Sunrise Time

As I drag myself out of bed at 6.30am, outside everything is dark. It’s less than a month since the winter solstice, and as the year rolls on, the sun will rise earlier and earlier, until eventually we change our clocks by an hour to try to keep things relatively sane, nevertheless by summer it will still be light well before 6am.

This got me thinking - why do we have such a clumsy system for measuring time? What is 6.30am anyway? It’s six and a half hours measured from a meaningless point during the night called midnight. It’s a fairly arbitrary point from which to start counting. Ok so it's the middle of the night, who really cares about that?

Surely we can come up with a better system. One phenomenon that does make practical sense is sunrise. Imagine a time-keeping system which starts counting time at sunrise. 0:00 hours would be when the sun rises, winter or summer, wherever you are located. You might start work at 1:00, an hour after sunrise. You won’t have to get up in the dark in winter while feeling that the day is half gone in summer, it will always be an hour after sunrise. There would be no such thing as daylight savings time any more, there would be no need for it.

This of course would signify many changes. Time zones would no longer be simple bands more or less going North to South. Most countries, states or regions would want to choose a single location at which sunrise is measured so that the whole place would have the same time, otherwise simply announcing the time for an event would become too complex. Of course, sunset would still keep changing - if you start work an hour after sunrise, in winter you’ll probably go home in the dark while in summer it will still be light but that already happens now anyway. In addition, countries very far North or South, in which the sun doesn’t go set or doesn’t rise at all for weeks or months at a time, will have to use a different system - maybe using the nearest time zone outside the arctic / antarctic circle.

However the biggest headache would be our clocks. They’re all designed to measure time starting from midnight, and don’t expect "00:00" to keep changing from day to day. These would all have to be changed. Question is: would it be worth changing our clocks to eliminate these irritating anomalies?

The Bible (abridged) - Genesis

God created everything. He created humans without the ability to distinguish good from evil, told them a lie, then punished them and all their descendants (including you) for doing evil by not believing his lie. He also punished the creature who told them the truth.

So the first man and woman had two sons, and one grew crops and the other herded sheep. And both offered the very best of their respective products to God, but God was no vegetarian so he totally ignored the veggies and instead took the meat. The vegetable farmer got so angry he killed his brother which made God punish him some more.

Anyway after these first humans had populated the planet, God decided he didn’t like what he saw because they too were doing things he didn’t like, so he decided to kill everyone - men, women, children and innocent little babies, by drowning them. He also decided to drown all the animals and birds too for good measure. But instead of creating everything again he chose one man and his family, got them to build a boat and place two of every species of animal in the entire world on it, together with enough food for all of them for almost a year. Then he drowned everyone and everything else by covering the whole world with water for almost a year. After he did this however, God - who knows everything including the future and does not make mistakes - regretted what he had done and decided never to do it again so he invented rainbows to remind himself never to drown the entire world again. Just small parts of it.

Soon after the drowning was over and this man had returned all the species of animals and birds to their rightful places in the world while repopulating the planet, some people decided to build a great big tower tall enough to reach heaven. God became concerned because he thought they might succeed, so he magicked them into all getting different languages so they couldn’t understand each other any more. Still they made up for this because they lived really long lives of 500 years or more and apparently never needed Viagra despite their age.

Some time later, God chose one person completely at random - Abraham - and decided he and his descendants would be his favourites. He decided to give him Palestine as a gift, totally forgetting that there were already people living there. They’re still arguing about it to this day. In return however he and all his male descendants would have to have the tip of their weiners snipped off. So after he had brought this news to all his male relatives, who were delighted I’m sure, he and his family went to have many adventures.

In one of them, his nephew Lot ended up living in Las Vegas, only it was called Sodom back then. It was a trippy place, with pot, free love and everyone having a pretty good time. God however wasn’t pleased, probably because he wasn’t invited. So he decided to destroy the city and everyone in it. He sent two hot looking guy angels over to Sodom to (a) warn Lot to get away, and (b) destroy the whole cities with everyone in them. Including the animals and trees this time too. So the two twinks went over to Lot’s house, but while they were there, a group of partying men wanted them to come out and have sex. Lot, who was extremely holy, offered them his own daughters instead. The crowd weren’t interested in them however, so Lot and his wife and daughters left the city and the angels told them not to look back. As soon as they were out, the angels started killing everybody using burning molten sulphur - even the little children. When Lot’s wife heard the screaming and turned to look back, God killed her too. So Lot and his daughters went into a cave where promptly Lot got drunk, had sex with both his daughters and knocked them both up. But that wasn't as bad as looking back so God said "carry on".

In the meantime Abraham’s wife got mysteriously pregnant. Abraham heard a voice in his head telling him to kill his son and he happily agreed, tying him up and was about to gut him when a stranger stopped him. And this shows what a good man Abraham was.

Long after, twin boys were born and one day the younger boy stole his older brother’s inheritance. He’s the ancestor of all Jews today.  His name was Jacob but his friends called him Israel, and he had 12 sons. One of them had a nice coat and they made a musical about it. His brothers sold him to some passing merchants, which was perfectly normal back then, but he had interesting dreams that got him a job with the Egyptian pharaoh (they didn’t have TV back then). After bringing all the other brothers with him to Egypt, they and their descendants settled there. This would turn out to be a bad decision but that's another story.

Vatican Idol 2013

In about a month, a group of people wearing funny hats will meet to choose who among them will wear the funniest hat of all - the contest to find out who will be the winner of this edition of Vatican Idol is on!

Seriously though... In front of them will be a fundamental choice: Should they choose another conservative pope who will further alienate what Catholics remain, as well as the rest of society in places where the church retains a significant presence, or should they try to go for a more liberal/progressive pope who may stem the tide of people leaving the church? The latter could alienate those conservatives within the church and possibly have to declare that the church has (gasp) changed its mind on a thing or two. It's not easy for the church to do this - it took them 350 years to admit that, in the end, Galileo had been right about the earth and the sun.

I've heard many people who are opposed to the catholic church say that they would welcome a conservative pope since he'd hasten the church's demise. However one can't ignore the fact that the church can still exert quite a bit of pressure in some places, and having an ultra-conservative pope would perpetuate the problems being faced by several groups, including gays, women and non-Catholics.

Personally I would prefer a more reasonable, modern church which lasts longer and gets along better with people, than an intolerant church that causes more suffering but has a shorter lifespan.

