It was difficult not to be impressed by Mr Muscat’s opinion piece yesterday, a piece designed to throw shade on same-sex parenthood via a bombastic mishmash of rhetoric and sophistry.
Yup, the level of rubbish people are ready to commit to for the sake of promoting their agenda is indeed impressive. If you didn’t bother to read the piece, the opinion in question is risible in today’s society. To put it simply, same-sex couples make bad parents.
Mr Muscat didn’t use those exact terms, because he knows it would have made him very unpopular, very fast. No, he didn’t even have the courage of his convictions, to dish it out straight and plain. Instead, he drowned us in rhetoric, hiding prejudices behind a layer of contrived waffle that he termed ‘empirical research’.
There’s only one problem. The opinions of two French political lobbyists do not constitute empirical research. However, I do find the evidence of children being raised by same sex couples growing into a happy and well-adjusted life very difficult to ignore. Maybe Mr Muscat doesn’t believe that a child’s happiness is empirical evidence enough. Maybe, unless it comes with a French name and all the irrelevant details typical of a junior anthropoligical paper, it fails to impress him. Or maybe, he only cares about winning this strange battle he chose to pick.
As an aside, I found the way the author went to some length to explain to us, the uneducated readers, all the LGBTIQA+ jargon while clearly not having any real clue of what the terms mean in real life very cute. Then again, why should I be surprised? Mr Muscat couldn’t even commit to an easily-sourceable Arab proverb he quoted (out of context). He felt the need to qualify it with the word ‘alleged’.
It’s also impossible to ignore that nice little bit of sophistry where he equates discriminating against couples in a same-sex marriage to the legal ‘discrimination’ brought about by the age of consent. Nice try, but no. You’re talking apples and (alleged) oranges, Sir. Or, if you’ll forgive me for referring to an old and totally non-PC Maltese joke – don’t try to fob us off with ‘il-loġika tal-akwarjum‘ (if you know, you know).
But, to get back to the topic at hand, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure we can find plenty of ‘bad’ same-sex parents if we look for them. Just as we’ll find plenty such parents who subscribe to the ‘traditional’ formula the author is so eager to promote.
Me, I’d rather look at the children whose lives Mr Muscat is using to further his own ideological beliefs. And if they’re smiling, then it’s none of my business what gender their parents identify as. And I trust the majority of us are sensible enough to do the same.
