Today I received this nice email. It's incredible my message went so far, yet it didn't convince the Maltese voters :-)
Dear Patrick,
First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your fight for the visibility, the dignity and the rights of Maltese gays and lesbians.
I shall introduce myself: I am a gay man from València (
I do not know wether you can read Spanish; if you cannot, I could try to translate some of the text for you.
I hope you do not mind my referring to you in my column. Anyway, I would be interested in knowing your opinion on it.
Best regards,
Nemo
The English translation from Google is here:
I am pasting an English translation by Nemo here:
TOLERANCE
Malta is a small island republic (316 square kilometres: a bit less than, for example, the municipal district of Elche; although the population density is high, the inhabitants of the Maltese archipelago are not many more than 400.000) located right in the middle of the Mediterranean, little more than 90 km south of Sicily and less than 300 off the North African shores of Tunisia and Libya. Although Malta has been part of the European Union since 2004, the fact that it is an island country, its small dimensions, its geographic situation, so peripheral with respect to Europe- would be enough to make us suspect that the culture and society of the Maltese islands must have some peculiarities with respect to what is usual in most of the EU. One of these peculiarities is, no doubt, the Maltese language: Maltese is derived from medieval Arabic, and although throughout the centuries it has incorporated many European words (from Italian especially, and also from English in more recent times), its basis is decidedly still of Arabic origin.
Another peculiarity of Malta is the religion. Not that the Maltese are Muslim: they are not, but Catholic (98% of them), despite the fact that they call God "Alla" and give Jesus and his mother the titles of "Sultan" and "Sultana", respectively; the real peculiarity of Malta is the religious fervour of its inhabitants, which far surpasses that which is usual in Europe, and especially in the western part of it. More than half the Maltese population attends mass regularly, which is one of the highest rates in the EU, and one in every four or five Maltese is a member of some Catholic movement or group. The most important of these movements or groups it is the Neocatechumenal Way, known in Spain popularly as ‘ kikos' because of its founder’s (a Spaniard, Kiko Argüello) name: in Malta, apparently, they have the highest concentration of ‘kikos' per capita in the whole world. The Constitution of the Republic of Malta very clearly reflects the strong influence that the Catholic religion has on the society of the islands: in article 2 of the first chapter it is not only proclaimed that "the religion of Malta is the Roman Catholic apostolic religion ", but also that "the authorities of the Roman Catholic apostolic church have the duty and the right to teach which principles are right and which are wrong."
In this religious country, what can be the situation of gays and lesbians? Weeks ago, looking for information on the Internet before making a brief trip to Malta, I found that they recently held a general election there too (on the 8 of March, a day before Spain’s; it was won by the party that has been ruling the islands since 1987, except for a parenthesis of two years in the 90’s: the Catholic and Conservative PN, Partit Nazzjonalista); I also discovered that, for the first time in the history of Malta, on this occasion they had an openly gay candidate, clearly favorable to LGBT demands, standing. His name was Patrick Attard, and he stood by the small Green party Alternattiva Demokatika (a party that obtained only 1.3% of the votes; even so, it has been the third force in the strongly bipartisan Maltese politics for almost two decades). During the electoral campaign, Attard had organised a meeting on LGBT questions in one of the few gay businesses to be found in the country, a hotel and called Adam's, which opened less than one year ago in the tourist locality of San Ġiljan or St. Julian's; once in Malta, I found out that this bar was not far away from my own hotel and I decided to visit it with my husband.
It was 9pm on a Tuesday, so we could not expect to meet a lot of people there: in fact, all along we were accompanied only by the British owner of the place and by two Maltese young men who, as we found out later, were a couple. Being so few -the bar, in addition, was very small- it was easy for us to start a conversation, especially with the owner; the Maltese did not talk much and looked a bit uncomfortable, I do not know whether because of the language of our conversation, which was English, or because of its subject. My husband very directly asked the other guests what being gay in Malta was like, and it was the owner of the place who answered him, insisting several times that Malta was "a very tolerant" society, and adding that when he had announced that he was planning to start a gay business in Malta to his English friends, many of them had told him to prepare himself for the worse, but in reality he had not had any problem and had suffered no aggression (it is true that St. Julian's is one of the most modern and ‘cosmopolitan’ parts of the country). As our conversation progressed, we also learnt, again from the lips of the hotel-bar’s proprietor -and timidly corroborated by the Maltese-, that in Malta "everybody knows everybody" and many "are afraid to be seen entering a gay place". That is to say, the ‘tolerance’ of Maltese society has, in fact, quite narrow limits: it will ‘tolerate’ what it does not see, but stigmatize what is apparent.
