It’s all Marxism to Edwin Vassallo as Brussels issues LGBTQI equality strategy

Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo launched one of his customary tirades on Thursday, after the European Commission issued an equality strategy that makes EU funds conditional on the respect of gay rights.

Vassallo, only last week reconfirmed as a Nationalist candidate for the next elections, said plans by the Maltese commissioner for equality Helena Dalli to inflict penalties on EU countries that do not respect LGBTQI rights was “Marxism at its best”.

It is now the standard, go-to slur for Maltese right-wingers and other religious opponents of equality laws to call anti-discrimination laws and affirmative LGBTQI action ‘cultural Marxism’.

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“This is Marxism at its best. She was so in our country, and indeed inside the EU,” Vassallo said on Facebook, referring to Dalli, a former equalities minister who pioneered the Equality Bill. “This attitude is not compatible with the value of liberty but is an entirely Marxist attitude in favour of uniformity and not respect of diversity. This is a democratic dictatorship, totalitarianism at its best.”

Helena Dalli said that a mechanism designed to make member states adhere to the rule of law agreed as part of negotiations over the EU’s long-term budget, should be used to uphold EU values on the issue. “I feel very strongly about this,” she said. “Because it’s a way on how to bring a member state in line, hopefully, by saying ‘OK, you don’t get a share which you should get if you don’t respect the rule of law’,” she said on Thursday ahead of the launch of a Commission strategy to protect LGBTQI rights across the bloc.

The so-called rule of law conditionality mechanism is linked to the EU’s long-term budget and new coronavirus recovery fund. It would enable the EU to cut funding to member states if they renege on rule-of-law commitments in a way that threatens the Union’s financial interests.

But it does not mention LGBTQI specifically, and it is unclear yet exactly how it would be interpreted.

Vassallo’s comment was welcomed and derided by Catholic supporters and PN activists in equal measure. For example, Gavin Muscat of the True Light Catholic Media channel on YouTube said: “Thank you for speaking up!”. But PN candidate Alan Abela Wadge told Vassallo he was cut off from the pulse of the nation. “I hope our party realises it cannot be a people’s party with this type of politics. Let’s be open to ideas that might not be in line with what you were taught in the past. If we don’t do that, we would be making sure our party gets smaller.” Opposition leader Bernard Grech today went on to dissassociate himself and the party from Vassallo's comments.

The pro-life activist Miriam Sciberras joined the debate, saying the EC’s threat was akin to banks withholding funding to developing nations which do not uphold sexual and reproductive rights. “In Malta we are still fighting to retain right to conscientious objection and religious freedom in the public square. In and of itself this will reject some lifestyles but this is not the same as rejecting people. We are obliged to love everyone even our enemies.”

But another commenter, Steve Zammit, said that while he was a practising Catholic, calling Dalli’s action plan ‘Marxist’ was not out of place. “It is unacceptable that countries like Poland create LGBT-free zones. Don’t you remember the battles of the PN in 1980s, when some felt that a part of the country could not enter Zejtun?” he said, referring to the Tal-Barrani clashes. “Don’t you remember that slogan ‘Work, Justice and Liberty’?”

Vassallo has been consistently conservative in his actions as MP, having voted against marriage equality in 2017 despite the PN’s approval of the law at the time.

The EC now wants all EU governments to come up with their own national action plan on how to decrease the discrimination against the LGBTQI community.

Dalli has already turned down EU grants for six towns under a citizens’ programme for twin municipalities that ranged from €5,000 to €25,000. All rejected grants were supposed to go to so-called “LGBT-free zones” in Poland: towns that have signed various declarations and charters which include discriminatory pledges about LGBTQI communities. “We have seen ways on how to effectively work in a situation where we have these LGBTIQ-free zones … by holding back the funding for the projects that are coming from the EU. Equality is the value of the EU, if you’re going against the value, then the EU should not fund you,” Dalli said.