This country seems to swing radically between uptight conservatism and an “anything goes” mentality leading one to wonder whether this is indeed a schizophrenic nation.
An example of a very laissez-faire attitude was demonstrated on Sunday morning during the TV programme Ħadd Għalik on PBS, when transvestites and women who are gay took part in this light-hearted quiz. We wish to emphasise at the outset that this should not be taken as a judgemental statement against the people who took part, nor even a criticism of the producers for choosing these contestants. The programme is, however, simply being used as a way to point out the inherent contradictions which can be seen everywhere you look.
On the one hand we have the secular part of the country struggling to break away from the influence of the Church, while the more traditional forces are anxiously clamping down on anything which can be viewed as a threat to the status quo. It is clear that, on the issue of divorce, the conservative faction has found its voice and seems to be swelling in numbers every day. Any argument, no matter how feeble, is being used to decry the negative effects which divorce will supposedly have on this country and people of all age groups are being roped in to hammer this message home.
For those on the other side of the fence, who believe in a clear separation of Church and state, this insistence on dragging religion into a civil rights’ debate feels alarmingly like fundamentalism, even though the genuinely devout object to this term.
It is within this context that the Sunday morning programme stood out so glaringly. For here, during what is family viewing time on the national station, we had people whose lifestyle choices are certainly not in tune with what seems like the conservative majority.
How can we reconcile these two very different sides of the coin of the same country? Why is there such tolerance for a gay lifestyle and even for cohabitating couples (who speak on TV quite openly about their separation, their new partners and their children from a new relationship) and yet there is such intolerance towards the idea of legitimising the new relationship with the word ‘marriage’?
One wonders whether there is a deeper psychological (and sociological) resistance to divorce than the No lobby would care to admit. Perhaps it is because, if divorce is introduced, the new second families will acquire the same status as the original family, a legitimacy which would be very galling for the spouses who have been abandoned. There are traces and subtle indications that this is really at the core of a lot of the objections to divorce. The Family Day celebrated at Ta’ Qali on Sunday harped on ‘good family values’ as if to imply that those who are separated and have set up a new family do not belong in this category. The fact is that thousands of ‘new’ families in Malta are being socially ostracised if not deliberately, at least by insinuation, and most definitely in the eyes of the law.
It is here that our national schizophrenia is most apparent: Alternative lifestyle choices are given wide exposure on Malta’s most watched shows, yet the legislation which can remove the stigma for cohabiting couples is being blocked.