If it is not obvious enough by now, the Labour Party is provoking pseudo-issues and obfuscating debates about LGBT rights in Malta through its continued co-option of the Malta Gay Rights Movement (MGRM) into its political fold, which it has done successfully, even thanks to some of its public activists.
The latest fake debate is about whether Gay Pride should be held at all, which Labour Party activists are dressing up as an attack on LGBT rights. It is actually an attack against the freedom of association and assembly, but Labour is tricking many into believing that sexuality is the ultimate be-all and end-all for those who are not heterosexual. This can also be applied to gender roles with regard to transgender individuals.
MGRM has been co-opted by the Labour Party through government funding, which has made the organisation unable to criticise the government and Labour. Last week, the corrupt Equality Minister Rosianne Cutajar inaugurated the statue of a Chinese cultural icon in Malta, in an activity promoted by the Labour Party and the government as part of a process to “strengthen” Malta’s relationship with China. MGRM has been unable to point out that China is the world’s largest violator of human rights and actively persecutes the LGBT minority.
Now, the same criminally-corrupt Equality Minister has proposed a government bill to ban companies from refusing to provide services to LGBT people. The initial reaction by the general public seems to be one of mockery and disdain, given that this is not an issue in Malta.
Although the law fights against discrimination, it is blatantly obvious what is happening here. The Labour government has no sense of morality or principles, and these laws are being pushed because, firstly, they are not a threat to its hegemony and, secondly, they enable the government to pinkwash the decrepit criminal state of this administration. While Labour government ministers applaud the trashing of a makeshift monument to a journalist killed by the Mafia, they are throwing carrots at the LGBT community to present a progressive façade which, in the background, does not exist at all.
At this point, Labour’s pinkwashing has become so obvious, blatant and deceptive that MGRM risks taking down the whole LGBT community as an enabler of a government that is restricting civil rights when it comes to free speech and abetting organised crime.
Ultimately, gay and transgender people are not just gay or transgender. They are also normal human beings and are experiencing the same negative effects of this government as everyone else: the housing crisis, corruption in politics, the monopolisation of the information space by Labour, the growing hatred fostered by Labour against journalists and its critics, the devastation of environmental and historical heritage, inflation, corruption and the association with organised crime are all matters that affect gay and transgender individuals just as they affect everyone else.
Labour’s compartmentalisation of minorities and women is even discriminatory in nature for this very reason: their distinguishing characteristics do not make them any lesser than anyone else.
And before some wise-ass comes along arguing that this is an attack on LGBT people, it is not. I fully agree with the raft of legislation implemented and proposed by the Labour government. Yet if MGRM continues to act as if it is just another Labour Party department, it risks provoking a conservative backlash against it that fundamentally comes from anger at Labour.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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