Christian conservatives fear ‘dangerous’ equality bill promoting LGBT agenda

This article has been amended, to correct the impression given that Paul Vincenti was the proponent of an online petition against two draft bills.

Christian conservatives planning to lobby for their interests have made their first major move – opposing a draft law intended to promote equality. 

The lobbyists have warned that the two draft bills will interfere with parental rights to educate children and “indoctrinate children with an explicit LGBT agenda”. 

The bills envisage a clampdown on institutional discrimination on the basis of age, sex, belief, disability, gender expression, gender identity, race, ethnic origin, maternity, and sexual orientation.

Anti-discrimination fines will be doubled to a maximum of €5,000, and a Human Rights Commission will be established – tasked with both following up on discrimination complaints and investigating cases on its own initiative.

Malta Gay Rights Movement president Gabi Calleja recently said that the passing of the law was one of her next three lobbying challenges. 

An online petition has taken issue with a clause in the equality bill that would require schools to “promote diversity and respect towards all persons regardless of whether they fall under any or more of the protected characteristics”. 

The petition claims that this amounts to government demanding that society promote and respect the “LGBT+ agenda”.

The online petition against the bills had drawn 750 signatures at the time of writing warns that the agenda is “innocence-destroying and sexualizing” 

“Serious questions are being raised by parents about the rush to implement these noxious programmes,” says the petition against the bills. “Is this what Maltese parents and other concerned citizens want for our young, impressionable children? To become guinea pigs in a sexual indoctrination experiment?

“Why would the Labour administration be so reckless with Malta’s children? Why is Joseph Muscat’s government promoting a recipe for the sexual and psychological abuse of children – especially when these terrible bills were not part of his party’s manifesto for government?” 

The petition adds that the bills amount to a “gross violation” of the right of children to have their innocence protected and to a “gross imposition” on the rights of parents to educate their children about personal sexual ethics and human nature. 

“The parents, not the state, are the primary educators of their children. The state must not be allowed to preach this dangerous version of reality to school-children.”  

Who are the ‘New Christian Conservatives’? 

It is a Facebook group set up last month by Paul Vincenti with the intention of uniting conservative Christians into a lobby group strong enough to influence party policies. Attempts by MaltaToday to contact Vincenti to get his views of this “agenda” proved futile.

Vincenti does not intend to back either Labour or PN, whom he has accused of “bending over backwards to shower the homosexual movement with promises”, but rather throw his weight behind a third party that could challenge the status quo.  

Other than LGBT+ rights, Vincenti has also come out against euthanasia, abortion, embryo freezing and government plans to decriminalise the vilification of Roman Catholicism. 

“As a Christian who cares about my country, I also care that we are losing our voices on values, that we are being relegated into second and third class citizens, and that our vote is being taken for granted,” he says in a video comment. “The voice of Christians has been relegated into the second and third division, which is unacceptable, unwise and dangerous for the country. When values are thrashed and new values are invested, when rights become wrongs, and wrongs become rights, then we’re in trouble…”

Right of reply from Paul Vincenti

"Throughout your article you have attributed to me many things that I did not say. You have taken what was written in a petition that neither myself or members of our group started. I only shared this petition on our FB group. You have claimed that I said many things. In fact, I did not say any of what you wrote and you are only quoting what was written in this petition and then claimed that I had said these words. You also claimed to have made several attempts to contact me. I have not received any emails from you nor any calls of late from any of your journalists."