VILLA FRANCIA

AND HOW A NATIONALIST PARTY PRIME MINISTER GLOSSED OVER ITS GAY HISTORY

So here’s one to the poofs of Villa Francia! (3)

WHEN SHIT HIT THE FAN:

CELEBRATING THE ‘BIRTH’ OF OUR MOVEMENT

&

OF GAY AND LESBIAN MILITANCY

FORTY YEARS ago, on 27 June 2009, friends were having a quiet drink at the Stonewall Inn in Christopher Street New York. The Inn, reportedly owned by the MAFIA, was more of a dump than a trendy public house. It operated without a liquor licence, its bar having no running water, with glasses being washed in dirty water. The Inn attracted an assortment of patrons: blacks, street queens, hustlers, effeminate men, butch dykes, homeless kids, transvestites and “scare drag queens”. Many were in their late teens (some underage). Those who were in their early thirties were considered “old”! At the Inn, drugs were freely available and the Inn was a good place to buy acid.

The twenty-seventh of June had been a memorable day! Five days earlier, on 22 June, Judy Garland, born Frances Ethel Gumm, had gone over her last rainbow. Her funeral that day in Manhattan had stopped the nation with some twenty-two thousand people filing past her coffin over a twenty-four hour period. She was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale New York. Garland was unmistakably a gay icon. Her personal struggles struck a chord with many homosexuals who had their own struggles to contend with. That day a tornado hit Kansas. A tornado of a different sort was about to hit Christopher Street. Inside the Stonewall Inn, gay men and lesbians invariably talked about her funeral and her life. We can only speculate whether the jukebox repeatedly played songs like Over the Rainbow and Come Rain or Come Shine!

28 JUNE, SATURDAY MORNING, AROUND 1.20 AM - Panic strikes the Inn. White warning lights are hurriedly turned on to alert patrons that a police raid was about to happen. Patrons scramble to find their seats. Eight police officers from the First Division including two patrolmen, two detectives and two policewomen barge into the Inn. A staged police raid should have followed with few patrons and employees being arrested. This time it was different. The police had failed or decided not to alert the Inn’s management of the impending raid. Patrons were slowly released but instead of returning home they opted to gather outside. Onlookers joined them. A paddy wagon pulled up. Police emerged from the Inn with those they had arrested: three blatant queens in full drag, a bar tender and a doorman. The crowd booed, gave the police cheek and called them “pigs” and “faggot cops!” Others threw coins at them. There were calls to roll over the paddy wagon which quickly drove away. A parking meter was uprooted. Someone screamed out “gay power!” And the fight was on. Patrons and bystanders threw bottles, bricks and dog shit at the police who were forced to retreat inside the Inn. Bricks are thrown at the front window of the Inn which was smashed to smithereens. The door to the Stonewall Inn was crashed open. Police ran out to scare the crowd but were forced to retreat taking with them Dave Van Ronk who was reportedly brutally bashed. The door was again smashed open and the police aimed a fire hose on the crowd ... without success. A side door was also smashed open. Police threatened to shoot anyone who walked inside. Someone threw fluid into the front door and lit a fire. The Tactical Police Force turned up to rescue the trapped police and disperse the crowd. The crowd dispersed, then quickly reformed. The police withdrew at around 4 AM.

28 JUNE, SATURDAY NIGHT – Gay men and lesbians returned to the Stonewall Inn in defiance of the police and to declare open the ‘new revolution’. Slogans went up everywhere: Support Gay Power. C’mon in, girls. At night, they returned again, announcing themselves as the Stonewall girls. They prided themselves in wearing their hair in curls, putting on no underwear as they showed off their pubic hair. They wore dungarees and they demanded equality. They held hands and kissed openly. Truscott describes the Saturday night riots as a “command performance for queers” when a chorus line of gay men and lesbians, in full kick routine, faced helmeted and club-carrying policemen.  Police chased the crowd which quickly reformed. The crowd dispersed around 3.30 AM.

