The first political skirmishes over the cohabitation Bill haven’t been short of lofty soundbites. But it’s in the nature of the sound bite that, the more one thinks about it, the less convincing it seems: less anchored in principle, more confusing about what the politician really believes, if he believes anything at all.

... it would already be a step forward if we did away with the pretence that public policy cannot exercise preference among family forms- Ranier Fsadni

When the subject is the family, the sound bite will almost inevitably sound mendacious. The sound bite strains to sound unambiguous and absolute.

But family policy has to be relativist – because relatives is what it’s about: full, half and step siblings; strangers who become kin; kin who become estranged...

That may sound like a licence for confusion but it isn’t. Acknowledging the need for nuance and being upfront about assumptions will make for better policy. Better because it’s clearer, easier to change and with better chances of keeping retaining social trust in the welfare state.

Confusion is what we have now. There is a competition to enunciate absolutist principles which, however, simply cannot cover all the facts on the ground.

There is the fatuous attempt to distinguish ‘real’ families from others that are, apparently, unreal – despite sharing the real kitchen table, the real sports days, the early mornings spent discussing the real bills and the real sleepless nights tending the really sick children... But absolutism need not be socially conservative.

Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat has been accused of hypocrisy for declaring all families to be equal while being against gay marriage. It’s certainly difficult to understand how he can say one thing but be against the other. But what slid past uncriticised was the declaration that all families are equal. That goes way beyond the position of any European state today.

Relativist though their family policies are, European states have not given up the right to judge family forms according to a standard. Individual families can be declared sufficiently dysfunctional to lose custody of the children. And there’s one family form – based on polygamy – that these states refuse to recognise.

While such forms may exist in practice, they are not dignified officially as civil unions or marriages. Whatever their participants may say about the intensity of their love and the freedom of their choices, their family form is considered inferior and not qualified for state support, for various reasons to do with both the adults and the children involved.

In European practice, states rightly continue to judge family forms, in different ways, every time policy is formulated that expresses a preference for, say, gender equality within the family (patriarchal ones are considered inferior) or marriage-based households (if stability is preferred).

Some of these preferences may be controversial but the idea that the state has the right to encourage some forms is not. Public policy has an immediate impact on whether certain family forms are functional or not.

No matter how much dedication and love a single mother has to offer, her chances of adequately providing for her children are, statistically, significantly diminished if she lives in the UK and not a short distance away, in Sweden. This means that some family forms may be as good as others in some societies but not all.

Whether they are or aren’t is relative. It depends on social solidarity.

Embracing this relativism is more responsible than emoting a feel-good absolutism. If, in Malta, single mothers are more likely than not to live in or near poverty and if a political party has no intention of significantly reducing that likelihood, then, it is irresponsible to speak of all family forms being ‘equal’ and fudging the various meanings of equality.

Relativism in family policy means recognising that the quality of home life depends on public choices. It also means recognising that the common good depends on the contributions of family forms about which we may have reservations. Family Minister Chris Said recently said he recognised that for gay couples their relationship was their precious family nucleus. That recognition of their private treasure didn’t nearly go far enough.

Whatever one’s stand on gay marriage, such relationships should be precious to the government that Dr Said forms part of, given its raft of health and social policies. People who share a home, in stable relationships, tend to live longer, in better health, and participate more in the immediate community.

If officialising those relationships helps those values flourish, then the cohabitation Bill (whatever its limitations) is a positive contribution to the common good not a morally neutral concession to some people’s private lives.

Whether it would be better yet to legislate for gay marriage is, I’m afraid, another column. But it would already be a step forward if we did away with the pretence that public policy cannot exercise preference among family forms.

It does so all the time, if only by default.

By recognising that it does, we can hold politicians to better account. They would have to provide rationales, not just soun bites. They would need to explain how they would deliver solidarity, not just emote it.

By absolving them of the need to be and sound absolute – absolutely conservative or absolutely liberal – we can insist that they are concrete.

ranierfsadni@europe.com