When it comes to civil rights, the Labour Party has a curious history. It won kudos at the 2011 referendum on divorce, even though it did not even take a stand. The Nationalist Party did and paid a heavy price for it. Its middle class liberal electoral base found itself suddenly alienated from its traditional party.
After successfully courting the gay lobby, Labour in government moved quickly to legislate on civil unions. In truth, it was not civil unions it proposed but de facto gay marriage with adoption rights, which saw the PN voting against the Bill, giving Labour ample opportunity to accuse it of anachronism.
PN leader Simon Busuttil must have seen through Labour’s game. When the Prime Minister said he was in favour of gay marriage, he moved fast to diffuse a controversy and said the Civil Unions Act already gave gays the same rights and obligations of a civil marriage and he had no problem in changing the name of the law.
But the traps kept coming. The PN voted in favour of a Bill criminalising gay conversion but did not support the idea of decriminalising the vilification of religion, though it agreed to the rest of the Bill. This played into Labour’s hands and its efforts to portray the PN as a conservative, old-fashioned party.
Labour efforts to keep the gay vote on its side continued, with initiatives such as a policy on transgender inmates, gender neutral toilets and controversial gay books for government school libraries.
Thankfully, the government and the Opposition seem to converge on the Cohabitation Bill but there is rough weather ahead when Parliament comes to discuss two other draft laws moved by Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli: the Human Rights and Equality Commission Bill and the Equality Bill. A position paper prepared by a group of experts on behalf of the Church found that the vague and broad definitions of ‘harassment’ and ‘victim’ in the Equality Bill were open to interpretation and could have a negative impact on the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
The paper also pointed out that the Bill was completely silent on conscientious objection and showed concern at how it would affect Church schools. The Church has not been alone in voicing concern.
A lawyer working for ADF Inter-national, a conservative Christian NGO, has warned that the Bill could encroach upon fundamental human rights. The Civil Liberties Ministry’s response was to accuse the NGO of having campaigned against gay rights, attacking the messenger and not the message. Although the Bill is meant to protect equality for all, the ministry’s reply seemed to be focused only on gay rights.
The Malta Employers’ Association president, wrote in this newspaper criticising the Bill, saying there was a feeling that employers may be facing lobbies “that have been allowed to box above their weight”. Not mincing his words, Mr Muscat called the Bills destabilising and ill-advised, adding that feminist and gay lobbies were being allowed to impose their ideologies.
It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that these Bills are intended to appease the gay lobby more than anyone else. More difficult is to believe that Labour in government is not pulling the same trick all over again, pushing the so-called ‘civil rights’ to their absolute limit and beyond reasonability, with all the problems the changes may bring, to score political points against the PN.