Gay marriage cannot be stopped by personal belief.

The first time I was introduced to the concept of what it meant to be 'gay' still rings clear in my head. I remember knowing that my mother's male friend had a boyfriend, and I didn't question it being a child of around maybe 7 years of age. Once I heard my father speaking about how relations between this friend and his father weren't great and I asked him why, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Why do <name> and his father not speak?
Dad: Because ever since he told him that he likes men, they had a fight and it's been difficult.
Me: But why?
Dad: Because even though there's nothing wrong with it, it's still very difficult for a father to know that his son is gay.
Me: But why?

This is where the conversation trailed off and, to be honest, I still feel the same kind of incapability to understand why it should be an issue for parents, let alone the general public, who a man or a woman feels attracted to.

Today Malta stands to be even higher in first place on the Rainbow Europe Index, on which it is already first place by over 10%. The legislation of gay marriage, rather than civil union, is a further step in recognising that love is not wrong. This has also been recognised fully or in part in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US and Uruguay. Not to mention progress made in Taiwan and Germany with even Israel and Armenia recognising gay marriage for official purposes.

When it comes to religious freedom, it is very normal to find people citing their beliefs as reasons for not allowing gay marriage legislation to be enacted, which is all well and good, unless they actually think that their personal beliefs are grounds to impinge on personal liberties. It's fine to disagree with something and offer reasons why you will never participate in or agree with it, but that does not remove the need for legislation to protect the people who will make use of it. I doubt there is any single person on earth who enjoys getting parking tickets, but that doesn't mean that due to public annoyance, traffic laws must be suspended to appease the few who think they're morally wrong.

The UK just had it's first gay Muslim wedding, which is a huge milestone in religious evolution. Malta's gay Catholic group, Drachma, is another trailblazer in pointing out that religion and sexual orientation need not be at loggerheads because, essentially, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There are no grounds for a religious belief to dictate who individuals can or cannot feel attracted to. In fact, one of the greatest decisions the Maltese Parliament has taken in the last decade, in my opinion, was to make Gay Conversion Therapy illegal. This practise which still goes on in some countries is inhumane, criminal, and comparable only to snake-oil salesmen promising cures for things that need not and definitely cannot be 'cured'. Even writing that made me wretch internally.

We live in a world which rejects humanity for the sake of personal belief. We live in a world where people feel like they are entitled to legislative power because of things they believe in purely due to being born into a culture which told them to. We live in a horrible world. Legislation like what is about to be passed is another small step into making this world a little less horrible, both for people who have been given the short end of the stick because they don't love who the masses deem is fit for them to love, and for humanity in general.

Marriage is a human construct, it is not a divine right, it is not an absolute, it is a human custom cultivated and distorted through the ages. Let it once more evolve to show what it means to be human. What it means to love and express love openly and freely without being demonised.

I am privileged for all the wrong reasons.

I'm aware that I am privileged purely because of a number of purely coincidental chances, but the one which I want to address in this post is the fact that I'm currently better off in a number of situations than literally half the population. That's right, I'm privileged purely because I was born with a penis. Mind you, the world doesn't seem to differentiate between how functional or picturesque said penis is, but just because I was born with it, suddenly I have a number of benefits which the unfortunate half of the human race don't; namely the mind-boggling opportunity to have a choice as to whether I want to have a child or not.

Malta, a country where divorce was only legalised after years of neglect on the issue, followed by a year of intense debate only in 2011. Fine, we were a bit slow on that but we have it now all's well and good. Then only three years later in April 2014 we made the huge leap from being as progressive as an 87 year-old Eastern European village lady working a loom with a look in her eyes that says she's seen too much, to legalising LGBTQI Civil Unions (DON'T SAY THE WORD MARRIAGE!). Again, fine, well done to the government for realising that it isn't a crime to love someone. Round of applause there.

Now, for the love of all that anyone holds holy, why on earth in a country where literally everyone's business is everyone's business can't we get past the idea that women deserve as much opportunity to contraceptives as men do? It is baffling to me that in 2017, seen as one of the most progressive countries in Europe, we not only JUST got the Morning After Pill in pharmacies this month, but a number of pharmacies and medical professionals, and here I do use the term 'professionals' extremely lightly, are actually refusing to hand it out on moral grounds? Am I missing the invention of a time machine taking us back to the late 1600s where women were only slightly higher than dogs on the social food chain?

Let me preface the following paragraphs by assuring you that all the information I'm getting is from the World Health Organisation, and not local lobby groups or my personal opinion, which in Malta are as widely cited as Oxford publications. For one thing, let's call it what it is. It's an Emergency Contraceptive Pill, not simply an everyday Morning After Pill leading to the inherent moral decline of civilisation as we know it with all Maltese women suddenly running rampant on the streets looking for literally anything to stick up inside them. It is not easy on the body, it is not a pleasant free-flowing, over the counter, no-holds barred condom supplement. The looks and stigma against the very audacity of asking for something legal is enough to stop any young woman in her tracks. It's an emergency second to last resort in case, oh I don't know, the condom breaks or someone rapes a

drunk woman. Let's not call it sexual misconduct, or unwanted advances, it's rape. Apparently a large number of this country still believes that rape is entirely a woman's fault which kind of makes me very fortunate to be a man considering if I happen to get drunk and force myself on a woman it's OK because it's only natural for a man to want to spread his seed while it was probably what she was wearing anyway.