29 JUNE, SUNDAY NIGHT – Truscott describes that night’s events in “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square”:

Sunday was a time for watching and rapping. Gone were the “gay power” chants of Saturday, but not the new and open brand of exhibitionism. Steps, curbs, and the park provided props for what amounted to the Sunday fag follies as returning stars from the previous night’s performance stopped by to close the show for the weekend.

Around 1 a.m. a non-helmeted type of the TPF made a sweep of the area. That put a damper on posing and primping, and as the last buses were leaving Jerseyward, the crowd grew thin. Allen Ginsberg and Taylor Mead walked by to see what was happening and were filled in by some of the gay activists. “Gay power! Isn’t it great!” Allen said. He expressed a desire to visit Stonewall – “You know, I’ve never been in here” and ambled on down the street, flashing peace signs and helloing the TPF. It was a kind of joy to see him on the street, with his laughter and quiet commentary on consciousness, “gay power” as a new movement, and the implications of what had happened. I followed him into the Stonewall, where rock music blared from speakers around a room that might have come right from Hollywood set of a gay bar. He was immediately bouncing and dancing wherever he moved.

Ginsberg left, and I walked east with him. Along the way, he described how things used to be. “You know, the guys there were so beautiful, they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.” It was the first time I had heard the crowd described as beautiful.

We reached Cooper Square, and as Ginsberg turned to head toward home, he waved and yelled, “Defend the fairies!” and bounced on across the square. He is probably working on a manifesto for the movement right now. Watch out. The liberation is underway.

30 JUNE, MONDAY NIGHT AND 1 JULY, TUESDAY NIGHT – According to Don Teal, Monday and Tuesday nights were peaceful but for a few minor scuffles.

2 JULY, A WEDNESDAY NIGHT - The Village Voice ran two front-page stories by Howard Smith (Full Moon Over the Stonewall: View From Inside) and Lucian Truscott (Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square: View from Outside) which protesters thought unfairly reported the events and contained uncomplimentary descriptions of the participants. A crowd of between 500 and 1000 people descended on the offices of the Village Voice, determined to burn down its premises. A street battle took place. Shops were looted. Some five people were arrested.

The riots outside the Stonewall Inn represent a significant moment in our history. Ordinary gay men and lesbians, seen by straight society and the more ‘respectable’ gay men and lesbians as the ‘dregs of society’, gave birth to a radical and militant movement that was not afraid of confrontation. The movement put an end to the ‘wounded look’ of the homosexual. It took on the MAFIA (or syndicate) control of many of the bars and the police who for far too long had conspired against gay men and lesbians, exploited them, harassed them and arbitrarily arrested and bashed them. Gay men and lesbians were no longer to be confined to the bar scene and the beats (cruising areas). But the movement was also tired of the respectable homophile organisations including the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, One, Inc and the Society for Individual Rights (which some activists styled the Society for Idle Rap), and their combined but slow efforts to educate society. A new generation of impatient gay men and lesbians had come out. A generation that was more blatant and outrageous than their conservative predecessors. They were well and truly out of the closet, refusing to conform to society’s stereotypes and demanding society’s respect as they were. The Gay Liberation Front and, later, the Gay Activists Alliance took shape. Finally ... at long last ... gay power was born in the United States.... and it soon spread worldwide! We owe a great debt to these very ordinary but at the same time quite extraordinary gay men, lesbians, transvestites and transsexuals. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MODERN GAY LIBERATION!

POLITICS OF COMPROMISE OR POLITICS OF COWARDICE?

These days, politics is all about dialogue and dialogue is all about compromise at least in current liberal democratic countries. Societies everywhere are increasingly pluralist and complex with competing values, divided loyalties, conflicting commitments and differing moral codes. Government by consensus - that is government by general agreement - is easier said than done especially in countries like Malta with marked political allegiances. So I was quite astonished to hear David Casa say, in an interview with Herman Grech, that membership of the European Parliament has taught him that politics is all about compromise. I am surprised that it took Casa membership of the European Parliament to finally realize the bleeding obvious!