"We are drowning in hypocrisy", wrote Patrick Attard on his blog shortly before the elections. He also wondered: “Why are young gays committing suicide in this country? Why are gays exiling themselves from this country? What is so bad about being gay?” Attard does not give numbers to quantify those suicides and exiles that are the product of hypocrisy, those human dramas that are the price of the peculiar ‘tolerance’ that homosexual people receive in his country... But be they as many as they may, it would still be necessary to add to them other -probably much bigger- numbers: those of inner exiles who live clandestine lives, exiled to the bottom of a gloomy closet, and those of ‘interior suicides', the frustrated lives of men and women who feel totally incapable to develop their personality in freedom and fullness, who renounce being who they really are.
Of course, it would be hypocritical of us too to pretend that such things only happen on those small and remote islands, and not in our own country. No matter how much we have advanced legally in the last parliamentary term, and socially in the last decades, there still are many gays and lesbians in Spain for whom the ‘tolerance’ of their environment is no more than a short strap tying them to a life of hipocrisy, of double morality, of concealment and shame and frustration. Here too there is a fashion for that kind of ‘tolerance’ that not only has nothing to do with respect, but is rather its opposite.
Other “Entendámonos” columns here.
Nemo
The following comments have been translated with Altavista's Babelfish.
20 comments in “Tolerancia”
1. Man,
Let us consider that is a tiny island.
by Guillermo 02-04-2008 to 09:10
2. Brilliant the article. Perhaps you would have to put in two apples a list of homófobos countries and another one of gay-friendly, and simply, to abstain us to leave too much paste to the homófobos countries while they do not change.
by yop 02-04-2008 to 11:09
3. Very good article, nemo.
In addition to interesting information, your final reflection seems to me very suitable. Any town of
These realities are much more near of which few, that live comodamente installed in their bubble of social modernity, are not able to see single meters of distance.
by Flick 02-04-2008 to 11:17
4. Good artículo… And your final paragraph could not more be guessed right.
by Mercedes 02-04-2008 to 11:21
5. That reason has east article, me has left astonished, and simultaneously it has let to me see that it is just like it happens in small cities, or towns of our country, more than nothing, because I am living one on those histories that the article tells, if I were to point of the suicide, now I take it on the inside, and I only think about that the university arrives to exiliar to me of and being able here to live with my true moral, and with which I do not have to live here, many me saldreis which who does not leave the closet it is because it does not want and the others are excuses, I I will say to you I am smaller of age, therefore I cannot go to me of house, like leaving the closet if in your group of friends these oyendo homofobos insults continuously, “que puto disgust gays of mierda”, “fua changes of channel (when fama)” is seen;, “a the bonfire todos”, “yo sent them in a boat in the middle of the sea and that occurs all by culo” there; and a long etc, that I then do I say to them that I am gay, I turn myself and passage of them until they notice that I am it and they realize of which they prefer if my friendship with the true reality, or they leave insultandome that way me as if outside an excrement since they do with the rest? and to that they say that it changes of people with whom I go I will say to them that this is not a great city and that is not possible, and if only there are 2 or 3 groups with whom it is possible that she can go, those 2 or 3 are homofobas, therefore only I have left to put a smile false, and to the change minim to turn the face, to do me open the social one so that if someday I do something outside común(para they) they think that she is by this, and finally to hope the dream to travel to another place to go to the university. And while to have to study, to have to leave ahead with a false identity, creedme that it is not easy, so it is not necessary to go away until
Greetings
by tio 02-04-2008 to 16:17
6. In my opinion, to wait for a future better is not solution. I believe that the dignity does not admit delays. The worse wound than one can receive is not the one that the others try to do, but the one that one same one is inflicted with hiding the true reality that takes inside.
If something I regret in my life is the hidden salary a time, mainly in the adolescent stage, the fact of being gay. It is, with grandísima difference, the worse option, in spite of the difficulties that can have to coexist with homófobos, which are it with greater virulence by the fact of around not knowing no gay meat and bone to his.