The following are reasons why having an Emergency Contraceptive Pill is necessary in all pharmacies as detailed by the WHO:

• When no contraceptive has been used.
• In cases of rape or coerced sex when the woman was not protected by an effective contraceptive method.
• When there is a contraceptive failure or incorrect use, including:
• condom breakage, slippage, or incorrect use;
• 3 or more consecutively missed combined oral contraceptive pills;
• progestogen-only pill (minipill) taken more than 3 hours late;
• desogestrel-containing pill (0.75 mg) taken more than 12 hours late;
• norethisterone enanthate (NET-EN) progestogen-only injection taken more than 2 weeks late;
• depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) progestogen-only injection taken more than four weeks late;
• the combined estrogen-plus-progestogen monthly injection given more than seven days late;
• dislodgment, delay in placing, or early removal of a contraceptive hormonal ring or skin patch;
• dislodgment, breakage, tearing, or early removal of a diaphragm or cervical cap;
• failed withdrawal (e.g. ejaculation in the vagina or on external genitalia);
• failure of a spermicide tablet or film to melt before intercourse;
• miscalculation of the abstinence period, or failure to abstain or use a barrier method on the fertile days of the cycle when using fertility awareness based methods; and
• expulsion of an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) or hormonal contraceptive implant.

Bear in mind some of these mentioned reasons don't apply to this country because there are contraceptives here that have never been in the country except if a foreigner were using them.

And now, Lord help us all, the political debate is turning on the issue of abortion. Remember how I previously mentioned the ECP was a second to last resort? Yeah here's the last resort. Don't moan, don't cry, don't recoil in abject terror. The fact of the matter is that, if all else fails, abortion is kind of effective in eliminating unwanted pregnancies. Let's take a look at that phrase for a second, "unwanted pregnancies". How are a gaggle of post-menopausal Catholics and middle-aged male parliamentarians leading this debate? I'm not saying they don't have the right to an opinion, far from it, please try to substantiate the debate with pros and cons and make it healthier and fruitful, but don't lambaste all women who feel, and rightly so, that they have a choice as to whether to carry out a pregnancy to full term when they obviously aren't ready for potentially the most physically and mentally traumatic biological experience all for the joys of saying they took part in the miracle of life.

21.6 million women per year go through unsafe abortions. 47,000 women per year die due to complications caused by unsafe abortion accounting to 13% of all maternal deaths. And those statistics are from 2008, almost a decade ago. It isn't getting any better. The procedure is invasive, it's painful, it's traumatic and it's risky but if it were regularised the risks would be greatly reduced and Maltese women would stop having to catch the Catamaran to have an abortion in a dingy basement in Sicily by someone who's had his medical license revoked but is very assuring when he speaks about how he knows what he's doing.

I cannot and will not try to change anyone's mind on whether they favour abortion for themselves or their loved ones, but I feel it is my duty as a man who cares deeply about a number of friends and family members who might one day find themselves in a situation where they have no other option. At least consider that your opinion and personal feelings are not the be all and end all in this debate. At least consider that women deserve to have a choice. At least, especially if you're women yourselves, have the common decency to your own gender to make it as easy as it is for me, the privileged half of society, to decide that I am not ready to have a child right now.

Migration in Malta, from a cocked up system to facts everyone gets wrong.

Plenty has been happening since mid-November of last year -the year which every single person on Earth save Republicans would like to forget- and none of it bodes well on a local scale for the "most progressive government this country has ever seen." I'm not going to go into bashing one particular government, but when it comes to the issue of migration and repatriation, both sides of the Maltese political sphere have cocked everything up for years on end.

Before I delve into opinionated drivel, let's look at some facts as presented on the website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malta. Up until the aforementioned November, there were 1,619 asylum applications on the island, out of which only 9.2%, or 159, were actually granted refugee status. This should serve as a basic indication of how difficult it is to actually get refugee status in Malta, despite the daily videos from those dirty liberal Facebook pages showing us all of those wars going on everywhere. Even less than that number, we have 8.5%, or 147, getting Temporary Human Protection, which is what concerns us considering it is these people only who are being rounded up during a reform of legislation which the government is currently doing and, as of yet, hasn't actually finished.

