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Maltese Government rejects Nationalist Party’s Marriage Equality Bill proposals
The Maltese government has declined the Nationalist Party’s (NP) proposed amendments to the Marriage Equality Bill which wanted to retain the terms ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in Maltese law while inserting the terms ‘parent’ and ‘spouse’. Malta’s Equality minister said that such modifications “implicitly undermine the concept of equality and create distinctions between different couples”. The opposition minister from NP criticised the move to abolish terms like ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ from the Maltese law entirely in the favour of gender-neutral terms such as ‘spouse’ and ‘parent’. However, Maltese Prime Minister said that he will not accept any recommendations to the Bill by the NP that distinguishes between homosexual and heterosexual people in any manner and refused to accept amendments that “defeat the purpose of equality”.