The campaign to abolish marriage on this tiny island of Malta is now close to success.
It is amazing how quickly it has happened and how a small, yet determined, group of extremists has found its way to smash a centuries old institution in just a matter of a few years.
The latest blow – civil marriage for gay couples – is indeed cunning. Politicians love to pretend they are giving when they are, in fact, taking away. It also suits them to portray the defenders of marriage as intolerant bigots. This new plan of theirs achieves both these things at once.
By giving the privileges of marriage to homosexuals the government is, in effect, destroying the meaning of marriage. The government had already dented its meaning when it gave the privileges of marriage to two people who chose to set up house together on far less stringent conditions than those demanded of married couples.
The privileges of marriage are now about to be extended to homosexual couples. Very conveniently, anyone who objects is smeared as a ‘homophobe’ when, in fact, the argument is about something else altogether.
Marriage has privileges because it is valuable to society. Married couples were granted respectability, security, legal protection and tax breaks in return for making a binding public commitment to do something brave, difficult and immensely valuable for society.
If those privileges are given to everyone, they cease to be privileges.
The promise to stay together for better or worse meant that children could grow up in a stable home which all research shows is the best thing for them.
This life-long commitment of a man and a woman in marriage gave stability to society and to their country.
In a way, it also provided them with a little realm where decisions could be made in a safe and secure environment without government interference.
This was best put by, of all people, D.H. Lawrence, author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, who said: “It is marriage which has given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the state; given him his foothold of independence on which to stand and resist an unjust state.”
And he warned: “Break it and you will have to go back to the overwhelming dominance of the state, which existed before the Christian era.”
We live in an age of ever-increasing state interference in our lives. The law pokes its nose into our homes in ways undreamt of 40/50 years ago, and is taking a growing interest in what we say and think as well as what we do!!
Global big business regards us as fodder, scorning our private needs and turning every day into a working day, something which even Stalin did not succeed in doing!
These forces see the married family as a stumbling block.
The state wants to take over the roles of husband and father, making more and more people reliant on it – not knowing how to cope without it.
Both business and the state want mothers out at work, encouraging them to leave children with carers, if they don’t want the very soon available option of having an abortion. (It is in the pipeline!)
With such giant allies, the ultra-feminists are in sight of achieving what they think they have always wanted; a life without any ties or commitments – a country without marriage, family life, fathers or husbands.
I wonder if they will like it when they get it!
Dr Messina Ferrante is a dentist and former PN Local Council candidate