In the interview, Grech asked Casa how he would vote if the issues of divorce and civil unions for homosexuals came before the European Parliament. On the subject of divorce, Casa declared that he will decide how to vote at the appropriate time and that discussion surrounding divorce was inappropriate within the context of the European parliamentary elections. Why? Is it political expediency that is preventing Casa from setting out his views? How long is Malta to remain the butt of ridicule?

On the subject of civil unions, Casa made the bold but inaccurate claim that civil unions were a “matter of morality”. Is Casa intimating that homosexual unions are immoral and that government recognition of these unions is immoral because presumably the Bible says so? If not, what is the problem? There is no denying that for some but not all homosexuality and civil unions for homosexuals are subjects that have a moral dimension. No gay lobby or homosexual is compelling anyone to become homosexual, to enter into civil unions and to apply to the government to have their unions formally recognised. Live by your Ten Commandments if you so wish! The government’s role is to protect all its citizens, homosexuals included. Governments should not be in the business of legislating a specific set of moral values or promoting a particular faith. But are there not legal and political dimensions to civil unions between homosexuals? Is this not what Casa should concern himself with?

Casa goes on to say that he is against the European Union laying down rules for Malta on the subject of civil unions for homosexuals. So why join the European Union in the first instance if you want to safeguard the country’s sovereignty? Is not membership of the European Union in and of itself all about the politics of compromise? There are no prizes for guessing how Casa would vote! And in a pathetic effort to attract the gay vote, he goes on to tell us that the government is already planning to introduce civil unions in Malta in the current legislature. Whatever happened to the moral dimension of these unions, I wonder? We live and hope. Malta’s gay men and lesbians are not unaccustomed to pre-election promises. The track record so far of the conservative and inappropriately styled “Nationalist” Party government is pathetic to say the least.

Casa’s response to these two issues is baffling in other ways. Electors have every right to know how their prospective representatives are likely to vote. Those seeking public office also have a duty to tell them. Failure to do so may not unreasonably be depicted as cowardice.

Casa, however, is dead right on the subject of refugees. Each application for refugee status has to be judged on its merits. Malta cannot be unmindful of its duties under the Refugee Convention. This is not to say that governments should not act decisively with those who lodge spurious claims for refugee status. Malta’s disinclination to return those who have neither a claim for refugee or humanitarian status is pathetic. I assume Malta is dragging its feet with a view to securing additional funds from the European Union. Malta’s bludger mentality and even greater bludger economy is an embarrassment for all right-thinking Maltese. Money no problem, I wonder?

IF NEED BE, TO HELL WITH MALTA’S CONSTITUTION!

ndependent Online recently (22 April 2009) published an article (Bioethics and the Family) by Professor Pierre Mallia. Mallia is described as an Associate Professor in Family Medicine (Patients’ Rights and Bioethics) at the University of Malta. He is also Ethics Advisor to the Medical Council of Malta.

ROMAN CATHOLIC CONCERNS ABOUT REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES - In the article, we read of an intervention by a Reverend Professor Emanuel Agius. Armed with church documents, (Donum Vita and Dignitas Personae), which are apparently important to Roman Catholics, the Reverend Professor reportedly outlined the Church’s position on reproductive technologies to a parliamentary commitee. As a citizen of Malta, the good Professor has every right to make a submission to any committee. I would go further and say that the Roman Catholic Church also has a right to make its own submission in the same way that other groups in society are entitled to make submissions. What it must not do is expect parliament to implement its agenda on some imagined claim that its agenda represents the will of God and the will of the majority of Maltese citizens. In an open liberal democratic society, neither “God” nor the majority of Maltese citizens are entitled to impose their views.

Roman Catholic theology is or should be of concern to Roman Catholics although it is increasingly becoming apparent that many Roman Catholics have long ditched many of the Church’s official teachings. How else can one explain the fact that many Roman Catholic families are no longer large? No person in his or right mind would be silly enough to think that Roman Catholic families are embracing natural birth control and family planning. The Church’s own research demonstrates that many Roman Catholics in Malta (about half) do not attend Church on Sundays and holy days of obligation. And if this is their behaviour on Sundays and holy days of obligation when everyone can see what they are up to, how do you think they behave in the privacy of their bedroom?

