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Maltese not keen on transgender, non-Catholic prime minister
Eurobarometer finds Maltese more prejudiced towards PM of different religious, ethnic background or transgender leader.
22 November 2012, 12:00am
James Debono
James Debono
2 min read
Vladimir Luxoria was the first openly transgender MP in Europe, and the world's second openly transgender MP after New Zealander Georgina Beyer.
The Maltese profess themselves to be "very comfortable" with having a female or even a disabled Prime Minister, but are less likely to feel at home if the highest-elected official in the country was a transgender person, or someone who is not Catholic or white.
A survey by the European Union's polling agency Eurobarometer asked respondents who they would feel about having people from a different religion or ethnicity taking up the highest elected political position in their country.
The Maltese said that from a scale of 1 to 10, their comfort level at having a woman prime minister was 8.9 - very comfortable - and above the EU average of 8.2.
They were less comfortable with a woman PM than the Swedes (9.7) and Denmark and Ireland (9.6).
The Maltese also score better than Europeans (7.7) on their level of comfort with a disabled Prime Minister (8.2) - again, comfort levels on a disabled PM or president varied widely, with scores ranging from 5.4 in the Czech Republic to 9.1 in Ireland.
Surprisingly, the Maltese are a notch keener than other Europeans on having a gay Prime Minister - scoring 6.8 on the comfort scale, just over the European average of 6.6, but mostly thanks to the very low scores registered by Eastern European countries.
Comfort levels with having the highest elected political office occupied by gays was highest in Northern and Western European countries, and lowest in certain Eastern European countries, with the lowest levels recorded in Latvia (3.2), Slovakia (3.4), Romania (3.6) and Bulgaria (3.7).
High acceptance levels were registered in Denmark and Sweden (8.9 and 8.8).
But the Maltese are less keen on having a transgender or transsexual Prime Minister: 5.1 compared to the EU average of 5.7. As in the case of sexual orientation, comfort levels with a transgender PM are highest in Denmark (7.6), Sweden (7.4) and Luxembourg (7.2) and lowest in Latvia (2.8) and Slovakia (3.0). In this instance Cyprus (3.0) also features at the bottom of the ranking.
The Maltese are also less keen than Europeans on having a PM hailing from a different ethnic group, registering a 5.4 comfort level compared to an EU average score of 6.5.
The national analysis shows that scores range from 3.5 in Cyprus to 8.0 in Sweden; after Sweden, the highest comfort scores were found in Denmark (7.9), the UK (7.7) and Luxembourg (7.5). Conversely, comfort scores are very low in Greece (4.2), the Czech Republic (4.4) and Slovakia (4.7), as well as in Cyprus.
Moreover, compared to other Europeans (6.7), the Maltese are less comfortable with a PM who believes in a religion different from that of the majority (5.5).
The Maltese are far less comfortable with a PM from a minority religion, than fellow Roman Catholic countries: high comfort levels were registered in Ireland (8.4) and Poland (8.0) - while at the other extreme Cyprus is the only country where the average comfort level is below point 5 on the scale.
Significantly, the Maltese are also more comfortable on having a PM under the age of 30 than other Europeans: they registered a 6.9 comfort level compared to the EU's 6.3.
James Debono is MaltaToday's chief reporter on environment, planning and land use issues, ...
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@HalfEUcitizen: I share a few of your sentiments. Some things do give me a little hope of progress however. As a child going to the 'Muzew' no-one dared to question that indoctrination, and we all really thought that following the scriptures would lead to a happy world. Today's kids seem to be much more questioning, insightful and, in some ways, cynical of those teachings. And they aren't afraid to challenge them either. They also seem to carry fewer of the prejudices (including homophobia and racism) which we grew up with. I can't help but be hopeful that Malta's future will be a better place as a result.
David Bongailas •
@vincentedestra: Ili zmien twil ninnota lilek tikteb tilja hmerijiet fuq dan is-sit. Tista jekk toghgbok tghidli kif wasalt ghall-figura ta 99% li qieghed issemmi ? Ghax jekk tahseb li 1% biss tal-popalazzjoni hijja jew gay jew favur l-abort (zewg affarijiet li ma ghandhu x'jaqsmu xejn ma xulxin by the way) ghandhek bzonn tqum mir-raqda li qieghed fiha mela ta!!!!!
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@ExPatriatus : Your point is taken. For my part - what i wanted to highlight is the false image of Malta being this pious country full of people steep in medieval traditions, god fearing and church going. HOGWASH! The churches are empty and even those who attend do so from the conditioning they have been subjected too since children, clearly disagreeing with most things the church stands for. As for pious, the country is awash with criminal activities of all sorts, corrupt and Maltese quite simply have very poor moral values. Just look at what they allow their leaders to get away with and you will know how poor their moral standards are.
The church off course has the most to gain from promoting this false image of Malta, because this image justifies its privileged position, the power it holds over the country and keeps the money coming in.
As for all these other ideas that are coming along - we are dealing with 21st century issues, when we ourselves have not come to terms with 18th century issues. No wonder we are confused and overwhelmed!
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Thankfully it looks like most Maltese still have their senses. They dont want to be dragged into the toilet with the sick monorities and their even sicker supporters.
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The johnny come lately fundamentalists are the gay and abortionist lobbies who want, backfiring big time , to shove their ideas down the throats of 99 per cent of the population.
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@HalfEUCitizen: Just for the sake of clarity this study, which was run by Eurobarometer was a comparative study. They did not take a moralistic view, simply asked participants for their subjective comfort levels and plotted the data against the emerging average. It seems a perfectly reasonable set of stats to me, and in no way does it suggest a threshhold of 'acceptabiliy' of people's values - merely identifies the middle point for every dataset. The only way they could have obtained 'a 100%' result would have been if every participant in every country scored a 10 for every question. Had that happened, the researchers involved would probably lose their job on the grounds of very poor research design.
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That is a lot of stuff all mixed in one bag. Why not add 'infected with leprosy', has a growth on his head that looks like an extra appendage and carries a parrot on his left shoulder - then you would certainly have gotten 100% of the result you were after!!!
Trans Gender and ethnic background - sure, I will want a PM with my agendas at heart and not his - he is supposed to represent me after all.
As for non-catholic. Are we talking about replacing one religious nutcase with a nutcase from another religion here ? I would prefer and trust an agnostic, secular PM for whom religion is not on the agenda, who is doing the bidding of the people who elected him and not the bidding of the church, who has a believe system rooted in the science of the 21st century and not the accumulated ignorance of the past two thousand - and who will not promote the special interests of a few at the expenses of the many.
Now that is a PM i would like to have. In the meantime, may i recommend that when you carry out surveys you ask intelligent questions and not questions already pre-disposed towards the desired answers!
