I love weddings. When the spouses are people close to me I feel - like most of us do no doubt - a deep feeling of love. Marriage is a beautiful bond, celebrating all that is good in life: life itself, love, partnership and a promise of lifelong collaboration.

Unfortunately, some marriages have an unhappy ending but then this is a part of life: failure, after all, highlights the beauty of success stories, even if we tend to hear and talk more about shattered dreams than wondrous realities.

Many believe in marriage as a sacrament, blessed by God and His earthly representatives. This week also saw a wonderfully inclusive sign of our path to integration. Thankfully society has progressed and now marriage is for everyone, not just heterosexuals.

Even if, as always, our life in Malta is tainted by political intrigue and machinations, the Marriage Act as voted unanimously, bar one MP, was a marvellous move in the right direction.

Not just for liberals or the forward-thinking but for all men and women who will not tolerate discrimination.

I suggest to those who, like Edwin Vassallo, have moral misgivings, that they think of Christ not as the figure who lived on earth 2,000 years ago but as a man who would be living now, in 2017. Would He have condoned or condemned the Act which helps society - all of it regardless of sexual orientation - come closer together?

It does not take much to move on - to shed old ways and mindsets and treat everyone as perfectly equal

Would a living Christ militate against homophobia and exclusion? Would he rail and berate anyone who thinks any relationship goes against nature? And, if they are not against nature, then why cannot such relationships be elevated to a matrimonial act?

It does not take much to move on - to shed old ways and mindsets and treat everyone as perfectly equal.

Priests who claim to be inclusive should refrain from raving against this Act. At a wedding mass I attended recently, the celebrant considered it apt to tell us how awful this new Act is. I wished to walk out but didn’t want to disrupt the joy of the beautiful day.

If only officiating priests and others would also realise that the harmony this law is fostering is for the goodwill of all of us, believers, non-believers, whatever our sexual inclination.

I salute the members of parliament who stood up to be counted and made this brave move forward. Anyone who denounces this move as retrograde should think of the harmony so needed by society in general. 

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