Big Brother Said

So the cohabitation bill is based on what our society accepts or doesn’t accept!

It seems that Dr. Said is telling us that the Nationalist Party is some sort of expert on knowing what our society accepts or doesn’t accept.

If this is right, where are the studies that legitimize the Nationalist Government’s role as Big Brother?

If we use divorce as a yardstick, it doesn’t seem that the present government really knows what our society is ready to accept or not. The Nationalist Party filled the anti-divorce movement with sycophantic yes-men and yes-women who had been sucking the teat of Nationalist bounty for over twenty years and yet, the referendum was won by the pro-divorce movement. So clearly both the Government and the Church have no idea what people wanted. Listening to Bishop’s Grech sermons, it seems that the Maltese Church is aching to turn back the clock to Archbishop Gonzi’s time when no one even thought about questioning the Church; while the Nationalist Government is becoming increasingly confessional and conservative, after an exercise that “cleansed” the party from “dangerous” radicals and progressives.

Like Dr. Gonzi, Dr. Said seems to have forgotten that he is supposed to be legislating new laws for the entire country and not just for the Nationalist Conservatives and Catholic Breast-Beaters. Every single citizen has the right to be represented by the government. As clearly shown by JPO and openly gay Nationalist MPs, the party was ready to embrace everyone to win elections, but when it comes to fair legislation it falters badly and actually ignores those who helped it win the government.

This is hypocrisy and political opportunism at its worst that uses people and throws them on the junk-heap when they deign to disagree on some point or another. Unfortunately, it’s rearing its ugly head in the IVF debate too without considering the sensitive nature of the law.

The situation regarding IVF is actually quite simple.

Either follow European guidelines and start freezing embryos and implanting up to three or four, or else tell barren couples to go directly to the UK and undergo the procedure there. Because even if the technique is freely available to the Maltese public through the National Health Scheme, it will not work; and this is a very serious matter.

If the Minister of Health is always complaining on how much the Health Service is costing the government, why is he ready to introduce an ineffective technique that costs more (oocyte vitrification is much more expensive than simple freezing) and delivers much less?

This state of affairs was actually proven in Italy who introduced a similar ineffective IVF bill in 2004 based on Law 40 and pushed by a Conservative Government in tandem with the Vatican, and ended up repealing it by 2009 as it just didn’t work and people were leaving in droves to undergo a proper IVF procedure in foreign countries that at least gave them a sporting chance of having a baby.

The Nationalist Party is being so incompetent in legislating controversial bills because it is caught between a rock and a hard place. The “rock” is its absolute fervour to gather every single Catholic and Conservative vote, while the “hard place” is made up of the votes of the gay community and sterile couples.

Just like Franco Debono said the bill tries to satisfy everyone and ends up satisfying nobody, but that’s the price you have to pay for being totally driven by political opportunism and hypocrisy; and the fact that JPO agrees with gay marriage means that he probably sees the current bill as unsatisfactory too. Disregarding Dr. Said’s boasting, the Cohabitation bill provides nothing over and above what gay couples had or can get by simply visiting a notary.  This is not what the gay community wanted. And let’s face it, these people work hard, pay taxes and contribute to our society in a variety of productive ways, so Dr. Said’s claim that society doesn’t accept gay marriage is just is ill-informed opinion.

Sorry, we ignored the opinion of your leader regarding divorce and we will ignore yours. You don’t legislate important bills on the strength of an opinion. You legislate on the basis of facts and what’s needed to make a society more fair and just.

The gay community is entitled to have every right the heterosexual community has. One look at the IVF bill which precludes gays from applying for the technique indicates that some people will be cut off from benefiting from the National Health Scheme.

Isn’t this discrimination?

But the cherry on the cake of bad decisions must go to government’s idea of having a sort of “Reproductive Committee” that decides who the lucky ones that get IVF, embryo-freezing and whatnot should be. This writer of the bill must have gotten the idea directly out of a George Orwell or Aldous Huxley novel. These “Committee” people, who obviously will consist of a fervent Catholic Gynaecologist or medical man, a priest who is an expert on Bio-ethics, a member of the Malta Council of Women who are known for their radical feminist views and tend to agree with everything the Government and the Church say, and probably Edwin Vassallo for his enlightened opinions on the Catholic Faith and reproduction. These people will decide whether a person is gay or not, whether she needs embryo freezing or not … in other words, they will decide who should reproduce and who shouldn’t!

Now, tell me whether there is something very wrong with this scenario?

Are we aspiring towards a more secular and accepting society, or a more conservative and divisive one that disregards minorities and obeys the “enlightened” will of Bishop Mario Grech?

I think that the latter and so everyone should make sure that such discriminatory and insensitive laws are shot down if they reach parliament next October.

Epicurus