I have a hunch that the current Government’s decision to introduce textbooks about gender equality in State Primary Schools is in part derived from a misreading of Michel Foucault’s book Will to Knowledge. In this trilogy on the History of Sexuality in the West, Foucault presents sexuality as a cultural construct. At the same time, in his first chapter “We, the Other Victorians”, already Foucault puts his readers on guard against concepts of State intervention in issues of sexuality. For him, (and rightly so) sexuality is a personal and private experience.

It is for this reason that Foucault attacks State intervention in matters of sexuality and associates it with the British Victorians, whose “imperial prude” fostered a culture of sexual hypocrisy. Foucault continues to state that sexual liberty started to be curtailed from the seventeenth century onwards. Definitely, in the Catholic South (but I am not sure about the North) sexuality was lived with much greater State liberty and openness prior to the Protestant Reformation to the extent that in the sixteenth-century, the Catholic Church was accused by various Reformers with all forms of sexual transgressions and obscenities. The Borgias, for example, are just the tip of the iceberg, even though, for Foucault, they neatly fall in that category of social group that he defines as sexually “liberal’ and “progressive’.

As a Marxist, Foucault attacks the Victorian bourgeoisie and accuses it of hypocrisy. For him, it was this social class that had reduced sexuality to just a reproductive function. Always in the same first chapter, Foucault also states that the Victorians stopped adults from talking to children about sex. He continues to elaborate this concept in the following chapters. In Early Modern times, children were considered as young adults, presumably meaning that sexual topics were no longer a taboo. I will not delve into this historical aspect as it requires a longer discussion, but I am ready to bet that Evarist Bartolo and his advisers are driven by this premise in forcing the teaching of gender issues and the production of a textbook, which depicts as normal homosexual and lesbian families. Therefore it follows that I and other heterosexual families must be abnormal. Perhaps, this Government wants to emulate our forbearers who lived in the Middle Ages, for according to Foucault, they were much more open to discuss sexual issues with their children than we are today. Parents, in Malta, should be grateful to this Government for wanting to take our pupils, attending State Primary Schools, back to the Middle Ages!

Nonetheless, Foucault makes other pertinent considerations. He states that the creation of a new sexual identity by the State – as our Government is trying to do - requires a new economy and a new mechanism of power. But for Foucault, mechanisms of power are synonymous with repression and repression is equivalent to Capitalism. He becomes even more direct when he affirms that sexual topics began to be repressed by the State as a result of the rise of Capitalism during the Industrial Age.

Hence sexuality must defy power to be really free from all forms of repression. In Foucault’s judgement, those in politics who start speaking about sexuality, and gender equality is an offshoot of this, are just promising bliss and liberty, when in reality they are perpetuating sexual oppression. Judging by Foucault’s logic, this new book for our primary school pupils is only going to produce a “grandiloquence of a discourse” about sexuality.

Like the Victorian bourgeoisie before, this Government thinks that the State has the power of revealing the truth about human sex. In reality, what Evarist Bartolo will be doing is just subverting the laws that govern sexuality and this is being done just to accommodate a small section of our bourgeoisie. Like the Victorians, this Government will only succeed in diffusing what Foucault has termed as ‘polymorphous sexualities’. This pretentious psychoanalytic term means perversity or the experience of sexual gratification outside socially normative sexual behaviours. This explains why these reforms are not going down well with a section of the Labour Party, in particular, those who have at heart the social democratic principles.

I have been reading Ivan Grech Mintoff’s articles in the Malta Independent on Sunday. Definitely, no one can accuse Grech Mintoff of being a Conservative, even if he is defending what some pseudo-Leftists would brand as the traditional Conservative model of the family. Nor is he betraying the Socialist spirit of his uncle. He has remained fully behind his uncle, Dom Mintoff, when the same Labour Party branded Mintoff as the greatest traitor in Maltese history. In truth, Grech Mintoff fears that these reforms are not being done for the good of the nation, or for that of the working classes, but to accommodate a small segment of our bourgeoisie, whose power Mintoff sought to destroy and yet Muscat is reinstalling in positions of trust.

Ironically, both Labour and the PN think that the bourgeoisie is more prepared to embrace these new gender positions but I am sure that soon the laws of physics will start leaving their impact and instead of creating a new sexual construct, as those supporting these theories wish to achieve, they will bring the Newtonian Law into action since for every action, there is an equal and an opposite reaction. This is another reason why the Nationalists are not making inroads in politics. Instead of keeping steadfast to their Conservative principles, which would help them to attract disillusioned Labourites, the PN still thinks that by becoming liberal, they are going to gain votes. The European Elections have already proved them wrong.

In this scenario, the Catholic Church is destined to make a comeback. Archbishop Scicluna seems adamant to make his voice heard. Evarist Bartolo and the Gay Lobby are giving him a helping hand. Labour never learns from its past mistakes. Individuals of my age still remember the overt reaction that the imposition of Arabic in schools created in Malta. I am sure that a similar reaction will ensue once parents come to terms with the Government’s textbooks about gender equality. I know of a number of Labour parents who are starting to express concern. Since the PN is taking a different stand on this matter, Labour cannot accuse the Church or Archbishop Scicluna of taking this stand to give support (or a helping hand) to the Nationalist Party.

The sole winner in this mess is going to be the Catholic Church and for this she should be eternally grateful to Evarist Bartolo and the Gay Movement for helping her regain relevance once again.