Do please stop protesting too much, Minister Dalli

Daphne Caruana Galizia Sunday, 20 July 2014, 11:00 Last update: about 11 years ago

Helena Dalli, Minister for Civil Liberties, spoke at a seminar called “Perspectives of Rainbow Families in Malta” and said that she is “ashamed” it took Malta “so long” to legislate for “civil unions” between people of the same gender. I think it’s time for Minister Dalli to get a grip on herself, on this matter at least, because she is being to sound fatuous.

Exactly what is she ashamed of, and where has the delay been? Malta is hardly the frontrunner in pushing the boundaries of social convention, but there again, it sits with much of the rest of the civilised and democratic world, and is no different. If Minister Dalli imagines that there is any country, anywhere in the world, in which homosexual men and women did not have precisely the same difficulties they had in Malta, even in the last couple of decades, she is dreaming. Making comparisons with life in big metropolises, in capital cities where people are anonymous and so can do pretty much as they please, is ridiculous. Amsterdam never was representative of the rest of The Netherlands. London never was representative of the rest of Britain; gay men and women had a hard time in cities in the rest of the United Kingdom because they had far less anonymity there. To suggest that New York City is the United States is laughable. Outside Paris, the French are among the most conservative people in the world – and indeed, held possibly the world’s biggest demonstration against legislation for same-sex marriage when Hollande came to power. It wasn’t that long before Malta legislated, so perhaps Hollande should give a press conference telling us how ashamed he is.

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to enact laws allowing two men or two women to marry each other, and that was just 13 years ago. It’s not as though the rest of the civilised world tripped over itself to follow suit, either. In the United States, only a smattering of states allows a form of civil union between people of the same gender, and most are not full-on marriage. So you’re ‘married’ in one state, but drive into another state and you’re not married there.

At the last count – it’s hard to keep track – only 10 EU member states besides Malta had legislated for same-sex marriage. There are another 17 which haven’t, and which have no foreseeable plans to do so. The United Kingdom legislated last year: perhaps David Cameron, too, should speak at a seminar and talk about his shame?

It is immensely irritating, too, the way Minister Dalli and her government must insist on referring to this as a civil union. When a man and woman marry civilly under Maltese law, we do not call it a civil union. We call it marriage. Precisely the same laws come into effect when two people of the same gender sign that exact same contract before an official of the Public Registry, in a ceremony that doesn’t differ to the one between a man and a woman. So why is one a civil union but the other a marriage?

It’s about perception and semantics. Joseph Muscat had said before the general election that he believes couples of the same gender should be allowed to tie the knot ‘civilly’ (he hardly has control over what churches allow) but that he believes actual marriage is for a man and a woman. Having had to stick to that but also keep the gay lobby happy in return for its having rounded up a good chunk of the Labour vote, we had the usual fiddle: marriage for same-sex couples that is identical to marriage for men and women, but with a different name: civil unions.

Elsewhere in Europe (and North America, but we needn’t go into that) a marriage is a marriage and a civil union is a civil union, and the reason they are different is not the gender of the people involved, but the rights and responsibilities inherent in the contract. Civil unions are called that because they are not marriage, with fewer rights and fewer responsibilities. If you say ‘civil union’ in Britain – which had that regime as a precursor to full-on same-sex marriage – the assumption is that your contract is different to the marriage contract.

Now in Malta, because of all this playing around with semantics to save face and keep people happy, we have people saying they are ‘marrying by civil union’. You can’t marry by civil union. You either marry, or you contract a civil union. Is this the only place in the world where an identical marriage contract and ceremony has two different names, depending on your gender?