I do not know whether Conrad Borg Manché is a bigot, or whether he is a politician with a good instinct who cannot quite articulate it. This is neither a character assessment nor a defence of his recent comments.The more interesting thing is not Conrad himself, but the space his remarks opened up: the large number of people who probably heard him and thought, quietly, that he had a point. Not the whole point, not always the best-worded point, perhaps not even a particularly elegant one, but a point all the same.The public reaction then followed the usual script. His critics treated concern about book readings in drag for children as though it were an attack on gay rights, while his supporters treated any criticism of him as proof that Malta has lost its mind. The result was the same as ever: everyone performed their role, nobody listened, and the more difficult conversation was buried under the noise.Let’s start with the obvious. The idea that Pride should be removed from public life is ridiculous. Pride is needed. Pride is part of us now. It is part of Western culture, and it remains protest, memory, celebration, visibility, community, tourism, ritual, and a reminder that rights now treated as obvious were denied until very recently by people who also thought they were being reasonable.Pride has a place because Pride still has a purpose. But that does not mean every initiative carried out under the banner of “being seen” is automatically wise. It does not mean every boundary pushed is a boundary worth pushing. It does not mean every hesitation from ordinary people is hatred in disguise.That distinction should be simple but unfortunately it is not, because modern politics has forgotten how to distinguish between defending minorities and endlessly reorganising public life around minority identity.Over the past decade, Western cultures have placed enormous emphasis on individual identity and this was fundamental at one point. Minorities had been ignored, mocked, bullied, criminalised, pathologised, and pushed to the margins for generations. Society had to be forced to see them. It had to be made to understand that what it called normality often came at someone else’s expense.That was a moral correction.Then social media got hold of it.And social media does what social media always does. It takes a legitimate grievance, strips it of proportion, rewards the loudest performer, and calls the result awareness.Outrage became content. Pain became currency. Identity became status and status needed constant renewal.The intentions were not necessarily bad. In many cases, they were noble. But the machinery was not.That is how identity politics metastasised. It began as a demand for dignity and became a system of permanent mobilisation and the problem with permanent mobilisation is that it cannot admit victory. If it admits victory, it has to change. If it changes, it loses power.So the apparatus that was built to win rights did not wind down after those rights were won. It looked for new frontiers. It moved from protection to affirmation. From equality to validation. From removing barriers to pushing boundaries.Book readings in drag for children are the perfect example, not because they are some civilisational emergency, or even because they are especially common. They are not. A man in a wig is not going to bring down the Republic. Malta has survived worse, including several Eurovision entries and MEPs turning hunting and unregulated fireworks into sacred national causes to keep the most basic members of our society onside.In reality, they are a relative non-issue in the life of most children. That is partly why they are so useful to people who oppose all of this instinctively: they offer an easy, exaggerated symbol of everything they think has gone wrong. But the fact that they are often used cynically by one side does not mean the other side has to defend them as though they were an essential part of raising decent human beings.Which is why the question should not be whether a book reading in drag is capable of destroying a child’s moral universe, but why anyone has decided this is the hill on which decent society must prove its tolerance.What exactly is being taught? Why this format? At what age? Who decided that discomfort with it is bigotry? Why is one form of adult cultural expression being treated as a necessary tool for teaching children respect?Children should be taught dignity, kindness, and the basic moral rule that they should not mock, bully, exclude, or persecute people because they are different. But difference is not limited to sexuality.There are many minorities in society: sexual minorities, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, political minorities, disabled people, poor children, strange children, quiet children, children with the wrong surname, the wrong accent, the wrong body, the wrong parents, or the wrong clothes.A child does not need a book reading in drag to learn egalitarian principles. In fact, placing too much emphasis on one group risks distorting the lesson. The lesson should be universal human dignity, not the conversion of one identity