A conservative pope is made likely by the simple fact that it is the pope who chooses the cardinals who will ultimately choose the next pope - and the current and previous popes were both very conservative and between them selected mostly dinosaurs. At the same time it's hard to miss the fact that the church is getting increasingly out of touch with reality. The pace at which society is changing has speeded up dramatically in recent times. The change from the Roman Empire to mediaeval Europe was relatively minor compared to the last 230 years, in which we've gone from the first human flight in a balloon, to people going out in space and not even making the news. 40 years ago, homosexuality was still a crime in Malta, while in 2011, a majority of the Maltese people - many of whom describe themselves as Catholics - went against the church's instructions (not to mention fire-and-brimstone warnings) and voted to introduce divorce.

In this context, a church that is still arguing against the use of condoms, insisting that priests must possess a penis (but they must never use it except for urination), and that two men or two women cannot possibly love each other just as a man and a woman can, is way out of touch. In fact the only thing that can be said in their defence is that there are churches that are even wackier, which is not exactly glowing praise.

In the meantime, an interesting development is that there is an increased likelihood that the new pope will be, for the first time, African. I've already seen a comment or two from people who are shocked that the pope could be black (isn't God white after all?) - though they generally avoid the B-word. Personally I'm a bit concerned that certain African contenders were behind, or supported, Uganda's new law to make homosexuality a capital offence. On the plus side he might do something about the dreary church music by injecting a few new rhythms from Africa.

In the meantime, while speculation is rife, Facebook users cheerfully share pictures of various people in papal vestments, from Silvio Berlusconi to Tony Blair top Austin Gatt (the pope who will never resign) - all of which reinforce what most people already know - that the Roman Catholic Church has become for many people a comical figure, as anachronistic as a knight in full armour going to work in his office.

Mammoth Lies and Pleistocene Porkers

It's said that if you repeat a lie long enough, people will eventually  take it as the truth - and true to form, the ultra-conservatives are out in force trying to prove it true today, the day after Tonio Borg managed to scrape through to his post as European Commissioner responsible for health and consumer rights. They are trying to convince people through repetition that the objections to his nomination were due to his religious beliefs, that these objections went against the EU's spirit of diversity, and that his eventual acceptance was a victory of common sense over partisanship and intolerance.
In fact, these statements seem to be trying to prove not only the aphorism above, but also the saying that some lies are so farfetched that some people might believe them, thinking nobody could possibly make something like this up.
The fact is that none of the objections to Tonio Borg were based on his religion - in fact, both of his predecessors were also Catholic, and this did not pose a problem. However, unlike them, Tonio Borg has a list of political actions in which he used his position to impose his extreme views on others. Things like his attempts to prevent same-sex couples inheriting property, his vote against divorce after the population had voted in favour in a referendum, and his participation in a campaign to entrench the anti-abortion laws in the constitution - laws which, in Malta, do not permit abortion even if the woman will die without one. Certainly these are issues that are influenced by Tonio Borg's religious beliefs, but the objections were not against his beliefs, but his willingness to use his position to impose them on everyone else.
Tonio Borg managed to get his post by reassuring the European Parliament that his behaviour henceforth would be different, or - to use his own choice of word - he has evolved, in reference to his past opposition to equal rights for gay people. That's a good sign of course - though obviously he will be watched very closely for any signs that he's going back on his reassurances. The moment he does, the commission could be heading for a major clash with the parliament - and could even result in the commissioner being forced to resign - for the second time in a row.
It is also worth looking at how Tonio Borg managed to win approval. Far from being a victory of common sense over partisanship, it was the other way round. The EPP, of which Tonio Borg's party forms part, voted en masse to approve someone from their own team, while the socialists allowed a free vote - so in fact it was a victory of petty partisanship over common sense. Common sense would have been to select someone who is not so extremist, and who would have passed muster with no controversy or doubts, which we have proven perfectly capable of doing with our past candidates. In the end, partisan politics won out.

Joe Borg's essence of vileness

In his weekly column on The Sunday Times, Joe Borg, a priest, put up one of the vilest piles of lies that I have seen in a while, reminiscent of the kind of writings the Nazis used to publish about Jews.

The subject of this invective is Tonio Borg, Malta's nominee to fill the post of John Dalli as EU commissioner responsible for health and civil rights. His nomination was greeted with surprise and dismay by most Europeans - the man is one of the least competent to take on the job. Since the commission he'd be responsible for includes responsibility for the rights of gay people, racial minorities, women and so on, why would the Maltese government put forward someone who is openly homophobic, who has tried to entrench Malta's anti-abortion laws into the constitution and whose decision to repatriate immigrants when there was clear evidence they were going to be tortured on arrival made international headlines? To me the answer is simple: The party wants to pave the way for Simon Busuttil to take over as second-in-command (so he'll be in place to take over from Gonzi should the party suffer a humiliating defeat) so Tonio Borg must go - and this is his farewell gift. However that is speculation on my part and not what this discussion is about.

According to Joe Borg, the only thing standing between Tonio Borg and his seat in the commission is an "anti-Christian secularist lobby". That this is a lie is made obvious by the fact that both of Tonio Borg's predecessors were Christians and neither of them raised these kinds of objections. In the case of ex-commissioner Joe Borg (a different person), it was because he was in charge of agriculture and fisheries - so no concerns about civil rights there - and in the case of John Dalli because whatever his personal religious beliefs, he demonstrated that he was quite capable of keeping apart his duty and his faith. Tonio Borg is different. He has a badly tarnished record of using his position to impose his beliefs on everyone else. If any sense of fairness prevails, he will be thanked for his application and sent back with a "next candidate please". Joe Borg (the priest again) lies about the reason for the objections - he says that the objectors are against him "because he espouses Christian values". That is only true if homophobia, sexism, racism and breaching basic human rights are "Christian values". Joe Borg digs deeper into his innate hate and vileness to compare secularists to suicide bombers as well as the far right racists. He forgot to mention that we're also responsible for storms and epidemics, sold our soul to the devil and eat babies for breakfast.

