At first sight, Friday’s Xarabank was a freak show: it had its gay, its lesbian, its priest, its right-wing MP who is also a hunter, its independent-minded doctor, and its Bible-thumper.
Put that lot together, shake well and stir and you get… moral relativism writ large.
One has to make a conscious effort and do a constant reality check: can this panel be seen, in any way, as representing Maltese society? Or is it so detached from real society as to represent a very distorted view of what Maltese society is all about?
On the other hand, to be fair, there is always the risk that to refuse to consider minorities such as gays and lesbians for the sole reason they represent a tiny minority could contribute to the majority continuing to ride roughshod over the rights and realities of such minorities.
But to deal with delicate matters such as gay and lesbian lives and the way they are or are not allowed to live their lives as they see fit in the way it was tackled last Friday, is not just a disservice to the way the country needs to discuss serious issues, but ultimately also a disservice to the rights of the gays and lesbians themselves. Do the producers really think that showing a Maltese engaging in a gay marriage in Amsterdam could contribute in any way to the serene and objective assessment of what gay rights are all about?
On the contrary, all that such discussions promote is moral relativism where everyone is encouraged to say what he feels, no matter how outrageous, no matter how the next speaker may disagree, on the principle that everyone is entitled to his opinion and that anyone can have whatever opinion without any need to really examine one’s opinion in the only way possible: by defending one’s opinion against a contrary one.
But on Xarabank there is no possibility of having a real confrontation of ideas. It is everyone shouting the wildest inanities at the top of one’s voice without listening to any other, and without examining and discussing whatever is said. That is precisely why such discussions, rather than bring minds together to discuss an issue and to come to some common ground, just promote wilder and wilder lifestyles, wilder and wilder statements leaving people with an enlarged moral relativism at the end of the programme.
And then, just to show that discussing gay and lesbian lifestyles isn’t enough, the programme slipped to discussing religion and the Bible. Even here, or rather especially here, the discussion was so superficial as to be even more dangerous. Peppi Azzopardi asking a believer in Sola Scriptura if she believes what St Paul said – that no woman should dare speak – was flippant and demonstrated barely disguised chauvinism.
Those who know Fr Anthony Gouder personally can vouch he is not the ogre or the intransigent cleric he is so many times type-cast as on such programmes.
In this regard we now have, on the letter pages of The Times, the current debate between Professor Peter Serracino Inglott and Fr Rene Camilleri (and Fr Mark Montebello as well now) on the relative importance of the Scriptures, Tradition, and philosophy, what could plausibly be described as the written version of the Xarabank controversies with everyone saying his bit and none the wiser.
The country is so in need of clarity and values and such discussions where no one is the wiser afterwards only serve to obfuscate minds. Nor does it serve to urge the return to the Faith of the Fathers for this, pace the new archbishop and St Gorg Preca, no longer represents the way that unites the whole people of Malta together, regretfully or otherwise.
Still, it should be still possible for us as a nation to avoid leading this country into the abyss of moral relativism where anything goes, if we all, media in primis, seek clarity of thought and no shortcuts anywhere, not even the shortcuts that may give us the best soundbites. By shouting at each other, by interrupting each other, by refusing to listen to each other, by competing to see who can most shock the public audience, we are doing the country no service at all.