I refer to the report Stop Comparing Us To Nazis, Or We’ll Call The Police (April 18).

The reaction of the no to divorce camp to what I said last week at a public debate about the need to introduce divorce legislation is both sad and misplaced.

A large number of people were present in the audience at the debate and it was recorded. What I am about to state can therefore be fully verified.

It is interesting to note that the spokesman for the no movement, who directly followed my intervention in the debate – the distinguished lawyer Austin Bencini – only objected to my mention of the Nazi party and, for obvious reasons, not to any comparison made with the movement of which he forms a part. And this was absolutely correct. He could not make such an objection as I indeed drew no such comparison whatsoever.

The reason I alluded to the statute of principles of the Nazi party was to make the perfectly legitimate point from our recent experience of history of how dangerous it is to prey on a concept to which that notorious party adhered – that of “the common good before individual good”– since it illustrates vividly that those constantly invoking this false argument about divorce are treading on very shaky ground.

I note that I am in good company. Malta’s leading constitutional lawyer, Ian Refalo, in his recent appeal against the ban on Stitching, made a similar point when he argued that one cannot impose one’s morality on someone else who is not doing anyone any harm by not adhering to it, “otherwise we find ourselves on a slippery slide where society could ultimately end up in horrific situations of social imposition and control, such as Nazism”.

For the no movement now to call for the intervention of the police is not only a gross overreaction but also demonstrates a total misreading of what I actually said. To define what I said as bullying is risible, given the pressures to which those in favour of divorce are currently being subjected by the most powerful institution in Malta.

“Spinning” what I said in the hope of provoking some sensationalist headline is cheap and unworthy of the no camp. To threaten to resort to the police demonstrates their intolerance and only serves to expose the paucity of their case.