He then goes on to say how Christians (who make up BY FAR the biggest religious group) are poor persecuted people - in the west, and especially in Europe! I kid you not. Actually he was repeating the pope's brainfart there. He claims that secularists (whom he calls anti-Christians) "discriminate against Christians in public roles by requiring them to act against their conscience". Maybe he should ask the clergy in Pakistan, who are constantly lobbying for the country to be made more secular. I don't blame them - they get discriminated against, so they want more secularism - they know that secularism guarantees freedom of religion and a level playing field. But in Malta and Europe, where they are a majority and frequently enjoy a privileged position for historical reasons - where THEY are the discriminators - they think that being prevented from perpetuating their traditional discrimination is in itself a discrimination against them. He thinks that Christians have a right to harm gay people, or suppress women, or discriminate against religious minorities and if they're not allowed to do this, they're the victims. The truth is that if you occupy a public office which gives you certain authorities, you may not abuse your position to push your personal ideologies. If you are a marriage registrar, your job requires you to check the papers and rubber stamp the certificate. If you're a racist you are not permitted to refuse to marry someone whose race you don't like. Similarly if the law of the land says that gays can marry, if you're homophobic you are not permitted to deny marriage to a same-sex couple simply because you personally don't believe it should be done - even if you can pull verses from your preferred book of religious scripture to support your point. If you want the job of commissioner responsible, among other things, for gay rights, and if you've publicly expressed - in parliament - the view that same-sex couples should not have the same inheritance rights where property is concerned - among other things - then yes, you should expect some very pointed questions in that area and if you don't live up to expectations you should not get the job.

So it all now depends on whether Tonio Borg can convince the EU that he was joking in the past when he resisted allowing same-sex couples access to housing, when he tried everything to prevent women from having access to abortion, when he sent escaping migrants back to the torturers. If he can convince them that he is now pro-equal rights vis a vis women, gays, people with a darker skin than his own etc., then maybe he'll get the job. Of course he might disappoint Joe Borg if he sets aside the "Christian Values" of homophobia and so on, but then it's not a Maltese election he'll be contesting next.

Not Voting?

I'm seeing lots of people recently declaring that they're not going to vote - and this is of course, their right. However many of them think that this "sends a message".

It doesn't.

The only people politicians listen to are voters, or future voters - but not non-voters. You won't get politicians going door to door in hotels full of tourists, or schools. If you tell them "I'm not going to vote" they'll move on to the next person because, as far as politicians are concerned, non-voters are non-entities.

Not voting means that you're willing to let others choose for you. You may be as disillusioned as hell with our current batch of politicians, and I don't blame you. Ultimately however, we are going to have a parliament and a government and it is going to be formed from those candidates whether you make a choice between them or not. Even if only 0.1% of the Maltese electorate turn out to vote, there will still be a parliament and a government.

So, if there are any issues that you care about, find out about where politicians stand on those issues, and vote for those politicians that are closest to your own position. Don't expect to find many politicians that match your own likes and dislikes perfectly. Elections are not about finding someone who's perfect but finding the best choice out of what's available. Individual candidates can make a big difference - as shown by recent events. And if they do come knocking on your door, make sure that they know which issues you care about, and that this is going to affect your vote. Having a parliament that has lots of MPs that agree with your most important issues increases the likelihood of getting a parliament and government that disappoints you less next time round.

Violence, Marriage Breakups and a decline in morality

This is a response to Lino Spiteri's article on The Times yesterday.

Why is violence on the rise? A few days ago we had a group of people caught beating up a man while surrounded by reporters, cameras and so on. They got a paltry €60 fine. A couple of days ago a man was charged with cutting open a man's face from forehead to lips - he got just over €100. Yesterday, two men chased down a man for "flirting" with a woman who was their relative. The police arrested and charged the victim because, during the chase, he ran over and damaged a car. No mention was made of actions taken against the aggressors. This leniency for violent crimes clashes with the draconian sentences meted out to anyone caught growing cannabis - an activity that causes nobody any harm. Examples like this serve to erode the public's confidence in the courts, which in turn may lead to the more hot-headed of them to not bother with the courts to seek redress over clashes with other people, and take matters into their own hands.

As far as marriage breakups are concerned, I know of no simple answer. This of course is happening everywhere in the world. It could be a result of a more hectic lifestyle which leaves less time for one another, or a culture where the couple are more concerned with getting than with giving, or increasing financial and other stresses. Another reason of course is that there no longer is the same kind of social stigma associated with marriage breakups - especially if there aren't children involved. Of course this only means that, in the past, many couples continued living under one roof long after their marriage was ended, merely for the sake of appearances.

I certainly agree that the police should be equipped with "non-lethal weapons" to give them a middle-ground between a stern voice and a deadly weapon. However we should be careful that, first of all, most "non-lethal weapons" are in fact "less likely to be lethal weapons". Many such weapons can and do kill - so we must look beyond the manufacturers' brochures. Secondly, we must ensure that our police do not abuse of them simply because they are non-lethal. In recent times we've seen photos from abroad of police officers using pepper-spray in the faces of protesters who were seated and posing no danger to anyone.

As for the concept of God, people are simply realising that there is no link between morality and gods or church. Cases like last year's divorce referendum and the current debate on IVF have opened people's eyes to the fact that the church's morality is highly flawed - and that their own sense of ethics is superior to the church's, which remains mired in dogmatic rules based on a book of stories from the iron age. Of course it's irrelevant today. It's been irrelevant for centuries. Morality, on the other hand, is not. It's only the source of that morality that has changed.

Litany of Hate

Sometimes it seems that, when things are too quiet around here, the Gozitan bishop Mario Grech decides to stir things up a little.

Last weekend he decided to take a swipe at the family. Not just any family of course - the one consisting of one man married to one woman, with children is perfectly ok. In fact it's the only one that is a family at all according to Grech. No other relationship is a family. If the couple are unmarried, they and their children do not form a family. They're just a group of people who live in the same house - a household. Same with all single parents, all widows and widowers, all same-sex couples (with or without children), all couples who were previously married. In fact, since a critical feature of all families is "procreation" between the man and woman, and since Mary supposedly remained a virgin all her life, I suppose the "Holy Family" must now be renamed to the Holy Household, because they do not meet the bishop's qualifications for a family.

Keep in mind that this is a pastoral letter, which - if my memory serves me correctly - is read out during mass at all churches that fall under his clutches. Imagine a child hearing this declaration from the bishop that he/she and his/her parents are not a real family because mummy and daddy are not married, or a single mother who performs almost superhuman feats to feed and clothe and care for her children getting this verbal slap on the face as she is told that hers is not a family. They're just people who happen to share the same address.

