Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/849592
25 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 16 JULY 2017 Opinion possible. But no: of all the things to chatter incessantly about for days on end, it had to be the 'Marriage Equality Bill '. And even then, only the terminology aspect: how the new law redefines the legal language in which concepts such as 'mother' and 'father' are expressed for purely legal purposes. Then again, I suppose it's just as well they never got round to discussing the actual issue these changes were intended to address. I somehow suspect Archbishop Scicluna would be horrified to hear a real orange tree's perspective on a subject like 'same sex marriage'. Most citrus trees are self- propagating; orange trees in particular are very often both male and female at the same time. So if you apply the so- called 'conservative/traditional ' model of 'marriage = man + woman' to an orange tree... well, most would be able to simply marry themselves, and get it over with. Humans, of course, don't have that luxury. (As it happens, neither do carobs... but let's not miss the wood for the trees.) And it's not the only thing that sets us apart from trees and other herbaceous life-forms. We also have the faculty of structuring and ordering our societies to ref lect the changing exigencies of its people at any given time. This is just one of the reasons why we need laws which adequately respond to social realities as they are today... as opposed to what some people think those social realities should be, in some kind of 'ideal society' that has never existed. From this perspective, Archbishop Scicluna's original tweet actually makes a lot of sense (provided you overlook that it's meant to be 'trees' talking). How did it go again? 'A carob tree says to an orange tree: 'See? They changed the law, but it didn't even remotely change how we refer to ourselves or each other...' Erm... hang on a sec: whose side is the Archbishop on, any way? Most of the objections we heard in Parliament were all about how the new law was going to force us all to call our parents 'parents', instead of 'mother' and 'father'. As David Agius (MP and PN whip) put it: "For God 's sake, the bill is proposing the total abolishment of the words mother and father, husband and wife, even brothers and sister." [...] "I was not exaggerating. You cannot call your parents mum or dad because it is not in the law..." It was supposed to spell an instant end to Mother's (and Father's) Day, too. Strange, I always thought, how a simple amendment to legal terminology should somehow be expected to override an entire industry – cards, f lowers, presents, meals at restaurants, etc. – that only exists because of those two annual occasions. You'd think that the global forces of consumerist capitalism were made of sterner stuff, than to be made redundant from one day to the next... by simply amending the legal definition of 'mother' at law. But now that the Marriage Equality Bill has been enacted, we can all test this hypothesis. According to its opponents, we should soon start seeing stationers removing their 'Mother's/Father's Day' cards from their selections... restaurants removing their special 'Mother's/Father's day' set menus... hotels no longer offering special 'Mother's/ Father's day' weekend breaks... gift shops closing up altogether, for want of anything to even justif y their existence anymore... and all because the marriage law was amended to remove legal ambiguities that might arise in certain marital situations. That's some power we've been ascribing to this new law, you know. If you believe any of that is likely to happen, you may as well believe those two trees really did suddenly start chatting away like gossips at a barber's shop. The latter only requires an inexplicable evolutionary quantum leap involving perennial woody plants of a certain size. The former, however, involves the suspension of the entire Western industrial-economic paradigm. Even a carob tree would be able to tell you which of those two scenarios is likelier in practice. (And if you ask it nicely, it might even give you a jar of 'gulepp' to take home.) Yet now we have the Archbishop himself, no less, telling us – through his arboreal alter-egos – that the new law actually made no such difference whatsoever. It came and went, but we are all still free to use whatever terminology we choose to describe our own family relations. The orange tree remained an orange tree. The carob, a carob. Just as 'mother' will remain 'mother', and 'father' 'father', regardless how the law chooses to define such concepts for its own purposes. The analogy has been made elsewhere, but it's worth repeating. If David Agius's argument, above, had any validity... i.e., that the removal of a phrase from the law-books means we can no longer legally use that phrase in everyday speech... then you would no longer be able to go to the police and file an assault and battery charge using your own words to describe the attack. Instead of saying, 'he beat me up', you would have to say something like: 'he caused grievous bodily harm on my person'. Otherwise, your complaint would not be legally valid. And you might end up being arrested for 'illegal language'. Again, even a 'tronga' – to use the word literally, for a change – would instantly see the absurdity in that reasoning. And oh look: according to Archbishop Scicluna (foremost among this law's critics)... it did. One other thing that his tweet also underscores is that this truth is so obvious, so self- evident, that even a couple of non-sentient woody perennials can work it out for themselves. Yet we have members of parliament – not to mention a whole body of public opinion out there – who evidently can't. So all things considered... I think I've changed my mind about wanting all those trees to shut up. They're beginning to make a lot more sense than a great chunk of this country's sentient human population. So speak on, my good old woody, leaf y friends: don't hold anything back. Just pour out all that undiluted sap you've been dying to talk about for centuries... Launch of an assistance scheme for Voluntary Organisations for the realisations for projects, activities and initiatives in Gozo. The Ministry for Gozo has launched an assistance scheme titled the Ministry for Gozo Non-Governmental Organisations Assistance Scheme. This scheme is designed to faciliate and support the realisation of small projects, activities and initiatives in Gozo by Voluntary Organisations throughout 2017. Applications are available on the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector website: www.vofunding.org.mt. Closing date is Friday, 4th August, 2017. Guidelines for prospective applicants are available on the Ministry for Gozo's website: www.mgoz.gov.mt and www.vofunding.org.mt. An information session will be held on Friday, 21st July, 2017 at 6.00pm at the Gozo NGO Centre, Il-Madonna tar-Rummiena Street, Xewkija Gozo. Further enquiries may be addressed to ngoscheme.mgoz@gov.mt. The new law came and went but we are still free to use whatever terminology we choose to describe our own family relations