.

Capricious at best, downright disingenuous and selfish when perceived from the outside. Because this is what has become the style for each and every individual who wishes to engage in discourse and finds himself defending Muscat’s benign politics.

Such is his liberation theology, made of suldati tal-azzar.

Burgensis, the Roman Catholic Church has a history of casual homosexuality derived from its gradual rising up the ranks of the patrician class of Rome. Somehow it adapted itself to attract those who mattered.

Which is how ‘puritan’ sectarian Christianity had come to dislike and treat sexuality in all its forms under strictly procreative utilitarian perspective in the first place.

Heterosexual lust alone is as sinful as the homosexual inherently childless act.

Both considered a determining component of hedonistic paganism, tolerant of idols, temples to every false god and enemy of a religious peace with each and every race under Rome’s patronage.

That only led to its persecution, a sect which only admitted the one god was as destabilising as the Taleban of Rome’s Pantheon.

Sexuality in the end was key to establish the faith amongst the ruling class.

Which is why the act of considering homosexuality as some oppressed minority is a sure sign of class hatred.

“…. he revives the old Catholic Church canard.”

How transparent, Mr Scicluna.

That, and your joke.

It’s probably like Daphne says: our educational system is based on regurgitating facts and not on rational thought. Hence, anybody who can construct sentences that sound good or look good is thought of highly by the vast swathes of rationality-incapable Maltese.

He is the typical returned migrant who thinks that Malta and the Maltese are still stuck in a time-warp that stood still when they left. Then they come back and want to teach us how to think like the evolved beings they think they’ve become.

Yet it is he who is still stuck in the Sixties, obsessing about Mintoff and sodomy and civil marriage and the Catholic Church.

Just before the European Parliament elections he exhorted us to send a message to the government that it was getting above itself, but now that things didn’t go quite as he had thought or hoped, he revives the old Catholic Church canard.

Pathetic pseudo intellectual babble. Go and do something useful, Scicluna, like feeding the pigeons.

Yes. From headhunted to whatever the antonym of headhunted is.

‘Unenlightened parts of the Commonwealth’, where’s that, Majorca?

Bit of a blemish on his illustrious career at Her Majesty’s service then; the guy’s a pacifist.

In stark contrast one of the very first decisions taken by the incoming Nationalist government in 1987 was the introduction of provisions of law extending the European
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to become enforceable as part of the Law of Malta.

[Daphne – Why enact a law to specify that something is legal when it wasn’t illegal before? That is the central point of my argument: it was never illegal to be homosexual. It was only ever illegal to sodomise somebody, but then again, only if the sodomised person filed a complaint with the police. Lesbians have always been free to roll around in the hay, anyway, so there was no need of a law to say that. Mintoff might as well have enacted a law to say that women are free to drive cars. Oh, and incidentally, speaking of women – the point you and Martin Scicluna miss in your Liberal Mintoff Admiration Society is that he never did anything to give women equal status in marriage and to remove their hugely unjust and very dangerous chattel status. It was the Nationalist government which did that in the early 1990s. Might I remind you and Martin Scicluna that sodomy regardless, homosexual men had more rights under the law than married women did, by virtue of their gender, and that bloody Mintoff did nothing to change that, perhaps because he was so very abusive towards his own long-suffering wife (which is, incidentally, just another indicator of how he was anything but progressive, liberal and open-minded).]

Your response continues to show how uninformed you are on the matter – Wikipedia is indeed a good starting point in your case (which is why I suggested it in the first place).

[Daphne – Burgensis (wasn’t that the name of the person who wrote the horoscopes for Radju Malta in the Mintoff years?), I read archaeology at university for four years. With that level of discipline, I do not start any sort of historical research with Wikipedia.]

The fact that sodomy laws invariably ignored lesbian sex is not a sign that such laws were “not anti-homosexual” but an expression of misogyny since the male lawmakers could not perceive women having such urges (Muslim and other patriarchal societies take a similar approach).