However this is not merely quibbling about the definition of the word "family". Grech also insists that the state should not give equal legal/civil rights to any type of "household" that does not match his personal definition. He describes as blind those political, economical and media institutions that give equal recognition to these other "households".

Is it possible that the bishop does not have someone to go over these letters before he sends them out from his reliquary? Oh wait he does - the letter was jointly written with the chancellor, one Salv Debrincat. Nicely done chancellor.

This attempt to redefine the family to this supposedly ideal mold is an attack on every other family - and these are not a few. It is hurtful, it is wrong, and I'm sure the bishop and chancellor know this perfectly well.

In fact many may have noticed that this was not the only attack on the family carried in the same Sunday paper. On the same paper we've got other attacks from two other priests, Paul Chetcuti and Joe Borg. All are out with guns blazing, attacking the idea that a family can consist of anything other than one man and one woman with children. Coincidence? I think not. I think they are either setting the stage to undermine the cohabitation law that the government promised to table soon, or are trying to turn society against same-sex couples in order to reduce the chances of gay marriage or civil unions being introduced to Malta. In either case, this is a case of attacking and hurting and harming people - and to what avail? Will married heterosexual couples with children be happier knowing that elsewhere, a childless couple will be denied state recognition as a family? Will their marriage be stronger in the knowledge that two women or two men will never be granted the same legal and civil rights as they are? No. So why these diatribes? Could it be that the only thing they are protecting is the church's collective ego? Let these people suffer as long as the church doesn't have to admit to a mistake until it's unavoidable. Maybe after 350 years, like Galileo.

Our constitution says that the church has the duty to teach what is right and what is wrong. This pastoral letter shows that the church is either incapable or unwilling to perform this duty. Somewhere along the way, the church has lost track of what is right and what is wrong - if they ever knew - and the time has come to get rid of this article from our constitution and establish a proper wall of separation between church and state.

Marijuana - Legalise or not?
Information Collection
Websites in Malta have recently been inundated by news and opinions about marijuana and Malta's harsh sentences meted out to those who use it. This was triggered by the 11-year sentence to Daniel Holmes for having two plants in his house in Gozo. The emotionally-loaded comments posted by both sides reminded me of the Divorce War in Malta. Just as divorce had been linked with everything from family breakdowns to earthquakes and weeping madonnas, it seemed to me that the same thing was happening here.

So, just as I did with divorce, I decided to find things out for myself. Fortunately, there is a flood of information available - more so than in the case of divorce since the divorce issue had already been settled long ago almost everywhere else.

Here is a page with the best material I found. I have tried to keep everything objective - I included both pages for and against legalisation - but I'll say up front that what I found led me to conclude that marijuana should be legalised.
I will be updating this page with more information as I find it.

Reports, Studies and Articles
Global Commission on Drugs Policy Report
This commission studies the impact on drugs and comes up with a set of proposals for formulating drug policies. The commission recommends "End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others", and "Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs ... This recommendation applies especially to cannabis ..."

What can we learn from the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?
This report from the British Journal of Criminology describes the result of Portogal's decriminalisation of ALL drugs in 2001. From the abstract: "It concludes that contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding." (click the "Full Text" links for the entire report - payment required).


Time Magazine: Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
"The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled."

Cannabis and Cannabinoids (US National Cancer Institute)
This website describes findings about the use of cannabis for the treatment of cancer. The above link is quite technical but there's another link on the page with simpler information for patients. This page describes how cannabis is effective both in attacking the cancer itself, and in alleviating the side-effects of chemotherapy.

Videos

1. Clearing the Smoke - the Science of Cannabis
This is a full-length documentary produced by the PBS in Montana, USA. 

2. When we grow, this is what we can do

3. BBC: Cannabis: What's the Harm? (part 1 of 2)

4. National Geographic: Marijuana Nation (part 1 of 5)

How generous is the church really?

In response to the recent report that the church is broke and getting broker by the minute, lots of people have spoken out in defence of the church, saying how it takes care of the old, orphans etc. However when I looked at the accounts published recently I was struck by the fact that these actually form a very small percentage of the church's expenses. In fact, the Pope's visit of last year cost 6.6 times as much as all children's homes combined.

The church's income comes primarily from donations, collections etc. I wonder whether the people making the donations are thinking that they are donating towards orphanages and homes. Do they know that, if they donated €50 last year, €2 from that went to finance the pope's visit, compared to the 30 cents that went to children's homes, or the 38 cents that went to old people's homes?

The church is not generous. Nor is it ungenerous. The church is an organiser - it collects money and redistributes it. The generosity comes from the Maltese people - they're the ones who earned the money. They hear of poor people and they donate. They donate to a church charity just as they donate to L-Istrina and to the Inspire foundation and other worthy causes.

If I found out that one of the secular humanitarian charities I donate to spent €1 million out of a grand total of €26 million to send their CEO on a trip somewhere, I'd immediately stop patronising them because I'd feel that they had betrayed their mission. If they spent 1.5 times as much on the media as they spend on the homes I'd say they have their priorities wrong.

I'd also say that if someone wants to help the needy, there are better entities than the church to ensure that your money is primarily used for that purpose.

Creationism: why it is dangerous

Some time ago I went to observe a presentation given by a creationist from the UK. I did this out of concern about the first signs of this phenomenon in Malta. Some people don't see any problems with creationism. It's just a belief, they say. I would like to point out why creationism is a dangerous phenomenon.

First however I should clarify what I mean by creationism. All Christians and most religious people believe that God created the universe, and technically this is creationism. However the creationism I have in mind, and the creationism presented by this visiting speaker, is the belief that the entire universe, including the world and every form of life on it, was created over a literal 6-day period, approximately 6000 years ago. It generally includes the belief that, some time after this, the entire surface of the planet was completely covered by water, drowning every living thing except for the contents of one large boat, and that it is from the animals and humans that were on this boat, that all life on earth today is derived, from kangaroos in Australia to polar bears at the North Pole, from tigers in India to grizzlies in the US, from Inuit to Somalis to Nepalese.

Most Christians do not believe these things literally of course, but there is a strong lobby in certain parts of the world, notably the United States. It is from here that most creationist churches hail, and they have established "missions" around the world - including Malta - to spread their particular beliefs.
I'm all for religious freedom, but most religious beliefs are relatively harmless. Creationism is different. Consider for a while how many areas of science are contradicted by creationism: It explicitly contradicts evolution, which is a fundamental area of biology. It contradicts geology due to its insistence that the entire world is 6000 years old. It contradicts cosmology, since it insists that nothing can be more than 6000 light years away. It explicitly contradicts the big bang and the age of the universe. It contradicts radiometric dating, especially carbon dating. It even contradicts local prehistory - the age of the early megalithic temples would have to be rewritten, not to mention Għar Dalam and other remains.

