Equality. But at what cost?

When organisations that seldom find themselves on the same side of a public debate suddenly speak with one voice, perhaps the government ought to listen. That is precisely what happened this week in Malta.

Fourteen organisations—Aditus Foundation, African Media Association Malta, Checkpoint Malta, Dance Beyond Borders, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, the Foundation for the Ukrainian Community of Malta, Humanists Malta, Jesuit Refugee Service Malta, MGRM, the Migrants Commission, Moviment Graffitti, Repubblika, SOS Malta and Spark15—jointly called on parliament to postpone the vote on Bill 3 to allow broader public consultation.

Bill 3 is the National Commission for Human Rights and Equality Bill, which ultimately required a two-thirds majority in parliament to pass since it also contained changes to the Constitution.

But the concern was not confined to these 14 organisations. Church educational bodies, the Chamber of Pharmacists, Doctors for Life, the Malta Employers’ Association, Life-Network Foundation, the Malta Women’s Lobby and representatives of the insurance sector also raised objections or requested further consultation. Even the Opposition, while supporting the establishment of a human rights commission in principle, withheld its support pending greater scrutiny. Indeed, the Opposition walked out of parliament when the government went ahead with the vote.

This widespread concern is not evidence of a sinister conspiracy against equality. It is evidence that the bill touches many different rights, professions and institutions, and that its practical consequences deserve more than a legislative sprint before parliament closes for the summer.

Bill 3 prohibits discrimination across an open-ended list of protected characteristics, including sex, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sex characteristics and “other status”. It also covers employment, education, curricula, harassment, publicly available goods and services, and the internal rules of organisations. These are broad provisions. Broad provisions are not necessarily bad provisions, but the broader a law’s reach, the clearer its safeguards must be. In this case, the safeguards remain troublingly unclear.

Consider healthcare. The bill contains no explicit safeguard for conscientious objection. Indeed, the Chamber of Pharmacists has warned precisely of this danger. Could healthcare professionals be required to participate in services, procedures or the provision of products that they sincerely believe to be morally wrong? The same question must be asked of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals. Could a doctor decline to participate in a procedure on grounds of conscience?

And what will teachers be required to teach? Would a Catholic school remain free to teach Catholic anthropology concerning the body, marriage and sexual ethics? The bill protects religious communities. But does that protection extend equally to the lay teachers who carry out their educational mission? Could a biology teacher state plainly that human beings are sexually dimorphic, while treating every student with kindness and dignity? Could a teacher distinguish between biological sex and a student’s asserted gender identity? Here, Orwell’s warning in Nineteen Eighty-Four remains uncomfortable because it remains relevant: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”

There is also the question of privacy in schools. The bill does not expressly declare who must use which toilet or changing room. Suppose a female student objects to undressing in the presence of a biologically male student who identifies as female. Whose dignity is considered? Whose privacy counts? Is the girl permitted to object without being accused of discrimination?

These are not uniquely Maltese concerns. Democracies across Europe have struggled with similar questions. Consider Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen. The proceedings followed several public statements concerning homosexuality and Christian sexual ethics, including a 2019 social-media post containing biblical verses and an older church pamphlet. She endured police investigations and years of proceedings. One may dislike her words. One may dispute her theology. One may believe some of her terminology to be outdated or offensive. But a democratic society must still ask whether such disagreements should lead to police interviews, repeated prosecutions and years of legal uncertainty. None of this means that people who are gay, transgender, religious, disabled, foreign or members of any other minority should be left vulnerable to unfair treatment. They should be protected in law, and their dignity should be defended. But dignity is not the same as immunity from disagreement.

A Christian should be free to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. A humanist should be free to reject Christian teaching. A feminist should be free to argue that sex matters. A transgender person should be free to explain the reality of gender dysphoria and advocate for legal recognition. A journalist should be free to question all of them. Malta must not replace one social orthodoxy with another and call the exchange progress.

There is something faintly comic about passing a human rights law so quickly that human rights organisations must beg parliament for the right to be heard. It is rather like organising a conference on dialogue and locking the doors before the participants arrive.