Love makes a family

In your leader of December 19, on the occasion of the festive season, you invited your readers to reflect on a myriad of issues ranging from the significance of Christmas to the purpose of our existence. You advocated selfless generosity, as opposed to donations given simply under the pretext of getting a prize in return. Last but not least, you reminded your readers of the importance of strengthening their families and helping their neighbour in need.

All of this is indeed to be lauded and one cannot but agree fully with the general gist of it. However, it is sad to note that yet again these good considerations have been coupled with preoccupations over the ongoing erosion of Christian values, both in Malta and in Europe, which are then conveniently blamed on certain sectors of our community, foremost among them sexual minorities.

In your editorial you claim that this 'attack' on Christian values is to be blamed on efforts all over Europe, and now also in Malta, to sanction what you brand as "fundamentally self-contradictory proposals like gay 'marriage'."

What is self-contradictory about gay marriage, may we ask? Is the fact that two individuals are of the same sex such an overriding factor in determining the strength and value of their love? What we find contradictory is that on the one hand we call for social solidarity, social inclusion, the strengthening of our families and "helping the neighbour in need", while on the other we advocate the continuing social exclusion of some families that do not fall within our narrow definition of the family.

It is very convenient for society at large to blame its failure to preserve the institution of traditional marriage on a vulnerable social group. Your readers should perhaps reflect on the fact that much before calls for the granting of some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples started to be made locally, traditional heterosexual marriages were already encountering unprecedented problems, and separations had already become the order of the day. Claiming that granting some form of legal recognition to gay couples might accelerate this trend is nothing short of preposterous, and whoever makes such claims should perhaps start thinking about substantiating their erroneous claims.

In research published in July, Lee Badgett, associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, has found out that, contrary to what has been claimed to sustain the argument in favour of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment in the US Senate, the number of children born out of wedlock in the Netherlands started going up well before that country adopted de facto same-sex marriage in 1997. Therefore, no correlation exists between the two developments.

Badgett's study, titled Will Providing Marriage Rights to Same-Sex Couples Undermine Heterosexual Marriage? was published by the Council on Contemporary Families and the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies.

Badgett also discredited claims by Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the conservative think tank Hoover Institution, that registered same-sex partnerships established in the late 1980s in Scandinavia contributed significantly to the decline of heterosexual marriage in that region. It has been found that straight marriage rates in Denmark actually increased after adoption of same-sex marriage. They are now the highest they have been since the early 1970s.

Furthermore, the majority of families with children in Scandinavia and the Netherlands are still headed by married heterosexual parents. It is crystal clear that the recognition of same-sex unions does not, in any way, harm heterosexual unions. Furthermore, the banning of same-sex unions does nothing to strengthen the opposite-sex version.

Yet another point which needs to be addressed is the issue of everyone's right to live freely his or her life in a democratic society. You complain that some "Christians who cling to their faith" are being labelled fundamentalists in Europe and that they are being discriminated against. This might be interpreted as a reference to recent events surrounding Italian Commissioner-designate Rocco Buttiglione. You fail to mention however that no-one has a 'right' to occupy a political post, but that one is given that honour only if he or she enjoys the confidence of whoever has the right to elect him, in this case, the European Parliament.

Surely no one would dare say that it is a case of discrimination on the ground of personal conviction if the Maltese do not elect someone to Parliament because of his/her support for abortion or euthanasia!

We rush to cry foul when alleged discrimination happens against someone within our ranks, but fail to even acknowledge the difficulties that are caused by the real discrimination many stable gay couples in our country are forced to face in their everyday lives in areas ranging from employment to health care and fiscal benefits.

Yet perhaps you might dwell for a minute on the fact that despite all these adversities, these couples manage to stay together, because ultimately it is love and mutual commitment which makes a family.

Demands for the legal protection of all of our families by gay lobbies across Europe is no 'disguised' attack on traditional family values. On the contrary it is a celebration of those same values, because one would not want to share in something unless they value it. It is the effort to exclude vulnerable groups from the protection of the law and the enjoyment of the right to family life without discrimination which goes against values such as solidarity and justice and which is, ultimately, unChristian.