Now, if someone is a pensioner, they can believe anything they like about the above and it's unlikely to affect their lives. If he or she is an adult with an established career that does not involve any of the above areas, they are unlikely to be affected either. However children are a different matter. Creationism contradicts almost all branches of science, which means that children would be denied a very important part of their education - education that ultimately translates into good potential careers, such as medicine, microbiology, physics, several areas of engineering and many others. After all, when people go to a doctor they want someone who believes in medicine, not someone who insists that the bacteria cannot possibly be evolving a resistance to antibodies.

These problems caused directly by denying science is only one aspect of the dangers of creationism. In the United States and other places, a more insidious danger is becoming more obvious. Creationism has created an atmosphere of "us versus them" between students and teachers. Students, especially teenagers, are already naturally inclined to rebel. When they are getting constant encouragement from their parents and priests to reject and ridicule the science that their teachers are trying to explain, this attitude affects all areas of education, and educational levels plummet across the board.

Of course, even creationists have abandoned several arguments they used to use, and steer clear of others. The creationist organisation "Answers in Genesis" has a webpage containing arguments that they feel are so discredited that their use is actually detrimental to their cause, and no creationists today argue that the world is flat. And yet, the Bible implies this in Matthew 4:8, where we have a mountain which is so high that you can see the entire world from it. Similarly, few Christians today literally believe that rainbows were placed there by a god who might otherwise forget his promise and drown everyone in the world again. Today we know a thing or two about optics, refraction, water droplets and so on, so we accept rainbows for what they are - colourful, beautiful but quite natural phenomena.


The problem with creationism is that it imposes a strict precondition on knowledge. Everything has to agree with a literal interpretation of every part of the Bible. Any evidence that does not is rejected, or must somehow be reinterpreted to fit. Rather than going for the most obvious and reasonable explanation, one must go to extreme lengths to fit the Biblical account. A simple example is, how did all the animals from the ark get to the various places around the world without leaving any individuals behind - no koalas or walruses in the middle east for instance. When asked what did the lions eat in the ark, some will even insist they were vegetarians back then. After all if you only have two gazelle you can't afford to let the lions run amok.

With science, by comparison, one starts with the evidence, and finds explanations to match. If the evidence is not what you expect or want to find, you have to accept that and revise your expectations. Just a couple of days ago as I write this, scientists working at CERN and Italy published preliminary results that indicated they may have seen a particle exceed the speed of light. This discovery, if confirmed, is shocking and will bring a significant chunk of physics crashing down, because they are based on the premise that nothing, nothing, can exceed the speed of light. And yet as this news sent shock waves through the entire scientific community, there is no sense of animosity. Certainly many have expressed doubts and speculated that we might still discover that it was some kind of mistake in the measurements, but if it is confirmed, then the affected areas will be revised or, if necessary, discarded and rewritten.

It is this willingness to admit to mistakes and correct them that sets science apart from creationism. By starting off with the assumption that they cannot possibly be mistaken in their, creationists attack the evidence and resist learning anything new.

Some comments following Xarabank's homophobia feature

The Bible is a thick book and it contains verses to support and oppose any position you care to choose. Slavery? It's accepted - even in the new testament - as well as condemned (especially when the Hebrews were the slaves). There are verses about forgiveness and love, as well as violence and destruction.

Gaydar Gordon is good at selecting verses he likes at times while also insisting he agrees with it from cover to cover, insisting on context (and then inventing the context himself). He uses the Bible as a weapon and as a lure.

The Bible is not a source of morality. WE are the source of our own morality and then some people select verses from the Bible (or Koran, or other scriptures) to support that position and give it legitimacy. Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of this is shown in the film The Ten Commandments. The director was a devout man, but clearly he was not happy with the bit where "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" repeatedly and then punished the people of Egypt for it. So he invented a character that's nowhere in the Bible - "Nefertiri", a woman who hardened Pharaoh's heart instead because of her jealousy and malice. Essentially, although he might not have seen it this way, he judged the Bible based on his own sense of justice - and found it lacking.

The Bible in English and Maltese has lots of verses about homosexuality, although many of these references are not to be found in the original ancient Greek texts. There are no references to lesbianism anywhere, and the only clear condemnations of male-male sex are found in the same part of the Bible that also condemns eating pork, wearing mixed fibres, planting different crops in the same field, and so on - things that are no longer followed by modern, mainstream Christians (including Gordon's). No reasonable explanation is given as to why the verses condemning homosexual sex should remain "valid" while the verses that prohibit eating octopus or oysters are not, or why it's now ok to plant two crops in the same field. Jesus never spoke a word against or about homosexuals, although he spent quite a bit of time talking about judgemental people.

Of course some "famous" verses that are used against homosexuality are rejected by the Bible itself. Top of the list is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Few know that later in the Bible (Ezekiel 16:49-50), there is a list of the 5 sins that brought about Sodom's destruction, and homosexuality (or indeed any sexuality) is not among them. Arrogance and pride, on the other hand, were. Romans 1 in the new testament is rather odd - Paul describes observing a group of people who, despite being taught about Jesus, insisted on worshipping idols. As a result, God made them gay. Now that's a bit odd isn't it? God miraculously making people sin even more? Most likely what Paul observed was an orgy that was part and parcel of religious groups who clearly didn't have the word "prudery" in their dictionary. Still it's amusing to imagine the expression on his face when he saw everyone fling their togs off and engage in this romp. In other new testament verses, Greek words like arsenokoites were rendered as "homosexuals", although in other texts it means male prostitutes. The word "malakos" literally means soft, and can mean both physically soft as well as someone who refuses to defend against an aggressor. That was translated as "effeminate".

We can't go back in time to ask what they meant exactly. We don't have the other side of the conversation - remember that these were letters, and each one was addressed at a specific group of recipients in a specific place. They were never intended as a general guide for everyone.

What we're left with is our own innate sense of justice and our capability of reason. It is through our reason that we must achieve a sense of morality, not by relying on a collection of writings that were written in a different time and for people living in very different conditions. Such a book can provide insights, but we must still use our minds to apply this to our modern world, and sometimes that means abandoning something that used to be a pillar of civilisation. That's how we got rid of slavery and burning witches. That is how we'll get rid of homophobia.

