If you think Muscat is going to help you out on this one, Jeff, you’re seriously mistaken
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who I last saw emerging from the airport arrivals lounge on Wednesday night looking like a self-conscious little twerp, doing that ‘square your shoulders, chin up, forward march’ thing as onlookers nudged and giggled (he’s really got to master the art of sprezzatura), is feeling left out of the news again.
Today he’s on the backpage of The Times, saying that it’s about time gay couples are allowed to marry in Malta. Why is it about time? Very few states worldwide allow gay couples to ‘marry’, and of those, most differentiate between the actual marriage of heterosexual couples and civil unions or partnerships between gay couples.
This is not to say that I oppose the formal and legal regulation of such unions. I don’t. My view is that it’s no skin off anyone else’s nose if two gay people wish to marry each other – except, of course, for involved individuals who might have objections to that particular union for personal reasons of their own, obviously.
My point is that it is utterly ridiculous for Jeffrey to suggest that Malta is somehow lagging behind The Rest of The Civilised World in this. Malta is not. New York legislated for same-sex marriage only last June, for heaven’s sake. That’s right: New York, that den of iniquity.
If Jeffrey the Tooth Fairy thinks he can pull off with same-sex marriage the same stunt he did with divorce, then let him try. But I can’t see him doing that any time soon. He would require the unanimous support of the Opposition, and not even the Opposition leader favours same-sex marriage. He’s on record saying that. A legal partnership, yes, but marriage, no. There are many on the Opposition benches who won’t even be able to wrap their minds round a civil partnership, let alone marriage.
The trouble with people like Jeffrey is that they are surrounded by a small group of eggers-on and never know when to stop bleating. And please, will somebody he trusts disabuse him of the notion that he is hip and cool. He might he hip and cool compared to that load of sad sacks he hangs around with, but not by any other standard.
For a start, he lacks the required nonchalance and has absolutely no sense of humour.
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Such a coincidence, Joseph made it clear it’s an electoral proposal only last night.
Does this moron of a man realise how pathetic he is?
No wonder he attracts all those desperate middle-aged housewives on fejsbuk.
“…not even the Opposition leader favours same-sex marriage. He’s on record saying that. ”
I believe the correct terminology for that would be “onn dee rekort”.
Some suck their thumb or their cigarette for comfort and reassurance. JPO seeks 24/7 media-attention instead.
Maltatoday and The Times seem to have run out of suitably sensational attention-grabbing headlines, so they resorted to passing off as headline news, tall tales of Tom Cruise buying a 12 million Euro villa in San Gwann from a “prominent family”.
Sprezzatura is very difficult to pull off if you’re five foot nothing. I say this in defence of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
Not fit to remain in the NP’s fold.
Better suited for Joseph’s skip where anything goes.
Regrettably Malta IS lagging behind the more liberal world when it comes to gay rights.
Why compare it to New York? The USA is a pseudo-democracy run by fundamentalist Christians and mega rich companies.
We should compare Malta to Germany, UK, France and Spain for example when it comes to gay rights. Malta is in Europe and not part of the USA.
Just before the divorce referendum I wrote here that that was the first step and in line will be same-sex marriage and abortion.
What do you expect of a dentist who poses for photos eating sweet pastry?
His innovative ways at shutting up his own mouth are remarkable, but ineffective.
Where do you get such silly photos of Jeffrey? You have many spies, Daphne.
[Daphne – Indeed.]
Who knows what Tonio thinks about this one. If the Madonna was sad about Malta contemplating divorce she must be losing sleep on this one, assuming she does sleep.
Yeah, especially with her son always hanging around with his twelve “special friends” and not a girl in sight.
Oh lord, I’ve done it now. Francis Saliba will come down upon me like a ton of bricks.
[Daphne – Errrr, there was a girl in sight. Hanging around with them, actually.]
Didn’t she come in towards the end, when Jesus had become a celebrity? She even displays the typical behaviour of the infatuated fan. Washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. Whatever next?
. . . and moreover, the 12 scarpered pretty sharpish-like when it came to the crunch.
Only the girl and the mother were anywhere to be found.
The 12 and their successors never forgave them (women) for showing them up, and relegated them to permanently passive roles in the Church.
You forget the youngest of the twelve. Please don’t tell me he was there only to finish the book.
H.P. Baxxter, I am agnostic by the way and don’t give a hoot about religions. I bet you won’t use the same language to discuss the most barbaric ‘religion’ in the world. Notice the inverted commas.
The video of Libyans vandalising a cemetery and a cross you show on your website is really shocking.
I wonder what our lovely Muslim Iman has to say about that.
Paul, what is the point of bringing Islam into the equation? In Malta it is fundamentalist Catholic (not any other religion) ministers we are dealing with and therefore it is their extreme beliefs which are ridiculed.
When Malta has a fundamentalist Muslim minister who proposes Sharia law, I’m sure he or she will be ridiculed too.
You mean Islam.
I will use the same language. Here we go: Mohammed was the greatest political and military leader ever to have lived. The empire he founded stretches from Morocco to Indonesia, with other outposts all over the globe, and is stronger than ever, 15 centuries later. No other empire even comes close.
Islam was never a religion. It was a political system, a convenient merging of Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices and the Arabian peninsula’s own animistic religion. It was the only way to unite disparate tribes and cultures and pave the way for the conquest of North Africa and the Middle East.
The reason we find it extremely hard to make jokes about Mohammed is that we know so very little about him. He wouldn’t even allow pictures of himself, for heaven’s sake. Jesus was a different sort, and sounds more like a Greek cynic than a Jew. So now I’ve mentioned Judaism too.
Regarding that video, my feelings are neither shock nor indignation. I simply posted it to show how a gentleman should not behave. When NATO has just liberated you from a tryant and paved the way for your ascension to power, you show some civility and gratitude to its lead nations. Islam and crosses does not come into it, except incidentally. We Maltese sometimes verge on that sort of behaviour when we bad-mouth the British, who defended us against Fascist oppression, or the Germans, who are keeping Europe together.
But of course we’re all better off without Gaddafi. Let’s be clear on that one. Even if Libya becomes the first North African caliphate since 1912.
Did you seriously just compare gay rights in New York to those in Malta?
Malta, like Italy, is most certainly lagging behind. It is “utterly ridiculous” to deny it.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j1nKt7TNTm4/TdIyk-qRveI/AAAAAAAADhI/6N2Jazw0mDk/s1600/RainbowMapEurope.JPG
[Daphne – Malta is not lagging behind. Onloy 10 states worldwide permit actual marriage between two people of the same sex. A few more permit some form of civil union. There is no such thing as gay rights. There are only human rights. If you mean the right to a civil union, then up to last summer, Malta and New York State were perfectly equal. Keep a sense of proportion or your arguments are weakened. Argue for same-sex marriage for its own intrinsic worth, and not because some other countries have it.]
Perhaps Malta is not lagging behind the rest of the world, but that would only establish the fact that the rest of the world is also ‘lagging behind’.