Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 00:01 by Ivan Fenech
Parliament approved the Transgender Bill a year after the Civil Unions Bill. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli
It was April 1, so there was slight hope it was a joke. Alas, it was not. Our Parliament, in its last sitting at the Palace before it rose for a month-long Easter recess, approved the so-called Gender Identity Bill.
It was a unanimous vote, although two-thirds of the Opposition were not there. Maybe they were ashamed, and rightfully so. They should be.
The Nationalist Party has capitulated to the gay lobby in the same way it once gave in to hunters. It is making the same mistake all over again.
Appeasement does not work because the appeasement of any lobby is a betrayal of the values the party should promote.
What we have today is a ramshackle gender law that makes a mockery of sexual identity, makes a mockery of marriage and a mockery of our very society.
In a nutshell, what this law says is that anyone, literally anyone, can walk into a notary’s office, declare he would like to change sex, decide upon a new name and, voilà, the government will, in true Orwellian style, change all official documentation according to the new preferred sex.
It is like your old self never existed. A takeaway identity service, compliments of Labour. This is not an April Fool’s joke.
This law the PN has just voted for to its great shame (Labour doesn’t have any) is a humiliating capitulation to the gay lobby.
Labour’s mockery of the PN, over its wimpish stand on civil unions, has hit home. Labour has got the PN exactly where it wants it: muzzled. It can now fulfil the promises it made to the gay movement, without any opposition.
Malta Gay Rights Movement chief, Gabi Calleja, already in a celebratory mood in February, said the new transgender legislation would usher in an overhaul of government policies that affect “all aspects of life”.
As an example, Calleja said schools would have to do away with expecting girls to wear skirts and boys trousers as part of their uniform. Is she serious?
Evidently she is because her ally, Equal Opportunities Minister Helena Dalli, said much the same thing, and worse, in winding up the parliamentary debate on transgender legislation.
Dalli thinks that making life easier for transgender people – which is essentially a good thing if done responsibly – has all to do with human rights. She is wrong. It has nothing to do with rights.
Her muddled thinking is immensely worrying because she is in power, aided by an Education Minister who moved a private member’s Bill on the same lines under the previous administration.
In the name of tolerance, human rights and gay gibberish, these two Labour ministers are now targeting schoolchildren, our children. This is very serious.
Dalli was neither coherent nor convincing in Parliament when she spoke of how she plans to see the education system promote her liberal agenda – which is really the gays’ agenda.
She said it was important for children to learn about equality and see it applied in practice: “What are we to do? Do we not teach them about science, about equality? Are we to stop teaching about evolution?”
Our Equal Opportunities Minister seems to think that Labour’s degenerate liberal thinking, a dolled up human rights transvestite, is actually a science.
Our Equal Opportunities Minister thinks that Labour’s degenerate liberal thinking, a dolled up human rights transvestite, is a science
She said: “And if the parents believe that the earth is flat, are we to deny our [sic] children what science tells us, when we are speaking of human rights?… If we want [society] to advance, we need to catch them young.”
The PN, in voting for the transgender Bill, is tacitly approving all of this.
Nationalist MP Clyde Puli justified his party’s vote in favour of this irresponsible Bill by saying the PN wanted to show compassion towards people who are suffering.
Then he went on to point out areas of concern in the Bill, for which he got absolutely no answers from Dalli. And, yet, his party voted for it.
Puli was concerned at how someone can just walk into a notary’s office and declare a sex change, without any professional advice.
In her very condescending reply, Dalli disagreed that anyone (presumably a professional) needed to certify someone else as transsexual and claimed it infringed some imaginary human right.
No one needed to declare me a female, the minister exclaimed. Well, no one, apart from the midwife.
Puli asked what would happen if a man unknowingly married someone who had had a sex change but did not know because of data protection.
Dalli replied that she did not think that a couple planning marriage would hold such secrets from each other. Really?
What happened, Puli also asked, if a sportsman changed his official gender and wanted to take part in the women’s category? Again, Dalli had no answer other than some muffled reply about hormone treatments (or something of the sort) because the more she threw in those liberal buzzwords the less sense she made.
If a married person decides to change gender, Puli asked, would this not mean that we are effectively legalising gay marriage?
We recognise gay marriage already if it takes place abroad, the minister replied. “Marriage is a vocation, so who are we to tell anyone their marriage is over?”
And, yet, Puli, or, at least, his party, because he apparently wasn’t there, voted for this Bill.
The sad reality is that people expect much better of the PN than they expect of Labour because Labour is the product of the uneducated working class, which provides most of its votes, combined with the vote of vested interest groups like the gay lobby, who have taken over the party.
In bringing together so many diverse and often contradictory interest groups, Labour assured itself a handsome win at the last election. And now the PN appears to want to ape it. If it does that, it would betray the very values that kept in power for a quarter century.
On the Civil Unions Bill, the PN tried to stay on the fence, with abysmal results. In taking a weak stand, it allowed this amoral government to introduce gay adoption when it had no mandate.
On the hunting referendum, it has again tried to remain on the fence and, in a few days, we shall know how wise that decision was.
On the transgender Bill, the PN went the whole hog and took a position in favour, with an endless list of caveats that remained unanswered by an Equal Opportunities Minister, who is flattered by European civil rights organisations that egg her on to take Malta into uncharted waters, which even the most liberal European countries dare not venture into.
Dalli thinks she is pioneering a transgender Bill that will serve as a beacon for other EU states. It shall not. They will learn from our mistakes and avoid them.
Society, and most especially our children, will pay the price for this irresponsibility and the PN is an accomplice.
True, it was wrong that most Nationalist MPs, including their leader, were away from Parliament when this infamous law was passed. They should have been there to vote against the Bill, on principle.
In this perverse world run by gay pressure, the PN has found itself apologising because most of its MPs were not there for the vote. The PN has buckled under.
Just because Labour lost its political values to votes, must the PN now do the same and give in to gay pressure?
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