The evil church of Malta

If there was any doubt left about the evil nature of the Catholic church, it should have been dispelled by its actions during the divorce campaign, with the bishops rubbing salt into the wound by issuing an apology after it was too late to affect the results - although MaltaToday bravely decided to risk legal consequences by publishing it despite the embargo.

If you apply the Catholic Church's own rules on confession to this apology you'll see their hypocrisy. It's like someone is involved in planning a robbery and omits to mention anything to the priest at the confession until after the robbery is completed. Would the confessor consider that as a genuine confession of someone who is sorry for what he did?

The bishops could have published the apology on Thursday. The fact that they didn't means that, despite knowing the harm that they were doing, they intentionally let it continue until it was too late, then apologised after. Is that a real, genuine, heartfelt apology or is it damage control?

I have no doubt that many people will still follow the church, just as there are people who still follow Angelik despite knowing he used his own blood and kitchen oil on the statue.

Malta's greatest enemy at this point in time is the Roman Catholic Church. It has many Maltese people blinkered so that they cannot see the chains that bind them. I only hope that in this dirty campaign, some blinkers fell off.

It is clearer now than ever before that the constitution of Malta, which entrusts the Catholic church with teaching which principles are right and which are wrong, needs to be revised. The church has shown time and again that it does not deserve this honour. For any entity to teach morality it must first practice what it preaches.

The church has shown its true face. It's all smiles and warmth when things are going its own way, but when the going gets tough, even the Sicilian mafia can learn a thing or two from these men of the cloth.

The church's 12 points against divorce

The church is sending out a leaflet to all Maltese households outlining in point form why they should vote against the introduction of divorce in the May referendum. Here they are in point form, together with my counter-arguments.

1. If battered wives are granted the right to remarry, so too will their abusive husbands.

How thoughtful. Let the victim suffer. It's her fault for marrying him, isn't it? Now why don't we apply that to other situations? We could handcuff muggers or rapists with their victims, to ensure that they don't strike again.
Except that it wouldn't work in this case would it? If the abusive husband can beat his wife, what's to stop him from doing the same to another woman that he moves in with, just because they're not married? Incidentally, isn't it a teensy bit sexist to assume that only men are abusive?

2. Although people have a right to marry, there is no such right to divorce, according to a 1986 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECHR doesn't recognise your right to ride a bicycle either. Some things are considered fairly obvious, and marriage and its termination tend to go hand in hand.

3. Catholics who vote against divorce are not imposing their values. They have a right to vote according to what they think is best for society.

They would be doing both. Certainly they have the right to vote as they please, but voting to deprive someone of a right to divorce is still imposing their values. Sometimes, having a right and doing the right thing are not the same. If someone were to suggest a referendum to deny the right of black people to live, would you say that it's ok to vote for that because they're merely exercising their right to vote?
By comparison, voting in favour is not imposing a value because each couple can then decide whether or not to resort to divorce once it's there. Catholics who agree with the church's prohibition of divorce can still vote to give that right to others and refrain from resorting to it themselves.

4. The Church allows priests to leave the priesthood and get married because celibacy is a Church law, not a law of God like the indissolubility of marriage.

How very convenient. In any case we're talking about civil divorce here. The church will retain its right to not recognise divorces, or to refuse to marry divorcees in church weddings.

5. Divorce weakens the marriage bond, leading to fewer people getting married.

No, divorce does not weaken the marriage bond. If the only thing that's keeping a couple "married" is the unavailability of divorce legislation, that's not a marriage in any real sense and is not worth protecting. The referendum question is for divorce after four years of separation, and any couple who could not resolve their problems after four (or more) years are very unlikely to ever succeed.
Besides, what about those young people who are looking at their options and are receiving the message that if they get married and they made a mistake, they're screwed for life, whereas if they merely cohabit they can rectify mistakes. Isn't that an incentive not to get married?

6. If you do not vote it means you do not care about the family or your children.

Perhaps, but people who care could and should vote in favour of divorce. Or do you think that children born to the new couple are lesser mortals just because their parents were once married to someone else?

7. In all countries with divorce, cohabitation increased, marriage decreased and more people fell below the poverty line.

And in all countries WITHOUT divorce, cohabitation increased, marriage decreased and more people fell below the poverty line. Statistics show that this is a trend which is happening everywhere, irrespective of divorce.

8. There is nothing wrong with Malta being an exception in the world. Malta has the most churchgoers. Unlike the US, it does not have the death penalty. Should those things change too?

Being almost the only such country, it's reasonable to wonder whether it's likely that we're the only ones who are right and everybody else is wrong. Another point to keep in mind is that no country that introduced divorce removed it. By comparison, many countries have removed the death penalty (as have many US states). Countries can and do change their laws, but divorce is one thing they all kept.

9. Divorce increases marital breakdown by 20 per cent. For society’s benefit, sometimes individuals must suffer. For example, people might have to give up their land to make space for an airport. All efforts must be made to reduce their suffering, but the land must be taken for common good.

There is no study that suggests that divorce increases marital breakdown. Truth be said, it's impossible to produce such a study since you'd have to compare a country with divorce with the same country, at the same time, without it.

The argument that individuals must suffer for society's benefit is a dangerous one. It's been used to justify all sorts of things, including slavery (black people suffer so that the white majority benefit) and the holocaust (aka "solving the Jewish problem"). No, individual rights must not be revoked for the convenience of others.

10. People who remarry civilly after a divorce cannot receive Holy Communion or go to confession.

That is, of course, an entirely internal matter for the church to decide. However, I wonder whether the church applies the same measures to people who use a condom or any other contraceptive. After all that too is prohibited by the church. What about people who separate from their spouse and move in with someone else, or who have sex before marriage? Besides, denying communion and confession... doesn't that sound a lot like "excommunication"? Reminiscent of the "interdett"?

11. The Church is against abortion, condoms, sex before marriage and divorce because these are all negative actions. However, it is in favour of positive actions.

No, the church is against these because once it declared itself against them, its supremacy in its followers' minds would be compromised if it changed its mind. It took 350 years for the church to formally admit that Galileo was right, and it did so because by this time its position became totally untenable. I have no doubt that it will eventually admit its error this time too, but in the meantime there are real people here who are suffering, real lives held in stasis just to protect the church's ego.