Nothing is worth the trouble without dignity.
by Javi (ab) 02-04-2008 to 16:50
7. I congratulate you by your article, Nemo. The question is: there will be in
A kiss.
by Fer 02-04-2008 to 16:54
8. I only meant that I identify myself to the 100% with the text of “tio”, since, I am in the same situation.
by adri 02-04-2008 to 19:09
9. adri and tio: perhaps the fact that leais this pagina (and comenteis) is already a point to your favor teneis the things clarisimas, but is necessary to know how to choose the moment.
the unica doubt that always arises is stays seguros/as of which you are not already object of ridicules although not hayais left the closet? perhaps they watch to you of another form if plantais expensive and you say to them: then I am of those. and to best the that form of miraros he is not of scorn but of admiracion. each one is a world and
by Lady Eleanore Walpole-Wilson 02-04-2008 to 19:15
10. If the majority teneis reason in which you say, but is more complicated of which it seems, in a great city cojes it loose and if they accept to you then very well, but but always you can be gone with another group, with other friends, to look for sites where acudir… but he is very different here, and in addition when you are therefore you see all black it, for that reason I wait for the arrival to the university, because I always have left the option to look for to me friends there really that they really want to me reason why really I am, if those of you are not able here to me to accept, and if sometimes I think that so that is worth to have friends who do not want to you reason why you are really, but if not it saben… In addition it is what I think collective poor man glbt maltés the truth, because if is everything as this way and in addition you have to emigrate to estranjero…
By the way adri if you want to perhaps speak tio_aragon@hotmail.com we removed something and we can be helped.
bss
by tio 02-04-2008 to 20:00
11. In addition to the data and reflections of Nemo, it agrees to remember that the authorities of
by Ricardo 02-04-2008 to 20:01
12. Many spirits for tio and adri. I suppose that living in
by Astyaro 02-04-2008 to 20:13
13. Uncle, lamentably marcharte to the University is not guarantee of which homofobia that right now surrounds to you is going to disappear. Homófobos has everywhere and of all the types. In my particular case the hirientes and degrading commentaries I had them to listen when I left my town (where the homosexulaidad was something of which simplememente it was not spoken, beyond some ridicule that another one) and I arrived at “gran ciudad” in order to study a university race.
Anyway, spirit.
by Charlie 02-04-2008 to 20:14
14. Thank you very much to all by your commentaries.
Guillermo: I had liked to make reference in my column to questions of history of
Another thing that wanted to emphasize is that “el is not unique
In any case, Malta is a country that is changing much, opening itself to Europe (from January of this same year they use euro), and that I imagine that it makes conceive hopes of which the transformations that also arrive affect, and positively, to gais and lesbians of that country and to its relation with the society: hopefully of the hypocritical tolerance towards them it is gone to the genuine respect.
15. Yop: the problem is that that to classify to the countries in “homófobos” and “gayfriendly” it implies to simplify social realities to the maximum that usually they are very complex. For example, I suppose that
In which yes I agree is in the importance of solidarity between the groups that fight by the rights, the equality and the dignity of people LGTB anywhere in the world, and in individual within the scope of the European Union, that is already our great common country.
16. Thank you very much, Flick, Mercedes, Fer. And Fer, you do not doubt ot even for a moment that also in Malta it must of having gais that they prefer to try that the homófobos throw some caramel to them (in exchange for the services that renders to them) to support to those who their dignity and its freedom defend. In all the sites it must of having them, but in reality they are quite irrelevant people, and I believe that here in DM in general we tend to give an excessive attention to them.
17. Uncle and adri: first of all, I send many spirits to you. I also grew in a small town, and she cost to me much to accept that he was gay. Soon I went it saying little by little to people of my surroundings, friends, relatives, fellow workers. I had liked braver and to be decided, not to have lost so many non-recoverable years of my vida… but good, I managed to leave there. You also will leave: I wish the greater happiness you. A greeting.
18. In agreement with post but the English is spoken by most of the population of
by Armel 02-04-2008 to 23:42
19. Certain, Armel, but in the space of a column does not fit everything. Since I have mentioned already in my answer to Guillermo (commentary of the 20:19), 76% of malteses the English speech with certain fluidity (although reason why I have been able to observe, the majority are far from being bilingual). That yes, maltés is the language that one listens habitually in the streets, the buses, the bars and restaurantes… The English also is coofficial, and is the language in which all the labels of the malteses commerce are written almost. The truth is that the situation (and the history) sociolingüística of
20. Not only in the small towns, I live in
By the way, “tio”; I have added you to msn.
Kisses
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