The church in Malta still promoted homophobia, where it had become a “regular” thing for the Gozo bishop to speak against gays, according to a gay rights activist speaking on campus this afternoon.
“It should be a crime to speak against a minority” Cyrus Engerer, a member of the Malta Gay Rights Movment and a PN councillor said, adding that unfortunately, gays were still fighting discrimination.
Mr Engerer was speaking at Move debate on homosexual people’s rights in Malta.
Giving an example, he said that while a gay person could adopt a child individually, a gay couple could not.
He spoke about the recently launched book by Maltese Australian Joseph C. Chetcuti, in which the writer said that St Gorg Preca and St Paul had homosexual tendencies.
Mr Engerer defended this claim by saying these people might not have been able to come out during their lifetime.
Television presenter Peppi Azzopardi, however, disagreed, saying the Gozo bishop was right in his recent criticism of the book because he did not agree that Dr Chetcuti should have mentioned people who were dead and who never spoke about their sexuality.
He said he was hurt most by people who were scandalised at the claims made in the book, “as if gay people could not become saints”.
Mary Ann Borg Cunen, a counsellor at university, said there was still ambiguity on what made people gay.
However, it was clear that people did not wake up at 14 and decide they were gay. Research suggested being gay might be genetic and it also seemed to run in families.
She said that there was new research which showed that women’s sexuality was quite fluid and a woman who earlier in life identified with being gay, could later on train her mind to be straight, and then change back. Men, on the other hand, seem to be more fixed in their sexual orientation.
Speaking on adoption by gay couples, Ms Borg Cunen said every research she read showed that children brought up by gay couples exhibited no disorders. However, they might be subject to discrimination at school.
Mr Azzopardi blamed this on schools for continuously presenting the stereotypical family with a man, a woman, a boy and a girl.