There is nothing negative about condoms, divorce or sex before marriage. Abortion remains a divisive issue.

12. The number of children born out of wedlock increases in countries with divorce because cohabitation increases.

The rate of cohabitation decreases slightly with the introduction of divorce, although the absolute number increases. There are many couples who are cohabiting right now not by choice but because the law leaves them no other option. Once they are given that right, they will start the proceedings to get their divorce and get married. Add to these the couple who are uncomfortable with the idea of marriage because of the unforgiving nature of the laws, who will feel better about it. For a while there will be a drop in cohabitation and an increase in marriages, before the rates stabilise again at a slightly reduced rate.

Isn't it obscene if it's in the Bible?

The Attorney General has appealed the court's acquittal of Mark Camilleri and Alex Vella Gera.

If the AG finds "Li Tkisser Sewwi" shocking, what does he think of the Bible? Verses like Ezekiel 23:20: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.". What about Genesis 19:30-38 where Lot gets both of his daughters pregnant while drunk? What about the many concubines, and slaves who are given by wives to their husbands to impregnate? What about Deuteronomy 21:11-14, where the "chosen people" are instructed to capture whichever women they fancy from other tribes, have sex with them and then, if they don't like them, discard them? How about Deut 22:23-24, where if a girl is raped after being promised to someone else and doesn't scream loud enough to be heard, she should be killed? On the other hand if she wasn't promised to someone, all that the rapist must do (if caught) is pay 50 shekels and marry her (22:28). I'm sure she'd be thrilled to marry her rapist. How about Judges 19:25 where a man gives his concubine to a mob who rape her all night until she's dead?

Not even Li Tkisser Sewwi's unpleasant character goes that far, and yet... it's in the Bible so it's ok. They complain that Ir-Realtà might have fallen into the hands of younger students but then they ENCOURAGE young children to read the Bible. Hello? Is there anybody out there? Am I alone in thinking there's something wrong with this picture?

Beg for permission to use your money

In recent times, everyone and his poodle have been analysing "the Wikileaks matter" from just about every angle. Is Wikileaks doing the right thing? Is Assange guilty of a sex crime?

Who really owns your money?

One matter which did not get the coverage I believe it deserved, is the decision by PayPal, Visa and Mastercard to "stop processing payments" to Wikileaks.

Little by little we are getting used to viewing our credit/debit cards as simply another way of making a payment - a more convenient way, and one which lends itself well to online or remote payments. This decision by these three companies highlights a major difference between these cards and ordinary money however: someone else, other than yourself, has the right and the power to decide who you're allowed to pay.

With cash, you need nobody's approval to give your money to someone. You just take the money out of your pocket and give it to the other person. Nobody else is involved. You need nobody's permission, and nobody can stop you. Until recently many of us thought that cards and accounts like PayPal were, essentially, a more modern version of the same thing.

Then came Wikileaks. And Wikileaks did something unpopular to a number of important people. Neither the organisation nor its founders or employees were actually charged with committing a crime. There was no court order requiring banks to freeze their assets. Instead, several companies decided unilaterally to prevent you from giving your money to this organisation. Not just you of course, but everybody. Luckily, Wikileaks has substantial support, and it's very unlikely that it will be brought down by this underhanded tactic. But it does raise the question - how much power do credit card companies have over our lives?

A company which depends entirely on online sales can be wiped out by such companies. All they have to do is block them from receiving money from everyone.

Not only that, but these companies can completely control what you spend your money on. Of course this rarely happens, since the more you use their services, the more money they make. However, there should be no more control over how we use our money than if we were using cash - at least not based on a decision by a corporation.

The shady world of banking

I wonder, is it a pure coincidence that all these companies decided to stop payments (and in some cases, actually steal donated money) came right after Julian Assange declared that the next released documents would involve a major bank?

In an interview with Forbes on the 30th of November, Julian Assange said that one of the next targets will be "a major American bank". On the 4th of December, PayPal blocked all donations to the site. This was followed on the 6th December by Mastercard, and the 7th December by Visa.

All sites claimed, of course, that they were doing this because Wikileaks was engaging in illegal activities. This doesn't explain why all three companies had been happy to handle donations to Wikileaks right up to the point that Assange announced that he'd be exposing skeletons in the financial sector.

Since the "official explanation" is sticking in my throat, I decided to come up with some speculations of my own. Theory number 1 is that "a major American bank" gently reminded Visa, MasterCard and PayPal that they are in the same boat, and if a big fat passenger falls overboard off a small boat, the resulting instability could get others wet as well. Theory number two is that, if "a major American bank" is discovered with its hand in the cookie jar, it might also be discovered that the other kids were giving it a hand to reach the jar in return for some of the cookies.

In short, this decision may have done just as much to damage the reputation of the banking and electronic money industries as the documents themselves (which will be leaked at any cost anyway).

Yet another victim of our fireworks

I am deeply saddened by the news about the death of another person as the fireworks factory he worked in blew up. Unfortunately, I am not surprised. Four out of forty fireworks factories blew up since the beginning of the year. To me such statistics are shocking, but every time this happens, after a couple of weeks of letters and speeches and memorial services, everything goes back to "business as usual". Nothing changes. No new rules, no new safety procedures, making it just a matter of time before the next factory explodes.

Other countries have fireworks factories but I seriously doubt that they get 10% of their fireworks factories blowing up in a year and do nothing about it. What are we doing wrong? We've had four fireworks fatalities (in 40 factories) compared to 10 road fatalities (for 300,000 cars - up to end of June). That does not include non-fatal accidents like 13 year old boy hit in the eye though he was behind the "safety barrier", or the burning of the golf club at Marsa, and several accidents that go unreported.

Where fireworks are concerned, I wouldn't even know which end goes up, but I'm sure that something can be done to prevent this kind of accident from being almost a regular event.

"Verbal harassment" lawsuit could backfire

In The Times today there is a report about "the first local case of verbal sexual harassment at the workplace" - a company had to pay €2000 after a male employee made a joke/comment with sexual connotations to a female colleague.

I don't know enough about this specific case to comment about the incident - for all I know this may have been the latest in a long series of verbal abuse always directed at the same person, or the woman in question had made her feelings clear about such kinds of joke and been ignored. The manner in which such a comment was made is also relevant - jokes can be made with malice or could be just a light hearted attempt at humour.