Now, when people say that more and more are coming to Malta every day, that's actually not true. There was a significant spike in irregular migration in 2008 but a steady decrease by 2009 and a huge dip in 2010. Granted it is higher this year than it was in 2010, but it's also lower than 2008 - 2009 and 2011 all the way through to 2013. That whole coming in by boat thing, also utter nonsense because, as it turns out, arrivals by boat in 2016 is actually the lowest it's been as far back as records on the website show (2003), even lower than they were during the previously mentioned dip in 2010. The whole argument that open centres are jam packed with people on top of each other is also farcical with 2016 having the lowest number of people held in the open centres in years, this apart from it being the year only beaten by the previous two years, for the number of migrants resettled to the US; so when it comes to all these migrants staying on the island, bear in mind that just under 2,000 migrants were resettled in the US in the last four years.

OK let's focus a bit more on 2016 then. It is common to hear pundits harping on and on about how all these Africans just come to Malta and are given a place to stay etc etc. Wrong. In all of 2016, only 160 foreigners were officially resettled in Malta; out of those 80 were actually Greek and Italian and for all those saying, "Yes but what about all the Syrians free flowing onto the island bringing in ISIS and the bombs and the ISIS and OMG THE ISIS!" ... Yeah, there are 27 of those. I've met a couple, they're nice people, many of them excellent plasterers and manual labourers actually, you know, because that's the only job they can find that although still gives them a ridiculously low-pay, they work their ass off to be able to live in this country. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how to get out of it myself.

When it comes to all these filthy foreigners living in Malta, it's true. There are thousands of foreigners living on this island; although most of them are actually British. Up until the 2011 census there were 6,615 British people living here while Libyans, who if you listen to anyone on the bus clearly outnumber the Maltese at least 500 to one with the absolutely staggering population of 403. There's a reason why it seems like migrants have "taken over" certain areas like Bugibba, Swieqi, St Paul's Bay and a veritable number of areas like Marsa in the south and that's because they're the only places someone with a docked manual labourer's pension can afford to live in.

In the end however, it seems that the only people who know less than the whiners and complainers about how to deal with the issue have been the elected governments both of the current administration and the previous one. Wouldn't it be rather intelligent that in a country where the children per family has gone from a cosy 4-8 per family to a spacious one child per family, if Malta actually invests in educating a migrant workforce that will readily contribute to the state in terms of taxes and living costs? You know, as a 24 year-old I sometimes dream of having a pension when I'm at that healthy retirement age of 95.

This whole rounding up Malians, who by the way are such a low number that are never actually mentioned in nationality statistics except in the "Other" category, and then letting them all go one by one after having traumatised whole families looks like one big panic-stricken move to appeal to the stupid, bigoted, racist, inhuman "patriot" groups speaking loud and proud at their 12-people-strong demonstrations in front of Parliament. Oh and sending letters to 4 Nigerian children aged a year and eight months, three, five and eight asking for their employment and residence papers in order to renew their Temporary Protection Status on a holiday? Class.

As a closing attempt to analogise this whole mess, I'm going to look back at a conversation I had with a good friend of mine who was struggling to come to terms with what is happening. Imagine the previous administration being a child who doesn't like vegetables so manages to sneak them into his room after dinner. After years and years of doing this, this vegetable hoarding starts to get out of hand so imagine the child's relief when the issue is solved as they find out they can forget all about it when a new family with a new child is moving in. Here comes another child whose parents don't forcefeed him quite as many vegetables, but just enough that he still needs to smuggle a few up to his bedroom. Upon locating the perfect place under the country's largest rug, what does he find? A massive lump of rotten legisla- I mean, vegetables. Of course, now his parents, let's call them EUgine and EUvonne, are annoyed to say the least, so the new child tries and tries to get rid of the rotten mess by throwing them out of the window as fast as possible only to realise he can't actually open the rain shutters and thus, the vegetables bounce off and fall right back in his sad lap.

The moral of this is that, the system wasn't exactly working for the first kid because he kind of lacked foresight. The same system, no matter how much smaller the problem is, won't actually work for the new kid either.

A rebirth of sorts.

Sitting alone at an eating establishment reading Bukowski and listening to Hip Hop music has led to me crave a rebirth of sorts. This is not an entirely new venture, but more a continuation of a blog one can find at subject-to-interpretation.blogspot.com which ran its course. Everything has to be retired at a point and it's time to stop pretending that that blog is still ongoing, although I won't delete it and it shall be kept as a sort of memoir of thoughts which came to me and passed years ago back when I was first a University student with a lot on my mind.

This will both be and not be a personal diary in the sense that I will not be speaking about things which go on in my personal life on a daily basis, but I shall still be writing as openly as I have always written about issues both on an international and local scale with varying degrees of relevance in my somewhat cultivated and entirely plagiarised style. I like to consider myself a poor man's Bukowski, but then again even that title was plagiarised from an episode of Californication.

I will not attempt to promise a timeline for the posts, or any sort of regularity, but sitting here reading Bukowski has awakened a fire that I thought had long since died. A fire for writing which I had until I was writing about things I didn't care about in a style I didn't care for simply to pay the bills. Circumstance has now changed and as the fire once again seems to be alight, let's see where this goes.

I do hope my drivel is still as entertaining as it was back then. I am eternally hopeful.