So to put it bluntly, the official Roman Catholic position on any aspect of doctrine does not necessarily represent the views of Roman Catholics. Those who are not Roman Catholic also have rights. It is not the Church’s business to concern itself with their rights. So I disagree with Mallia that Malta is a different society because it is not a multicultural society. You do not have to belong to a multicultural society to respect the rights of individuals.

THE FAMILY UNIT AND THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF MALTESE SOCIETY - I have nothing against the family. There are good and there are bad families. Society’s “social fabric” has many components. I would like to think that respect for individuals, irrespective of their sexuality, and the rights of minorities constitute important components of this “social fabric”.

MALTA’S CONSTITUTION AND THE ROLE OF PARLIAMENTARIANS - I am dumbfounded by Mallia’s inference that article 2 of Malta’s Constitution requires parliamentarians to “legislate according to the Roman Catholic faith”. Declaring Roman Catholicism as the “religion of Malta” imposes no obligation on parliamentarians to legislate Roman Catholicism. If that were the case, we might as well abrogate parliament. The thrust of that stupid article is to give the hierarchy the right and duty to teach what it thinks are what principles are right and what principles are wrong, a right enjoyed by every Maltese citizen. That very clause (given the context of politics in the first half of the 1970s) is evidence of the extent to which the power of the Church had been clipped by the then courageous Mintoff administration. Is Mallia seriously suggesting that laws that do not comply with the official version (assuming there is one) of Roman Catholicism are inconsistent with the Constitution? Any one other point. It is individuals not countries that have a faith.

THE ROLE OF THE DOCTOR IN A CIVILISED SOCIETY - Doctors have a duty towards their patients and their profession. Put simply, the role of doctors is to better the health of his or her patients and to behave ethically towards both their patients and their profession. Doctors have no duty towards their faith. If a doctor can’t stand the heat of advising a patient according to that patient’s morality (assuming that is what the patient wants), the doctor should look to another profession.

FENCE SITTING? - Mallia’s article sets out the issues, the problems and the dilemmas surrounding bioethics and its likely impact on Maltese society. He provides us with three case studies. Not untypically he stereotypes a gay man as effeminate. That gay man has three sisters and a fetish for women’s clothes. I, too, am gay. I, too, have three sisters. And I must admit to having worn a dress (a lovely pink one) in the second half of the 1970s at one new year eve's University of NSW party. Other students including many heterosexuals put on a frock. But I do not have a fetish for women's clothes.

In this day and age and with all due respect to the professor, I expect better from a person with the label of a professor. Perhaps I am too naive to expect this of a Maltese professor. But my real squabble with Mallia is this: where do you stand? What are your views on bioethics? Which side of the fence are you on? Sitting on the fence for prolonged periods is a dangerous pursuit indeed and may well harm one’s family jewels. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to have a solid education have a duty to approach such sensitive issues dispassionately. We have to purge ourselves of our cluttered minds and do away with our cultural baggage. We need to think outside the box and extend our parameters.

OLD WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW?

my Bezzina briefly introduced me to George Abela, now Malta’s eighth president, some six years ago, at a restaurant at the corner of Strada Forni and Manoel Theatre. Abela struck me as a man with not too many airs and graces. He came over as a genuinely affable man. Lawrence Gonzi appears to be of similar disposition. So welcome to Malta’s mutual admiration society!

Where does Abela stand on human rights for gay men and lesbians? In 2008, Abela came out of a self-imposed political wilderness in an attempt to take over the leadership of the Malta Labour Party as it was then styled. He also called for the greater democratization of the party in the election of the party’s leadership team. Abela may have lost the crown to the younger and less experienced Joseph Muscat but he managed to secure the second largest number of votes and the position of deputy leader. Not a small feat for someone who was ‘out of the party’ for 10 years! In an interview he granted in May 2008, Abela was reported as saying¹

I was influenced by Archbishop Paul Cremona’s stance that we must draw a distinction between our moral beliefs and the civil and legal rights that materialise out of the relationships that exist in society. I have the same approach.