My main concern is about the many people who are considering this as a precedent which should apply to all cases where male workers make any kind of sexual joke or comment to female workers. If this is the case, I think the situation could backfire.

If someone is selecting people for a job, will they now weigh the added risk of lawsuits against the company when they're looking at a female applicant's CV? Because let's face it - the likelihood of a similar lawsuit being instituted by a man is much smaller.

Equality is all well and good, but the last thing that is needed for women in the workplace is to put out the message that employing women is an added liability to the company. Harassment is wrong, and employers should indeed put a stop to any that is going on - not because of lawsuits but because it is harming some members of their staff. On the other hand, we should avoid going to the other extreme where any kind of joke made to, or in the presence of, a woman is a risky business. That could easily turn into a situation where employers avoid having women on the team, or where the team feels safer excluding female colleagues from conversations - or even that the very presence of women has caused a damper on workplace relations.

Creating methods with named parameters and default values in Java

Have you ever had a situation where one of your methods had many different arguments, and it became difficult to keep track of them, or to provide multiple versions of the same method with different parameters, trying to cover all commoon combinations?

In such cases you might have envied languages like perl or python which allow you to specify default values for your parameters, and let the caller specify parameters by name, thus providing parameters in any order.

Now, technically Java can't do that kind of stuff, but with some imagination, the varargs parameter type, and the new import static, we can come very close.

Goal

Our goal is to create a single method that accepts all the following calls.

go();
go(min(0));
go(min(0), max(100));
go(max(100), min(0));
go(prompt("Enter a value"), min(0), max(100));

All the bits below fit within one class. The actual names of the enum, methods etc. are up to you.

Step 1

Create an enum for all the parameters that your method will accept. Give the enum an instance variable for the (optional) default value, and set it in the constructor.

static enum OptionName {
  min (0),
  max,
  prompt;

  private final Object dflt;
  private OptionName(Object dflt) {
    this.dflt = dflt;
  }
  private OptionName() {
    this.dflt = null;
  }
}

Step 2

Create a simple class that contains one enum and one object. Give it a constructor to set these two values.

public static class Option {
  private final OptionName name;
  private final Object value;
  private Option(OptionName name, Object value){
    this.name = name;
    this.value = value;
  }
}

Step 3

Create a set of static functions, one for each OptionName, each returning an instance of Option.

  public static Option min(int value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.min, value);
  }
  public static Option max(int value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.max, value);
  }
  public static Option prompt(String value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.prompt, value);
  }

Step 4

Create the method. The parameters should be a varargs array of Options. Immediately place the parameters into a Map. The following example first sets all the default values, then overwrites them with the passed-in values. Once that's done, you'll have a map keyed by the OptionName enum, which you can query for the values you'll actually use in your method.

public static void myMethod(Option... opts) {
  EnumMap om = new EnumMap(OptionName.class);
  // first set the defaults
  for ( OptionName on : OptionName.values() ) {
    om.put(on, on.dflt);
  }
  // then overwrite them with the values passed in.
  for ( Option op : opts ) {
    om.put(op.name, op.value);
  }
        
  Integer min=(Integer)om.get(OptionName.min);
  Integer max=(Integer)om.get(OptionName.max);
  String prompt = (String)om.get(OptionName.prompt);       
  // do something with min, max and prompt; remember 
  // to check for nulls.
}

Using it

In the calling class, use the "import static" syntax to import all the static methods we defined in this class.

You can then call myMethod using a comma-separated list of method class to those static methods that will serve as parameters.

The Identity Question

In a letter to The Times, Ray Azzopardi argues that "Our true identity as Maltese has to be linked to our Christian roots". Nothing could be further from the truth.

Whenever one refers to "roots", one is implying a beginning, and it's obvious even from the Bible's account of Paul's arrival here that Malta and the Maltese had their own distinct identity well before the Christian faith even reached our shores. Throughout our history, we have retained our identity even during times when this faith practically disappeared from these islands.

If I had to choose a characteristic that identifies us as Maltese, I'd have to choose the Maltese language. Nothing distinguishes us more from any other nation. Even expatriates maintain the language alive in their adopted countries because of this very reason. In centuries of foreign rule by the Knights, the French and the British, we retained our language - often using it to distinguish ourselves from "the outsiders". Within Malta, people who can't speak Maltese are considered to be foreign residents, irrespective of what their passport or ID card says.

Throughout our history there have always been people who are not Catholics, or even Christian, yet are entirely Maltese. There is evidence of a Jewish community in Malta since before Paul's arrival, making it probably the oldest surviving religion in Malta, though it has not done so continuously. Today there are many Maltese who are Muslim, Hindu, or have no religion at all.

The national anthem is quite irrelevant in determining our identity. It was written by a priest, so it's hardly surprising that it contains references to God. It also refers to "min jaħkimha" - a reference to the British governor of the time. Hardly meaningful today.

I'm surprised that Mr. Azzopardi attributes "our generous and altruistic nature" to Paul's Christianity when the Bible points out that Paul himself was surprised by the natives' "uncommon kindness". It seems that our friendly nature is part of our pre-Christian identity, and has survived 2000 years later. Nor were they "our Christian values" that kept us struggling for independence, since most of our foreign rulers shared that faith.

Mr. Azzopardi asks a loaded question when he asks why we are passing on "a secular and narrow vision of our society" to the next generation. Actually, we are passing on a secular and more open vision of our society. A secular society is one in which each individual has the right to his own faith - or none at all, but the govern remains separate, thus not discriminating against - or in favour of - anyone based on their religion. A nation when one can apply for a teaching post in a government school without being asked to confirm whether they are Catholic first. A nation where the church and the state are separate.

What would our life be like if we did not have this separation between church and state? You can look at Iran or Saudi Arabia as an example of what happens when religion and government are in the same bed. Condoms - and indeed any other form of contraception - would be illegal. Going to mass on Sunday would be compulsory. Unwed mothers would be in prison. Marriage between Catholic and non-Catholic would be prohibited by law, and unmarried couples living together would be harshly punished. Do not make the mistake of thinking that these things only happen in Muslim countries. Not only does our history show otherwise, but even now, fundamentalists in the USA and other nations constantly seek to use the laws to make such impositions on the whole population.

Thankfully, we are already partly secular, but more needs to be done. Religion should be a personal matter even if 99.9% of the country adhered to one faith. Certainly it should not be something for the government to be involved in, nor for our laws to control. A secular society is the foundation for a better future.