[Daphne – Wrong again, Burgensis. Sapphism has been a known and at times even celebrated fact of life for thousands of years. The reason that law-makers did not care about sex between women is because, being exclusively men, they were literal-minded and thought in boxes. The biblical prohibition is against sodomy, so they took it literally. That’s why the law is/was against sodomy specifically in both Christian and Muslim societies, and not against homosexuality. That is why the sodomy laws were not gender specific and affected heterosexual relationships too. In any case, you can’t legislate against homosexuality because it is a state of being, like red hair. You can only legislate against a specific act.]

With regard to your facile argument that the prosecution would “require a complaint from the injured party”, you do not seem to be aware that the potential for blackmail was one of the motivating factors for legalising homosexual acts in the UK.

[Daphne – You know, it is at points like this that I am tempted to give up and let people drown in their own stupidity and ignorance. Fear of blackmail about homosexuality in Britain in the recent past had only marginally to do with fear of the police. You ignore the crucial fact that the complainant would end up as a key witness in the trial and he would have to be very motivated indeed to want to expose himself in that way. The REAL fear of blackmail, which continues to exist into the present as we have seen from a couple of high profile cases only in the past two years or so, is from being outed as homosexual. The fact that a lot of Maltese people miss is that whether a society is liberal or not, there will always be many people who prefer to keep their sexuality private, for reasons best known to themselves. British society is a typical example of that.]

It is a shame you were not around to consult the UK Government when it commissioned Lord Wolfenden to write his seminal report on homosexual offences and prostitution in the 1950’s. You could have regaled him with your “expert” opinion i.e. that such legislation was not really necessary.

[Daphne – Burgensis, 1950s Britain was a very different world. You cannot teleport yourself back in time and come back with a lorryload of anachronistic assumptions. We do not discuss the status of women today in terms of women being granted the vote in 1947.]

You are clearly out of your depth on this particular issue. It is best for everyone if you stick to your sterling journalistic work exposing the failings/excesses of the PL administration (past and present).

[Daphne – I’m sorry to have to disabuse you of the notion that I am out of my depth on this subject. It is actually one of which I have considerable knowledge. Human rights issues are indivisible. Unlike many, including yourself, I have never stuck to a narrow area of interest on the grounds of my gender, sexuality or marital status. In other words, I did not spend years fixating on the terrible status of married women under Maltese law while ignoring all other related human rights/discrimination areas. And you would do well to do the same and climb out of your narrow, one-track-minded obsession and look about you at the bigger historical picture and also current reality.]

Yes, you are homophobic, and a snob to boot – these traits come out when a political opponent happens to be homosexual and/or perceived hamallu.

[Daphne – That’s your perception because you have such a big chip on your shoulder about your sexuality and social background. Which brings me back to my original point to you – or maybe it was to somebody else in the same thread? – that the people with most hang-ups about homosexuality are homosexuals themselves raised in an oppressive tar-rahal, tal-Muzew environment. I have a feeling that was rather close to home, hence your reaction. The reality is that people from my sort of background never really gave a damn about whether somebody was homosexual or not – it was just part of life, and because that life wasn’t dominated by the parish priest, what God thought about sex between two men or two women just never entered the equation. This is something you probably find very hard to understand but you will just have to take my word for it. Also, if I were a snob I wouldn’t even bother to interact with you but would just brush you off. You’d be better off if you did not parade your prejudices and preconceived notions about people you think are from a better (different?) social background to yours, and who refuse to conform to your notion of ‘humble’ and self-effacing. Even if I were a snob, quite frankly, what is it to you? My being a snob is no more your concern than your being homosexual is mine.]

Anyone in the UK who denigrates the decriminalisation of homosexuality as “the legalisation of sodomy” is seen for what they really are.

[Daphne – Seen for what they really are by whom, Burgensis? Do be specific. Factual arguments require facts.]

In Malta however, you can get away with your protestations that you are not homophobic since anyone displaying inglizati is often mistaken for a liberal. I am afraid that, if you do not keep such traits under control, you risk giving the PN the “Nasty Party” image that the UK’s Tory Party acquired when in opposition, taking it years to shed.

[Daphne – Tsk tsk, Burgensis. Inglizati? Your prejudices are on bold display. Don’t blame me for your problems with your sexuality. Blame whoever it was who gave you a chip about ‘snobs with Inglizati’. The root of your difficulty accepting your sexuality is the same as that of your difficulty accepting people like me.]