On starting this piece, I intended largely to ignore the divorce question, after I lapsed slightly in my blog a couple of days ago after the Bishop of Gozo made one of his more fundamentalist pronouncements, but as the words flowed, my resolve weakened.

I am going to vote yes and I am entirely comfortable with my choice because we are not voting on whether the Catholic Church’s take on divorce is correct or not or on whether divorce is a morally acceptable choice or not but simply about whether civil society should have a system in place that allows individuals a free choice about how to regulate their personal affairs.

Their property and parental affairs are already catered for by the process of legal separation and the silly guff about divorce somehow affecting the children or society as a whole (any more than separation and the underlying causes of it does) is patently just that, silly guff.

All that’s going to happen, if (hopefully when) divorce is finally accepted here, is that the components of a separated couple who choose to can remarry – that this mildly dilutes the perceived solidity of marriage as we have it now is a given but it is equally, actually even more so, a given that the institute of marriage as we have it now is as rickety as it is elsewhere, starry-eyed perceptions aside.

I’ll be voting yes despite the ludicrously vague and manipulative question being put (it occurs to me, what if there are no children, would the separated couple be allowed to divorce?) (and, yes, my tongue is in my cheek) and despite the extent to which the pro-divorce lobby sets my teeth on edge, and I’ll be voting yes, apart from the direct intent of allowing divorce in, in order to push back against the erosion of the distinction between a secular and a confessional state.

I live in a western, liberal society and I want to continue living in one: priests, imams, rabbis, Jedi Knights and Buddhist monks are more than welcome to preach their faiths but, at the bottom line, I want my country to be governed by reference to appropriate values but not values mandated by any one religion or, even worse, by particular and fundamentalist interpretations of that religion.

Hopefully, once we get past this spasm, we’ll be able to take a step back and reflect on the potential of harm this debate, if you can call two sides bellowing diametrically opposite positions at each other, interspersed with sometimes shameful misdirections and thinly-veiled insults, a debate, has brought to our society. Many are predicting social and political backlashes that will harm the Church, the Nationalists, Labour and everyone and her brother, and analysing all this will be interesting but, in the meantime, it’s about time we rediscovered the virtues of tolerance and liberal (that word again) acceptance of all shades of opinion and human interaction.

Will we do so or will we lurch even further towards fundamentalism, with sanctimony, hypocrisy and stridency overturning sober debate and respect for others’ views?

If the evidence of the divorce “debate” is anything to go by, fundamentalism might be enjoying something of a spring. I use “fundamentalism” loosely and probably inaccurately, taking in attitudes that allow plays to be censored, writers to be prosecuted, artworks to be veiled (if only figuratively) and anyone perceived to be out of line to be cast into the outer darkness.

In the looming darkness of our fundamentalism, however, there are some glimmers of hope.

The backlash against the disturbingly homophobic posturing of that Gordon-John Manchè fellow, for all his protestations after the fact, demonstrates that there are among us people who are prepared to stand up to vileness.

All is not lost, yet.

At this point, writing on Wednesday evening, I paused to listen to the Irish President and Her Majesty with dignity and civility hammer a couple of enormous nails into the coffin of sectarian bigotry and hatred, hatred and bigotry that used to claim their roots, even if falsely, in the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism. If these two isms can put aside their differences, there’s hope for us.

Closer to home, the people of North Africa are giving effect to their aspirations, in their own way, vigorously pushing back against thuggish despotism and – hopefully – Islamic fundamentalism (not Islam, please note), two more isms that themselves deserve to be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, immediately if not sooner.

Enough philosophy, Horatio, let’s to nourishment and the pleasures of the digestive tract.

We were in Bologna with some excellent company over the weekend and, as you can imagine, we downed copious amounts.

The meals at Da Teresina, I Tre Poeti, Il Gallo (in Ravenna) and Il Papppagallo spring to mind, though if you’ll allow a platitude, it’s almost impossible to eat badly in Italy, so the tedium of sitting in non-reclining seats in the flying teleshopping experience known as Ryanair, where you’ll be warned as you take off to have a euro coin ready to operate the emergency exit and your credit card poised to swipe through to release the life-belt and oxygen mask, is worth undertaking. Bologna is a vibrant city, too, so we had a great time.

In town on Tuesday evening, we fetched up at Spezzo for a bite and I’m glad to report that it remains as good as it was last time I was there, a bit of a while ago. The setting is quite a fine one and big enough to chance turning up without a booking, though it was deservedly crowded when we were there.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs