OUR SEX AND IDENTITY LAWS ARE A DANGEROUS CONTRADICTION
By Mario Attard
Two flagship laws in Malta stand in open, irreconcilable conflict, a blatant display of ideological hypocrisy that puts children at grave risk and mocks both science and common sense.
The Affirmation of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression Act of 2016 bans any form of “conversion therapy.” It declares sexual orientation and gender identity immutable, fixed traits that cannot and must not be questioned or altered. Any attempt to help a person align with biological reality is branded harmful, deceptive, and criminal.
At the same time, Malta enforces some of the most extreme and permissive gender-transition rules in Europe. Under the Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act of 2015, a sixteen-year-old can undergo irreversible surgery to mutilate healthy reproductive organs, without parental consent. A simple notary declaration is enough to legally rewrite a person’s sex. The law treats the human body as a mere costume, endlessly reshapable to match a fleeting inner feeling.
These two positions cannot both be true. They are logically incoherent. If gender identity is truly immutable, why does the state enthusiastically mutilate healthy teenage bodies to “affirm” it? If the body can be surgically rewritten at will, why criminalise therapy that helps distressed young people accept their birth sex? This is not compassionate policy; it is dangerous doublethink dressed up as progress.
Science exposes the fraud. Decades of research confirm that core sexual orientation is difficult to change. But biological sex is not malleable. It is rooted in chromosomes, gametes, and reproductive anatomy. No amount of surgery, hormones, or legal fiction can create the opposite sex. What surgeons produce is a sterile imitation, a lifelong medical patient dependent on cross-sex hormones, facing elevated risks of bone loss, cardiovascular disease, and infertility. It is cosmetic delusion, not medicine.
Gender dysphoria is different. The overwhelming majority of children who experience it outgrow it naturally. Older studies documented desistance rates of 60 to 90 percent when left alone. The landmark UK Cass Review, along with policy reversals in Sweden, Finland, and Norway, have demolished the case for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors. The evidence is remarkably weak; the risks are devastating. Regret rates are climbing as long-term follow-up studies finally appear. Yet Malta presses ahead with ideological zeal, ignoring desistance data, the well-documented links to autism, trauma, sexual abuse, and rapid social contagion, especially among teenage girls swept up in online trends.
This is not care. This is state-sponsored medical experimentation on confused and vulnerable children. Malta’s proud Catholic heritage which teaches respect for the body as a gift from God is being deliberately sidelined by fanatical ideologues who view biology itself as oppressive. Families, not the state, must be allowed to guide their children through natural developmental confusion. Common sense and basic biology demand consistency: if identity cannot be changed, we must stop pretending the body can.
Our lawmakers have a moral duty to revisit and radically reform these contradictory statutes immediately. The Affirmation Act’s blanket ban on exploratory therapy must be repealed so genuine mental-health support can be offered. The Gender Identity Act’s reckless provisions for minors must be scrapped or heavily restricted. Protect Malta’s children. Basepolicy on biological reality and rigorous evidence, not activist slogans and emotional blackmail.
Malta deserves laws that match science and protect the innocent, not ideological “balbuljati” that sterilise, scar, and confuse the next generation.