What is it about this country that turns rational men and women into drama queens the moment there is a disagreement about a national issue, particularly if it touches on religion? Is it so difficult to discuss divorce for what it is? Namely, a civil right, pure and simple.

At the most basic level, a new civil right – like divorce – is best discussed in terms of what it gives to those who need it, in addition to what they already enjoy from current legislation. Neither those who are thinking of leaving a troubled marriage nor those who have separated need divorce to act.

Not only is it legal to separate, but the state intervenes to legalise separations. Effectively, the Maltese state is already party to the renegotiation of a broken marriage contract in order to accommodate the new reality that a married couple are no longer, well, a couple. And of course, the absence of divorce does not prevent people from cohabiting after a separation.

Divorce would barely have an effect – except in inheritance matters – on the rights of children born out of wedlock or to cohabiting couples. The fact that one out of every four Maltese children is born out of wedlock should bring those living on cloud nine down to earth.

So, the state does not prevent separations, puts its stamp of approval on separation contracts and does not prevent cohabitation or stigmatise children born out of wedlock.

But there is more. For more than a decade, various measures have been taken – ironically, by politicians who oppose divorce – to give cohabitating couples more rights, effectively bringing them closer at law to married couples. Indeed, the attempt to legally regulate cohabitation goes as far back as 1998, and Eddie Fenech Adami was its proponent.

The issue that remains then is this, and only this. How is cohabitation legislation going to be different from and better than divorce?

For all the name-calling, cloak and dagger politicking, potted histories, invocations of the son of God and ladies not turning, it all boils down to a matter of cold, rational legislation. Choosing what is best between competing goods.

In this sense, the ball is in the court of those who are opposing divorce. It is they who have to justify why cohabitation legalisation is fairer and more just to a man and a woman who wish to remarry than divorce, and offers better protection of the rights of all the parties concerned.

And herein lies the crux of the matter. If cohabitation legislation will continue, as it has done over the last decade, to remove the legal difference – in terms of taxation, social security, inheritance rights, pensions, the stuff laws regulate – between a cohabiting and a married couple, divorce would have been introduced in everything but name.

And that would be so typically Maltese wouldn’t it? Zwieg Bla Divorzju is a name that might strike a chord with the faithful in the pews at Sunday Mass. But I doubt whether Poġġuti Bla Zwieġ, which is exactly what this movement is proposing, would send them dancing in the aisles chanting hallelujah.

Some might object that divorce affects everyone, not just those who wish to remarry. Divorce, the argument goes, undermines the marriage bond by making it breakable.

Not quite. It is not just that no one will be compelled to divorce. Nor is it that the law can never mend what the matrimonial home breaks.

Neither is it that the absence of divorce has not stopped the number of Maltese men and women separating and cohabiting from increasing. The Church itself estimates that the figure will hit 35,000 in four years’ time.

There are two deeper points. First, if a man (or a woman) who is about to get married is comforted by the thought that if things don’t work out he can always swipe the divorce card, my humble conclusion is that he is not ready or fit for marriage or is about to marry the wrong woman, not that divorce is wrong.

Secondly, I grant that the will of the majority can, in certain instances, constitute sufficient grounds for denying a minority civil right. Nevertheless, the civil right to remarry entails one of the most basic, private and life-determining decisions a person takes in a lifetime. A European state should be careful even to tiptoe towards this decision, let alone march over it with black boots.

Denying the right to remarry simply because the majority doesn’t want it for religious reasons – and let’s be honest, for all the verbiage and intellectual gymnastics, this is what the on-the-ground debate in Malta is all about – would be a blow to what we understand contemporary European democracies to be all about.

As I recall, in 2003 we voted ‘yes’ to look north to Europe, not east to the Philippines.