Kien influwenzani l-argument ta’ l-Arcisqof Pawl Cremona li qal li rridu nzommu distinzjoni netta bejn il-morali li nemmnu fihom u d-drittijiet legali u civili li johorgu minn relazzjonijiet li jitwieldu fis-socjetà. Jien ghandi dan l-istess twemmin.

He went on to declare:²

We are not a confessional state and therefore we have to think of these relationships and regulate them. We cannot leave them to fend for themselves and continue to regard them as illicit.

M’ahniex stat konfessjonali u ghalhekk irridu nahsbu f’dawn ir-relazzjonijiet u nirregolawhom. Ma nistghux inhalluhom ghal rashom jew nikkunsidrawhom illecti.

As president-elect, Abela has expressed his yearning to represent “unity in diversity”. So far, he has made repeated references to political, sporting and religious diversity in Malta. There are other forms of diversity in the Maltese archipelago, sexuality among them, that need to be acknowledged and respected. Will Abela the president follow the lead of Barack Obama and declare his hand on gay and lesbian issues? Or will he opt to remain silent and distance himself from controversy (as he said he would) but unwittingly reinforce the invisibility of gay men and lesbians? Is respect for the human rights of gay men and lesbians and their relationships still a matter of public controversy in Malta, I wonder?

Abela’s repeated references to ‘il-Bambin’ (the Infant Child) as when he qualifies what he says by such phrases as “ghall-grazzja tal-Bambin” (by the grace of the Infant Child) and “nispera fil-Bambin” (I hope in the Infant Child) are somewhat disconcerting. I have no qualms with Abela’s religious beliefs but is Abela aware that an increasing number of Maltese either do not believe in God or have other belief systems? Do not these repeated references to ‘il-Bambin’ have the effect of sidelining and alienating those who do not share the belief system of the majority?

Gonzi’s decision to appoint Abela as president of Malta was a stroke of political genius. Attempts to represent Abela’s appointment as a devious way of removing a potentially powerful adversary are, I suspect, far-fetched. Gonzi and Malta are the winners. Gonzi emerges as a moderate Prime Minister who may take enough Labour Party votes to secure another term in office. But will he also come out as Malta’s great ‘moderate reformer’?

Gonzi is likely to face increasing and ongoing pressure from the European Union. The stage is now set and several factors may come into play. Malta’s archbishop is moderate, less prone to confrontation and appears more at ease with his pastoral role than the defence of orthodoxy. Gozo’s bishop is repeatedly being misunderstood and seems to fumble from one crisis to the next. With respect, he comes over more as a glorified parish priest than a bishop. The leader of the Opposition, young, energetic and innovative, has already declared his hand on divorce and some limited reform for gay men and lesbians. And now enter a moderate president who says he is disinclined to impose his values on the rest on society! No other prime minister has been so blessed. Introduction of divorce in Malta and increased human rights for gay men and lesbians may well sideline the Labour Party and secure Gonzi another term in government. Abela’s appointment is bad news for the Opposition but augurs well for gay men and lesbians whatever their political leanings.

____________________________________

1.     Sansone, Kurt, “Fiex jemmen il-Mexxej Laburista [did?” in Illum, 11 May 2008: http://www.illum.com.mt/2008/05/11/interview.html.

 

2.     Ibid.

GOODBYE MR PRESIDENT?

DDIE FENECH ADAMI, the seventh President of Malta, assumed the office of President on 4 April 2004. He left that office five years later on the same day! His supporters are inclined to depict him as a politician who changed Malta for the better, a giant of Maltese politics. But giants are usually men of extraordinary size and strength, and Malta’s giants are somewhat puny when compared to your foreign variety. On the other hand, Fenech Adami’s detractors portray him as the man who again polarised Malta and who traded Malta’s independence for subservience to the European Union. They point to photographs of Fenech Adami being carried on the shoulders of a man whose qualities the future President was reported to have once described as “good and less good”.¹

So how would gay men and lesbians remember him? Better still, how should we begin to view his legacy?

