It is ironic that Equality Minister Helena Dalli chose to play the modern-day inquisitor with a priest who used a vlog to warn of the dangers of contraceptives. He is a Dominican priest whose religious order was at the forefront of affairs when the real Inquisition was in full swing.

Fr Ivan Attard said the obvious, which has become a novelty nowadays. In his piece entitled ‘Sexual junk food’, he said contraceptives were turning sex into something done for personal pleasure rather than reproduction. He warned this was leading to abusiveness and a weakening of values. Using a fast food analogy, he said if you liked pizza and ate it all day long, you would end up hating it. The same applied to sex.

Dr Dalli did not like that and compared his comments to the “dark times” when, she said, priests pressured women to have sex solely for procreation. Then, in Parliament, she argued the comments could not be defended as freedom of expression: “Women and girls are not rabbits. Claiming contraception is dangerous is deeply irresponsible.” The inquisitors of old spoke that way too and were equally intolerant.

It was the second time in a month the Equality Minister intervened in what would have been no controversy had she stayed out of it. A few weeks before, a contestant in X Factor was censored by the State broadcaster after he said there can be love between two men or two women but that would be friendship love. Everything else, he argued, was sin.

The government, and others, called it a homophobic comment and said the broadcast of such a clip did great damage and put at risk people who were vulnerable to gay conversion practices. Dr Dalli said TVM had “lacked ethics” when it aired the interview. She claimed it did untold damage to the government’s efforts to change social attitudes towards minorities, including LGBTIQ youths.

She remarked that young gay people did not need forgiveness or healing. They needed understanding. An inquisitor would have said something similar, even if he would have put it the opposite way. But the result would have been the same: intolerance.

The government is clearly sated by the electoral windfall that its pro-gay policies have brought to it. Gay marriage and child adoption by gays are probably the most controversial measures taken. Being electorally fruitful does not mean all must accept such measures. More importantly, pro-gay initiatives are not a religion. People do not believe in gay lifestyles, they accept/practise them or they do not. There are differing opinions and they all have a right to be heard and certainly cannot be censored, most especially by a Cabinet minister.

The Equality Minister appears to believe her policies are right and proper. Even if she was right, that does not empower her to censor anyone who disagrees, most especially on religious grounds. What is electorally beneficial does not necessarily make it a good thing. Experience shows that, in most government policies, it works the other way around.

The government has been very successful at pandering to the gay lobby. However, that does not mean it is always right. Censorship of opinion, inversely, is always wrong, more so when coming from a Cabinet minister who is constantly speaking about rights.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial

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