Our love now dares speak its name

In the past few weeks your newspaper's letters pages have served as a catalyst for a healthy discussion on a number of gay issues, including same-sex marriage or unions.

However, it is sad to note that some contributors have based their arguments on misconceptions, erroneous assumptions or incorrect facts. In so doing, maybe unwittingly, they have hurt the sentiments of individuals who are already suffering enough as a result of social stigma as well as the exclusion and discrimination it leads to.

For instance, it is painful for a gay man or a lesbian to have a heterosexual urging him or her not to 'practise homosexuality'. Even the choice of words reveals the sheer ignorance of people who rush to write on gay issues when it is evident that they have no understanding of what being gay means.

Very often, these contributors attempt to devalue "homosexual love" by equating homosexuality with criminal inclinations such as a disposition to commit violent acts. Unlike the latter, however, homosexuality does not harm anyone at all.

Allow me to start from the basic notion that gays and lesbians are human beings. You should take nothing for granted with people who have gone as far as giving us tags such as "sexual perverts", "very horrid and anti-social people" and "a threat to society", and who have tried to associate us with paedophiles and serial killers.

Gays and lesbians are people who are naturally attracted to members of their own sex. Therefore, in the same manner that a straight person falls in love with members of the opposite sex and may decide to build a stable relationship with one of them, a gay or lesbian person falls in love with persons of the same sex and may decide to build a stable relationship with one of them. As things stand, while the State gives legal recognition to heterosexual relationships, until now it fails to do so with regard to unions between same-sex couples.

Now what does telling a gay person not to "practise" his or her homosexuality actually mean? Nothing except that they should refrain from directing their love to a single individual, which is tantamount to keeping back from being fully alive. It is like having the right-handed majority telling the left-handed minority that they would be accepted as long as they keep the fact to themselves and refrain from writing!

It's hard to know how it feels if you have grown up with your love towards your partner being sanctioned and celebrated by society. Maybe one could try to reverse the situation in one's mind. Imagine society telling you, a man or woman attracted to members of the opposite sex, that you should not "practise" your heterosexuality and that you should repress your romantic and sexual attraction to your partner and lead a celibate, single life until death.

Unfortunately many of those anti-gay writers who are so keen to talk about gay issues find it easy to write about love between adults of the same sex in a derogatory manner, as if it were simply a lustful affair, and to relegate it to a lower plane than heterosexual love.

The fact is that, in spite of all the social pressures, hundreds of gay couples remain together in committed relationships. As anyone in a long-term relationship can vouch, two people can only keep their relationship alive through love, commitment and communication.

A homosexual relationship cannot be reduced simply to a sexual relationship. It is based on exactly the same human emotion that heterosexual relationships are based upon, that is love.

There is no heterosexual or homosexual love. Love is one, and a loving relationship between two people can never be inferior to a loving relationship between two other people simply because those involved happen to be of the same sex.

Another thing that hurts gays and lesbians is the assumption by some correspondents that a section of the population, the majority, has a divine right to impose its own values on the rest of society. It is clear that, in its bid to have same-sex marriages or unions introduced in Malta as well, the gay lobby in no way wants to interfere with heterosexuals' right to get married. So why should heterosexuals want to deny us our own right to have our relationships sanctioned by the State? We are not second-class citizens, or are we?

The experience in other countries where same-sex marriage or civil unions have been introduced has shown that, by granting same-sex couples their right, the State would not be harming the traditional version of marriage. On the other hand, by failing to sanction gay unions the State would be doing nothing to save traditional marriage from the crisis it has ended up in.

The granting of legal recognition to same-sex couples would, on the other hand, make things easier for gay and lesbian couples to form stable family units. It would also send a positive signal that would encourage more of the thousands of gay and lesbian persons on the Maltese Islands to come out of the closet instead of leading a double life, with all the hardships it entails.

Last summer's Pride March in Valletta, for example, showed that the majority of the country's gay and lesbian community are still afraid to publicly state their sexual identity and to take a public stand in favour of their rights. The introduction of gay marriage or civil unions will lead to more people leading a fulfilled life within the framework of a stable relationship. It is much easier for an assertively gay person than for someone who is in the closet to give out his or her full potential at home, at work, and in society.

At the end of the day, the biggest beneficiary when the State finally grants legal recognition to same-sex marriage will be society itself.