PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 22, 2012 AT 4:21PM
Malta Today reports Malta Gay Rights Movement coordinator Gabi Calleja as saying that Labour recognises the need for more equality and urging “the gay community to weigh up its options properly and vote wisely in the forthcoming general election”.
How Ms Calleja made the leap of imagination from Joseph Muscat saying that he recognises the need for more equality to Joseph Muscat actually planning to do something about it is quite beyond me.
I believe they call it wishful thinking.
In terms of what needs to be done to give state recognition to homosexual relationships and to permit homosexual couples to adopt children – and this is what it is all about, because there is nothing else left to deal with – the political parties are at par.
They have exactly the same stance on both. This is ‘No’ and ‘No’. The Labour Party has no policy documents we can look at, so we have to go by the pronouncements of the Labour leader, which are more than clear.
He does not agree with marriage for homosexuals, and he does not agree with allowing homosexual couples to adopt children.
The furthest he will go is some kind of registered union, but definitely not marriage.
He said so. Clearly. Is there scope for wishful thinking here? No, there is not.
Are his pronouncements any different to the Nationalist Party’s stance? No, they are not.
They are exactly the same.
The difference is that the Nationalist Party does not take a used-car salesman approach to going after the votes of the gullible.
There is another difference. The Nationalist Party is not homophobic and most of its support base tends not to be homophobic either. The only openly gay member of parliament is Nationalist.
The Labour Party is inherently homophobic because of its socio-cultural background and totalitarian political roots. Its politicians use words like ‘pufta’ and believe that calling people ‘pufta’ is the ultimate insult. In this, they are a reflection of their support-base, which uses sexual denigration out of habit.
The Labour Party set up a political ghetto for gay people, grouping them with transsexuals and others they obviously consider ‘abnormal’, and treating them as special cases. The Nationalist Party doesn’t give a damn about the sexuality of its people – and that’s meant in a positive way – and doesn’t bother considering whether a person is homosexual or heterosexual when integrating them into the party structure.
The Labour Party, on the other hand, makes special cases of its token gays, while leaving the rest comfortably in the Super One closet, with the Vileda rubber gloves and mop-and-bucket.
Some Forum Zghazagh Laburisti twit cooed on Facebook about how he and Cyrus Engerer – the only Labour gay man who isn’t in the closet precisely because he came direct from the Nationalist Party – were saying only the other day how wonderful it was to see “a gay and a Muslim” chatting together on a sofa at the Labour congress.
A gay and a Muslim. I try to imagine a context in which I might look at my friends and think of them as ‘a gay and a Muslim’ rather than as, say, Joe and Soraya. And I can’t. That’s because I don’t think of them a ciphers for their religion or sexuality, as Labour does.
Yet for some reason, it’s Labour’s atavistic attitude to ‘pufti’ and special treatment for ‘pufti’, as though you are somehow crippled because you prefer to have sexual relations with those of the same gender, that Gabi Calleja prefers.
How very odd.
There’s more, of course. You have to be truly unintelligent to look at your own selfish aims (and yet get even these wrong) while failing to consider the bigger picture.
Look where that got Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
Telling gay people to vote Labour because Labour believes in equality is like telling them to sink a ship to drown a rat on board.
Imagine asking people to elect a Labour government for five whole long years, with a Super One hack as prime minister and Mintoff’s favourite boy as senior cabinet minister, with no policies and with the seeds of economic disaster already being scattered about, just so that Gabi Calleja can feel more equal.
And equal to what, anyway? If she thinks that Joseph Muscat is going to legislate so that she can marry her lover, she’s howling at the moon.
Gabi Calleja seems like a nice person, and unfortunately, the nice are too easily eaten for breakfast by the not-so-nice.
As for the propaganda that “the gay community” has swung towards Labour because Joseph Muscat is so great about gays, forget it. All the gay men and women shouting on Facebook about how wonderful Joseph Muscat is, and how they are planning to vote Labour, come from Mintoffian families to start with.
I know exactly what I’m talking about.
They would have voted for Muscat anyway. But they’re not going to tell you that, because then they’ll have to admit in public that their voting history includes Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici for prime minister, Alfred Sant for prime minister, and if they’re old enough, Mintoff for prime minister.
They’re happy to boast about their support for Joseph, but they’re not going to tell you about their parents’ rabid support for Dom Mintoff (or theirs, because mmaaaaaaa, it’s too embarrassing).
They’ll even have to admit that they voted against EU membership. And that’s not going to be great for their street cred and cool Facebook rating, is it.
Sensible gay men and women from non-Mintoffian family backgrounds think pretty much as I do about Labour, and make no mistake about it.
Those who consider homosexuals to be one great, undifferentiated mass – and here Gabi Calleja and her lobby group are guilty as charged – are committing the same wrongs they argue against.
We’re talking here of ordinary people like all others, with lives, attitudes and opinions that are as different and differentiated as those of everyone else.
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