Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/540322
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 JULY 2015 Opinion 21 account for every other licensed establishment in Malta's entire entertainment district... And that, please note, is just Paceville: which is small and easily avoided. Meanwhile, it seems to have also escaped the morality brigade's notice that every town and village in Malta (not too sure about Gozo, to be honest) is now the proud owner of at least one – sometimes six or seven – Chinese massage parlours, with entirely innocuous names like 'Honey Girl' and 'Happy End'. The latter being particularly appropriate, incidentally, considering that 'moral Malta' is very clearly the stuff of fairy tales anyway. But never mind all that. Who cares if the entire country has already willingly transformed itself into a floating brothel in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea? The important thing is we've all been given a new horror to get our moral knickers in a twist about. People will now be permitted to buy their sex toys and pornography legally in shops all over the island… instead of virtually over the internet, which is what they've all been doing for years anyway. And of course, we all know what will happen next: it's pornography today, Satanism tomorrow, and next thing you know, we'll all be eating our aborted foetuses for breakfast. So thanks, Owen, for your ongoing efforts to make this country such an interesting and entertaining place to live. Thanks, too, for your particular choice of controversy this time round. Not only has it spectacularly illustrated the extraordinary hypocrisy we all live each day… whereby strip clubs and handjob joints are all perfectly normal, while sex shops selling dildos and adult lingerie are ominous portents of our country's downward trajectory towards moral oblivion… but it has exposed the precise reason for these double standards, too. I have often wondered why so much moral outrage even exists, in a country which has never really exuded any discernible morality of any kind whatsoever. The "gentleman's club" phenomenon alone illustrates this to perfection: what started out as a loophole exploited only by one or two establishment owners in Paceville, quickly snowballed into a situation where anyone with a licence to operate a club there could (and therefore, in most cases, did) transform it into what the Americans would respectfully call a 'titty-bar'… only without any form of special 'titty-bar' permit, as would be required in America, or indeed anywhere else in the world. That so many of these establishments would suddenly sprout up, just because a loophole in the law permitted them to… well, what does this actually tell us about the 'moral fibre' of the nation, whose decline we so often and so bitterly lament? What it tells me is that it doesn't really exist, and probably never did either. Given half a chance, any typical Maltese entrepreneur would avail of any possibility to willingly engage in a line of business that the morality brigade would describe as 'depraved', 'degenerate', etc. The simple truth is that 'moral concerns' don't actually count for toffee in this country, if there's money to be made (and plenty of it) from any given activity. And this, I suspect, is part of the reason some people get so upset about 'moral issues' like sex shops and pornography. It's not so much that they genuinely believe Malta to be a moral place, and therefore automatically 'above' such decadent things… on the contrary, it is because they know perfectly well that the very opposite is true: that all it takes for their cherished illusion of 'Maltese values' to evaporate before their eyes is the mere whiff of a few extra euros. And this thought inevitably forces such people to confront their own illusions about national identity, and all the mythology that has been patiently built up around it over the years. It forces them to conclude that they are actually caught up in a delusion. Looking at it from this perspective… I can fully understand their panic, too. Going on Malta's experience with gentleman's clubs and Chinese massage parlours, it is perfectly safe to predict that a new law permitting sex shops will have roughly the same effect. Very soon, there will be one at every street corner of every town and village, next door to the local grocer and across the road from the lotto booth, with maybe a couple of massage parlours in between. You won't be able to walk down your own street, without bumping into someone stepping out of a curtained doorway with a multiple- pronged dildo under his arm. And everywhere you look, a sign saying: "Warning. Persons passing beyond this notice will find material on display which they may consider indecent…" How can people possibly go on believing in the myth of Maltese morality, when there is so much visible proof of its non-existence all around us? No, this is a vision that must be fought at all costs. The only alternative is to just accept that we are actually just a nation like any other – with our own warts and blemishes, alongside our own advantages and assets – and that there is simply nothing 'special' or 'magical' about us at all. And we can't exactly have that, now can we? e sex shop already… I would like to receive the newspaper MaltaToday Midweek for a period of one year. Name & Surname.................................................................. Telephone: ........................................ Address ...................................................................................... E-mail: ........................................ FOR €42 YO YO Y U CAN RECEIVE THE MALTATO ECEIVE THE MALTATO ECEIVE THE MALTA DAY MIDWEEK, FOR A PERIOD OF ONE YEAR. SUBSCRIPTION FORM Send a cheque payable to MediaToday to: Subscriptions, MediaToday, Vjal il-Rihan, San Gwann, SGN 9016 The newspapers are delivered by post and therefore subject to the usual postal timings. Normally, MaltaToday midweek should arrive on the same day (Wednesday). SUBSCRIPTION FORM Just look at the effect. Life is immediately back to its usual, entertaining, hysterical old self