category into a civic sacrament.This is also where Borg Manché is partly right. Malta has changed, and not in some vague, symbolic way. On LGBTIQ rights, the country moved from deep social conservatism to one of the most progressive legal frameworks in Europe. Marriage, adoption, recognition, protection: the law today is not what it was, and that matters because rights, institutions and legal protections are not decorative achievements.But once the law changes, the nature of the struggle changes with it. Legal reform can happen overnight; culture cannot. You can pass a law in Parliament in one sitting, but you cannot make a 60-year-old man update every instinct, phrase, joke, reference and cultural reflex by Thursday afternoon because an NGO uploaded a carousel.This does not excuse discrimination, abuse, or the denial of dignity, work, housing, safety or equal treatment to anyone. But there is a difference between discrimination and cultural lag, between hatred and clumsiness, between refusing people their rights and using language that belongs to an older world.A person can use the word “gay” badly without being a homophobe, because words carry history, habit and context. People grew up with schoolyard slang, television jokes and casual expressions that were once normal and are now, often rightly, challenged. But treating every outdated phrase as proof of ideological corruption does not make society more tolerant, humane or fair. It turns ordinary awkwardness into evidence for the prosecution.Many Gen Z activists would hear an old joke among friends and begin drafting a denunciation before the second syllable landed. That is not moral clarity. It is social illiteracy with a ring light.And yes, Gen Z deserves some of the blame. Not all of it. They did not build the machine. Adults did. Platforms monetised it. Newsrooms amplified it. Politicians learned to fear it when convenient, and to weaponise it when useful.But the truth is that Gen Z is its most complete product.They were raised inside social media, identity politics, emotional safety language, and victimhood as currency. They learned that offence creates attention. That pain creates status. That disagreement can be rebranded as harm. That shutting someone down is easier than understanding them.They often confuse being wrong with being dangerous. They confuse being old-fashioned with being violent. They confuse nuance with betrayal.Not all of them, obviously. Some of them can read beyond a headline. Several may even survive this piece. But the pattern is undeniably real.Modern liberalism has developed a strange habit. It includes everyone, provided it first excludes everyone with the wrong view. It celebrates diversity, but mainly the kind that votes correctly, speaks correctly, jokes correctly, and apologises on command.This is not how societies change. Persecuting people into obedience does not make them kinder. It makes them quieter. Then resentful. Then politically available to whoever says what they are no longer allowed to say.Which brings us to the left. The left was built to speak for workers, wages, housing, dignity, class, public services, and the ability of ordinary people to live without being crushed by landlords, employers, banks, and governments.Too often, it now sounds like the HR department of a company that pays badly but has excellent pronouns.This is not because LGBTIQ rights do not matter. They do. It is not because feminism does not matter. It does. It is not because migration, race, or minority rights are irrelevant. They are not.But when these issues become the emotional centre of progressive politics while rent, wages, precarious work, social mobility, and family life are treated as background noise, working-class voters notice.They see politicians who can detect a microaggression from three districts away but cannot explain why two salaries no longer buy a flat.They see activists who speak endlessly about marginalised communities while sounding faintly embarrassed by actual working-class people.Then everyone acts shocked when those voters drift right.They did not abandon the left first. The left stopped speaking their language.This is the wider reason people respond to politicians like Borg Manché.Not because they want rights reversed. Not because they hate Pride. Not because Malta is secretly waiting to return to silence, shame, and badly fitted Sunday suits.They respond because they are tired.Tired of being told their instincts are hateful.Tired of watching politicians tremble before activists.Tired of seeing every awkward phrase turned into evidence of moral corruption.Tired of a public culture that can forgive anything except hesitation.Borg Manché may not be the right messenger. But the message exists.A society can defend minorities without surrendering every shared norm to minority identity. It can protect rights without treating every activist demand as sacred. It can celebrate Pride without turning childhood into a stage for adult symbolism. It can allow people to change slowly without calling every delay bigotry.That is not reaction.That is maturity.And we could all use some.•