Days before leaving his office, the President made the point of emphasizing that a family is made up of a man, a woman and their children. Married couples without children and de facto and same-sex couples were left out in the cold! To those remotely familiar with Maltese politics, his comments come as no surprise. Throughout his fifteen years as Prime Minister, Fenech Adami left Malta in the dark ages. He may well have steered the island towards the European Union but it was a union without divorce and Malta one of the few secular democracies without ‘legalised divorce’. Fenech Adami is also reported as saying that divorce would not be introduced during his presidency.²

So fuck the parliament, fuck the will of the people, fuck democracy and fuck a pluralist society! Fenech Adami’s Christian values ride roughshod over all other values because God is on his side and we all know that God is a member of the Nationalist Party.

In 1997, I had the hard luck of presenting a copy of Il-Ktieb Roza: Dnub, Dizordni u Delitt? (the first book on homosexuality in the Maltese language) to Fenech Adami. At the time he was Opposition Leader, a position that suited him admirably and one he should have retained. Throughout our brief meeting at the Party’s headquarters in Blata l-Bajda, not a word was uttered about gay men and lesbians. Instead Fenech Adami opted to talk about the Maltese community in Australia. As the guest, I respected the host’s decision. I had made my point by my presence. Also, his office did not take up my request to photograph my presentation of the book. I should have offered to carry Fenech Adami on my shoulders! I may have had better luck!

On 29 January 1973, Prime Minister Mintoff and his administration decriminalised ‘homosexuality’ and ‘adultery’. Before then, section 220 of Malta’s Criminal Code stipulated that: "Whoever shall be guilty of an unnatural carnal connection, without the circumstance of violence ... shall, on conviction, be liable to hard labour for a term not exceeding two years, with or without solitary confinement." The then civilised world was either debating decriminalisation or decriminalising homosexual acts. The Nationalist Opposition under Dr George Borg Olivier opposed it and tried every trick in the book to throw the government off course. Fenech Adami also opposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality and adultery. He saw homosexuals as a threat to the family (by which he meant the heterosexual family) and called for measures to protect it. But as is often the case, Fenech Adami offered no proof of the imagined threat. Like a good Christian soldier, he turned to Scripture for support: "We find in the Old Testament that there were a chosen people ... and there was a need to protect the family to ensure the growth of that society." But God’s chosen people are a family of faith, not a biological family. He went on: "legislation [should be] inspired by Christian values that [look] on the family as an essential part of society and, in the past, our legislators believed it their duty to punish with criminal sanctions anyone who disturbed the good order of the family and this included adultery and homosexuality.”

No one was calling for a ban on heterosexuality or the heterosexual family. Nor were homosexuals saying that the (heterosexual) family was not an important ingredient of society. Surely the (heterosexual) family is sufficiently robust to withstand any such imagined attack! Or is it? The Maltese archipelago, in any event, is densely populated and would be well served by not an insignificant reduction in the population. Incidentally, Malta and Brunei each have .006% of the world’s population but whereas Malta has an area of 316km², Brunei has 5,765km².³

Few would accuse Fenech Adami of imposing an age of moral enlightenment on the Maltese archipelago. So I guess not many gay men and lesbians would be shedding tears at his departure. Goodbye Mr President? More like Good Riddance, Mr President!

____________________________________

1.     Bedingfield, Glenn, Il-{urament (Partit Laburista 1999). See also www.di-ve.com/Default.aspx?ID=72&PID=241&NewsID=21763&Action=1.

 

2.     Vella, Matthew, “Memory and Identity: The world is changing, but the staunchly Catholic Eddie Fenech Adami says he is not one for turning” in Malta Today, 18 January 2009. See also www.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/01/18/interview.html.

 

3.     Chetcuti, Joseph Carmel, Queer Mediterranean Memories (Expected publication 2009).