There are political interviews that clarify positions. Then there are political interviews that create more work for everyone else in the party by lunchtime.

Newly-elected PN MP Conrad Borg Manché gave one of those interviews to MaltaToday, touching among other things on Pride, children, drag, queer visibility and whether society has now accepted LGBTIQ+ people so fully that Pride has apparently become a bit too much theatre for his taste.

The reaction did not take long.

The Malta Gay Rights Movement strongly rejected his comments, especially his suggestion that people within organisations such as MGRM had agreed with his criticism of Pride. MGRM made it clear that it does not, and has never, agreed with statements that undermine or oppose Pride initiatives.

Which is where things get a little awkward for the PN.

Because the LGBTIQ+ community did not exactly appear as a footnote in the PN electoral programme. It featured quite clearly in a whole set of proposals, including a stronger GU Clinic and dedicated service for Gozo, emergency housing for vulnerable LGBTIQ+ youths, stronger workplace protection from discrimination, equal protection in services, research and dedicated services for elderly LGBTIQ+ persons, and services for trans persons.

So, on paper, the PN was promising shelters, research, services, protection, anti-discrimination structures and support for trans people.

Then, in an interview, one of its newly elected MPs appeared to suggest that Pride may have become excessive because civil rights are now legal.

That is quite the journey. From “we will protect you through policy” to “but do we really still need all this visibility?” in one electoral cycle. If politics were a GPS, this would be the moment it says: recalculating – and we all know that PN and calculations do not exactly go hand in hand.

That alone should have been enough to make the PN pause and ask itself whether its new parliamentary group had accidentally downloaded two different manifestos: one with LGBTIQ+ inclusion proposals, and another with “let us discuss whether Pride is still necessary” written somewhere in the margins.

Then came Lee Bugeja Bartolo.

In a now-removed post, the former PN MEP candidate described Borg Manché’s comments as highly irresponsible and asked a very simple question: should we stop celebrating Women’s Day because women now vote, work and sit in boardrooms and Parliament?

The answer, in his words, was: “Heck no.”

It was a neat comparison. Rights being legal does not mean prejudice has vanished. Having laws on paper does not mean every child in every classroom, every worker in every workplace, or every person walking hand in hand in the street suddenly feels safe, accepted and free.

That is precisely the point Pride exists to make.

Bugeja Bartolo also wrote that if he had to recall the comments and insults he heard growing up gay and different, he would have to write “a book as long as the Bible”. A dramatic line, yes, but also one that cut through the theory nicely. Because debates about “acceptance” sound very clean when they are held by people who never had to measure a room before being themselves inside it.

He also took issue with Borg Manché chuckling while saying he is not gay himself, saying there is nothing shameful or funny about being gay.

And then there was Rosianne Cutajar, the Minister for Equality and Civil Rights, whose post was not deleted.

Cutajar said Malta’s civil rights journey was not an accident. Since 2013, she said, the country had taken important steps so that every person, irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity, could live with dignity, respect and freedom.

Her point was simple enough: equality is not something you pass once in Parliament and then place on a shelf like a souvenir from better times. It is a responsibility that must be renewed every day.

Cutajar also warned that when people start questioning the value of initiatives that gave visibility, dignity and a voice to communities long pushed aside, they ignore both the realities those communities lived through and the collective journey that brought Malta to where it is today.

Which brings us to the awkward little knot in this whole episode.

A few days ago, the PN wanted to present itself as modern, inclusive and ready for government. Its own programme seemed to understand that LGBTIQ+ people still face real vulnerabilities, from discrimination at work to family rejection, homelessness, isolation in old age and access to healthcare.

Yet one of its newly-elected MPs gives an interview that sends Malta’s main LGBTIQ+ rights organisation into correction mode, while one of its own former candidates feels compelled to publicly tell LGBTQ people to hold their heads high.

Then the post disappears.

Which also raises another rather obvious question: was this just a disagreement over Pride, or did it accidentally lift the curtain on a wider internal rift inside the PN?

Because Lee Bugeja Bartolo was not exactly an outside commentator watching the campaign from the sofa. He was visibly active throughout the latest electoral campaign, present at several events, meeting candidates, speaking to supporters and forming part of the party’s wider public-facing effort.

So when someone like that feels strongly enough to publicly call the comments of a newly elected PN MP “highly irresponsible”, only for the post to later vanish, the story becomes slightly bigger than one interview and one reaction.

It starts to look like the PN’s inclusivity chapter may read very differently depending on who in the party is holding the microphone at the time.

Which is, in its own way, very PN. First, the manifesto. Then, the comment. Then, the reaction. Then, the reaction to the reaction. Then, the silence. Then, presumably, a meeting about why everyone is reacting.

The problem is not that politicians cannot have views. Of course they can. The problem is when those views treat Pride like a party that has outlived its usefulness, rather than a movement born from exclusion, survival and the very real fact that legal equality and lived equality are not the same thing.

MGRM put it bluntly: Pride is political, but it is also a celebration of queer joy and resilience. It is visibility. It is safety in numbers. It is the reminder that people who were once pushed into silence are no longer asking permission to exist in public.

So no, Pride does not end because Malta passed civil rights laws. Just as Women’s Day did not end because women got the vote.

And no, children do not become less innocent by learning that different people exist. They become less cruel.

For the PN, the question is now simple. Is its position the one written in its manifesto, or the one casually improvised in interviews?

Because Malta has moved too far forward for political parties to keep treating equality as something to applaud in theory, question in practice, and delete when the comments section gets uncomfortable.