Back in February, well before the pro- and anti-divorce campaigns kicked off, Labour leader Joseph Muscat had told this newspaper that while he was in favour, on a personal level, of the introduction of divorce to Malta, he would seek to bring people around to his way of thinking “by persuasion, not imposition”.

That is exactly what he has done, and what did so well last Sunday when he advocated, in the clearest of terms, that divorce is a civil right the country owes itself and its people. Some have called it political cowardice but we beg to differ, we see the decision as an act of political responsibility and poles apart from the governing party’s insistence to politicise the issue to the extent that it has.

And while we have not always agreed with Dr Muscat on a number of issues, here we have to concur with him wholeheartedly and appeal to others to take a page out of his book.

Is the anti-divorce campaign, the campaign at large and not necessarily that embarked upon by the official lobby – Moviment Żwieġ Bla Divorzju - about coercing, through emotional and religious blackmail, the public to vote against divorce, or is it about fostering an intelligent debate?

Is it about persuasion or imposition?

In the last weeks we have seen some deplorable behaviour on the part of members of the clergy, the governing, and staunchly anti-divorce, Nationalist Party’s media machine and from the more fundamentalist offshoots of the wider anti-divorce movement.

As a newspaper, we have made our stance on the issue perfectly clear in that we favour the introduction of divorce purely as a civil right that, morally, must be granted to one of the country’s minorities, and our stance has not changed. But that does not mean that we do not want an intelligent debate from all parties on the issue.

But, with the general exception of the anti-divorce lobby, the debate being conducted by the splinter anti-divorce groups, some of which are known and some of which are not, is really anything but.

We will not delve into the very questionable merits of the parodies of pro-divorce billboards created by persons unknown that are doing the rounds by email and Facebook. Some of these, it has to be said, are particularly nasty and have absolutely no place in any kind of civilised debate.

On the front page of today’s issue we carry a story about priests refusing confession, house blessings and communion to those members of the flock who, when asked before things get underway, say they intend voting in favour of divorce.

The reports of such behaviour reached our offices comes in the wake of what many considered to have been a hijacking of the solemnity of Our Lady of Sorrows, when the occasion was used by several parishes to forward an anti-divorce message. The initiative was taken perhaps worse by the staunchly devout than by those who were not in attendance.

Whether these incidents reflect a central strategy being employed by the Church or not, they are counterproductive to their own cause. If there is no such central strategy, the Church should step in and correct the behaviour of its renegade priests since this kind of behaviour, quite frankly, does the cause they are championing, and indeed the Church itself, no good whatsoever.

This week we had the story of the Nationalist newspaper in-Nazzjon refusing paid advertising from the pro-divorce lobby. The act is utterly deplorable from a newspaper, which should at least give the impression of being pluralistic. But not only that, the same media house also comes out with stories such as that, on Friday, of how some Labourites have been annoyed at the party media outlet’s thrust in favour of divorce.

Hands up if there is anyone who does not know of a Nationalist upset over their party’s unrelenting, tunnel-vision stance against divorce at all costs - even at the potential cost of the next general election.

All this is the mere tip of the iceberg and matters are expected to escalate considerably over the coming three weeks, and we appeal for a rational debate in the weeks to come and for matters to not degenerate further.

But against this backdrop there is one pro-divorce lobby, drastically underfunded by way of comparison, which has so far appealed to the electorate’s reason. It has so far fought the fair fight and we have no doubt whatsoever that it will continue to do so.

After all, this is not a political battle, however much some would like it to be, nor is it a battle for souls. It is a battle of rationality against irrationality and one, to paraphrase one of our journalist-columnist Stephen Calleja, one of a very small David against a well-armed and daunting Goliath.

It is, purely simply, a fight for the institution of a basic civil right that, quite frankly, the country and its people have been denied for far too long now. Let’s keep the gloves on and keep it a fair fight.