Last Monday, Malta became the 22nd European country to recognise same-sex unions and the 10th to allow gay couples to adopt. As happy as I am that we’ve finally made it into in the 21st century on the right side of history, I’ve also come to realise that once again we don’t really know what the individuals representing us in Parliament really think.

Both parties didn’t allow a free vote, so in essence we can only guess what each individual thinks, feels, or how they really and truly wished to vote.

Just to make things clear, a free vote is one in which MPs are not forced to vote according to their political party’s official stand, which is exactly the opposite of what happened on Monday where both parties used their whips to make sure that all their members voted according to the official party policy. We therefore had the PL all voting in favour and the PN abstaining en-bloc.

Politically, a party’s whip is used in order to avoid the embarrassment of a party appearing fractioned, but this only serves the parties and not the people. A free vote is not only more honest and transparent but is probably the only way to prove, to the highly partisan Maltese public, that in most cases, our two main parties are not so different after all.

A series of highly publicised free votes in Parliament would demonstrate that the political situation in Malta is not like most blinded voters think – that one side is spilling saints and the other hoarding devils – but that differences in parties (like in most groups of people) tend to average out. This should convince some blind voters that having one party full of thugs and morons and the other made up of saints and geniuses is, existentially impossible.

I’d like to believe that had both parties been given a free vote for Monday’s bill, it would still have made it through, not only because Joseph Muscat seems to have really convinced his side of the room, but also because there would have been members from the Opposition’s side who also would have voted in favour of the bill. I’d really like to know who these MPs are but their leader preferred not to show them up.

So now, because of the Opposition’s vehement opposition to this bill, we’re forced to assume that even in the absence of any scientific evidence, all the members of the Nationalist Party prefer to assume that gay people are not as capable of parenting a child as well as everyone else.

At the same time however, we’re supposed to believe that, the same party that abstained in a vote that puts gay relationships at par with straight ones, was (on the same day) wholeheartedly behind the motion to amend the Constitution in order to make any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation unlawful.

The mind boggles.