Adulthood is such an important stage. It implies that the individual has become his or her own man or woman. The person is now autonomous; a value that should be cherished dearly.
It is not only individuals that appreciate adulthood. Populations yearn to be treated as adults. Many enlightened liberals and progressives will swear that the Maltese people have been kept in the infantile state by the backward Catholic Church that did this country untold harm, they say. However the chains of childlike servitude will now be broken and thrown into the rubbish bin of history.
Our government has declared that it wants to graciously bestow on us, citizens of this benighted republic, the state of adulthood.
From this day onwards, the Minister for Justice, solemnly declared recently, the Maltese will be treated as adults.
The context was the publication of the government’s proposal to allow the vilification of religion and pornography, including the opening of sex shops.
Does this imply that the vilification of God Almighty is a sign of mature adulthood?
Or does the adulthood bit apply only to the pornography part of the legislation? Maltese adults will now be able to go to the high street of their village to buy what they need to ecstatically experience their very own Fifty Shades of Grey dreams.
Bedrooms will stop being humdrum places where relationships go to die and many marriages will thus be saved. Though, truth be said, it is strange that the government is all out for sex shops when people buy stuff from the internet and not from physical shops.
However, the dean of the Faculty of Laws, Kevin Aquilina, wrote in the Times of Malta that there are hidden pleasures yet to come when the proposal becomes a law. According to the learned academic whom the government appointed on several of its law commissions the proposed legislation includes the legalisation of pornography and the possible licensing of pornographic television stations.
Vilification of God and indulging in pornography are the two activities that accompanied the government’s gracious bestowal of the state of adulthood on each and every one of us.
However, he who graciously bestows something can also arbitrarily restrain it.
Journalists tell you that the government has generally to be dragged kicking and screaming before it decides to release information
The government decried that while we are adult enough to freely sell, buy or watch porn on TV, our eyes are not adult enough to behold the myriad agreements signed in our names and on our behalf. These have been placed under lock and key lest their content contaminates the innocence of the newly acquired state of adulthood.
Knowing what the government agreed with the Autobuses de Leon is thus verboten. If you cry too much to be allowed to see the agreements with Socar, prepare to have your wrist slapped. The agreements concluded with Electrogas are none of our business. The list is legion. We pay for all of these – and we pay very dearly indeed – but we are not adult enough to know what we are paying for.
The government had promised to bare all in front of our eyes since nothing should be hidden from adult eyes. The Freedom of Information Act was activated with fanfares galore. But journalists tell you that the government has generally to be dragged kicking and screaming before it decides to release information.
But don’t worry, journalists are known to be an ungrateful lot of nosey bunch.
They do not appreciate the fact that our father the government knows best and we should be eternally grateful for saving us the inconvenience of having to go through these thick and monotonous tomes written in technical jargon. Some, though, very ungratefully ask to see more.
Children are to be seen but not heard, the adage goes. Since we are now adults we will definitively be heard and not just seen. We are emboldened to say our piece.
The government has, for example, just launched a consultative process to listen to what all stakeholders have to say about the Embryo Protection Act, which is being referred to by government as the IVF law. The consultation is ongoing but the Prime Minister told Malta Today that he has already decided what the law should include and exclude. The new law will include embryo freezing, said Joseph Muscat, otherwise it will not be effective.
This is a strange statement if there ever was one since government statistics prove that this is not true. Official statistics prove that the IVF process in Malta (without freezing) gives more positive results than the process in England (with freezing). It is of no concern to Muscat that wherever there is freezing, embryos are stored and then killed; and so it will have to be in Malta. Some time back the minister responsible for civil rights had said that IVF will not be available to gay couples. The Prime Minister brushed her aside and just said ‘humbug’. It will be available if the gay couple consists of two women.
This is another restriction on our adulthood. Unlike children we will be heard but we will not be listened to if what we think and say is different from what the Prime Minister resolutely thinks and assertively states. As it should be, after all, since the government knows what we really need.
This system is beginning to sound more like paternalism than respect for adulthood. It is universally understood that autonomy of the individual based on the enjoyment of rights are the core characteristic of adulthood. The brand of adulthood proposed by the liberal/progressive authorities that be thrives on the bestowal of selective privileges on selective groups and the fomenting of political patronage.
The government’s paternalism makes it shun the adulthood of prying eyes that holds it accountable every step of the way. On the other hand, it lauds the exercise of adulthood of the penis et circenses type as evidenced by the vilification and pornography provisions.
This is done undoubtedly in the national interest, I hasten to add.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt