Owen makes a very good point

Owen Bonnici, Partit Laburista

At a University debate on gay rights, Owen Bonnici, a Labour MP, spoke on same-sex couples their right to adopt children. 

"What worries me is that society could end up rebelling against adopted children whose parents are homosexual ... I feel there needs to be more discussion and more dissemination of information for people to form an opinion. We need to fill the vacuum with a debate."

Spot on. The issue of gay marriage and concomitant adoptive rights cannot and should not be treated as just a question of principle, although it certainly is that. It needs to be approached with what classical political thinkers used to call 'prudence'.

For them, prudence was not an excuse to do nothing, less so to lack courage or nerve. Prudence - a sense of judgement in today's parlance - is the virtue which gives clarity to one's grasp of the big picture, a good sense of the beckoning future and a knack for picking the best way forward.

Bad principles are almost invariably the road to bad legislation. But good principles do not automatically produce good legislation either. The road to legal hell is frequently paved with good intentions. The prudent politician avoids both roads.

With 18 months separating us from an election, this is the right time to raise the issue of gay marriage, the form it ought to take and adoptive rights. But it has to be done in the most prudent manner possible, without provoking a reaction which will stop the process dead in its tracks.

Euphorically taking the post-divorce referendum road to gay rights as if it were just extending it by a couple of kilometers would be a disaster. For gay people themselves.