THE HAUNTING SPECTRE

For whatever reason, the unspeakable has finally been uttered. It that must not be named, with apologies to Ms Rowling’s fictional hero, has been dragged out from under the stone where it has resided for so long. Whether the Establishment likes it or not, we the people are going to discuss the question and we, the people, are going to tell the Establishment what to do.

And they’re going to have to do it.

It is to divorce, that means of regulating the civil contract of marriage, to which I refer. The reasons why we as a nation are going to have to discuss this, much to the consternation of the Church Organised and its attendant God-botherers, are manifold.

One of these reasons is that Joseph Muscat has said that he will, if elected to real power (as opposed to what he’s been elected to now) see about introducing it. This was said perhaps because he is blessed with the impetuosity of youth, perhaps because he saw it coming and like any good politician decided that now is the time to hop on the bandwagon, or perhaps because he – like so many of us in the real world – doesn’t feel constrained by the imposed moral (so-called) strictures that beset us. Whatever the reason, it’s going to be an issue.

And if it’s going to be an issue, any smooth political operator will immediately seek to control the rhythm of the debate. Muscat may or may not be a smooth political operator, only time will tell (he is beginning to look like he might be – whether he’s helped or hindered by the various bits of baggage with which he’s been lumbered is another matter) but Gonzi certainly is, so it’s thanks to this that we can say that it’s thanks to Muscat that, finally, Malta is going to have to discuss divorce.

There are those who say that there are other reasons why the Scandalous Subject has to be discussed.

The isolationists, who see the source of all our ills as lying to the North, centred in Brussels, will say that this is yet another instance of the EU forcing its policies down the throat of every member state, regardless of that state’s cultural and sociological ideals. Never mind that – at least in the matter of divorce – we’re the only member state that refuses, officially at least, to recognise that a) it’s fervently desired by the vast majority of its citizens (and before I’m asked, no, I haven’t conducted a scientific survey, it’s just what I think most people would say they wanted if asked the right question) b) it’s time the restrictive influences of a single religion were removed from state governance and c) it’s available to those who can buy it anyway.

The latter point alone makes it imperative for divorce to become available in Malta to remove the discrimination between those who can afford to buy a foreign divorce and those who can’t.

Oh well, I suppose blaming the EU is marginally less ludicrous than blaming the immigrants, which I am sure some moronic racist would try to do if given half a chance.

Another reason why, some people are saying, the debate is being proposed is that some of those who are pushing it have a personal interest in seeing divorce brought in to Malta.

Let me put paid to this one and point out that at the moment, I have no wish to get divorced (whether this applies to my spouse, currently dragging herself out of the pit of nod while I slave away over a hot keyboard, is another matter) but I am – and have been for many, many years – publicly and unequivocally in favour of divorce being available to anyone who wants it, subject of course to appropriate protective mechanisms for all concerned.

Moreover, I have no financial interest in the matter of obtaining divorces for people. In my real life, I earn a living from an area of activity that traditionally sees members of the profession that practise it earning a decent crust from family court proceedings. This area of practise is, however, a closed book to me, one that I have absolutely no intention of opening.

So I, along with many of the people who want the debate to start, have no personal interest in starting it: not everyone acts out of exclusively personal interest all the time.

A spokesperson from the Ministry of Justice was (hopefully mis-)quoted as saying that “Malta would make sure that divorce would not form part of the Maltese legal system”. While I am sure this is not what he or she meant to say, because otherwise this would have been a statement of Mintoffian levels of arrogance, implying that the Government knows best and there’s an end to it, it is precisely this sort of mind-set that I would dearly love to see vanquished once and for all. Just because a group of men in frocks (to put it uncharitably, inaccurately but nonetheless not that far wrongly) have decided that marriage, like a puppy, is for life and not just for Xmas, doesn’t mean that it is or that we have to accept that it is.

I really hope no-one will trot out the argument that Catholic Malta depends for its moral strength on the integrity of the family unit or some such twaddle. I see where the people who put this forward are coming from, but come on, people, step back and smell the coffee, why don’t you? Malta has remained about as Catholic – in the true rather than the ceremonial sense – as it has remained a rural colony under Her Majesty Queen Victoria, High Panjandrum of Great Britain and Imperatrix of the Empire (fellow Anglophiles will forgive me for not getting the title perfectly right) and as for our moral strength, yes, right, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Maltese society, whatever that amorphous blob-word means, is as venal, self-interested, licentious, bigoted, materialistic, amoral and uncaring as any other. Many component members of the clump of souls that inhabits this rock are not venal, etc, etc – I’d go as far as to say that perhaps there are more who aren’t than who are but this is not because we don’t have divorce.

And it is not because the Catholic Church, with its absolutist, but leaky, attitude towards the permanence of marriage, holds some form of sway over us, either. There are as many, proportionately speaking, good chaps in countries that eschew religion as a pillar of state policy making as there are here. Sorry for the use of the word “chaps”, incidentally, I trust I shall not be visited by minions from the NCPE, wielding politically correct truncheons.

I fervently hope that once the debate is over, we will have come to our senses and worked out that a sensible alternative to “living in sin” (like anyone really cares) or the hypocrisy of annulments is unavoidable. This will not mean that anyone whose religious convictions preclude him or her (see, I can obey the diktats of the NCPE when it is appropriate so to do) from accepting to be divorced will have to consider themselves to be divorced and act accordingly – their morality remains their own.

But it will mean that the individual citizens married to them, who want to determine the civil contract of marriage into which they entered, will have their wishes respected.

Respect for the individual, at the end of the day, is what it’s all about. This has always been a concept anathema to the grey eminences who think they know best, which is why it has to be shoved down their throats once and for all.