Unholy trinity: Minority, Majority and Conscience

For many years, Northern Ireland was allowed an effective opt-out, as these things are called, in the legal treatment of homosexuals. No-one on this side of the water bothered much. Politically loyal or disloyal as the province may have been, it was treated as a distinct society within the British state.

If Northern Ireland chose to criminalise gay sex after the rest of us had abandoned such bigotry, that, somehow, was none of our business. If a gay minority pleaded in vain for equality with the rest of Britain, the inconsistency - moral, legal, practical - was tolerable. Or ignored. Call it primitive multi-culturalism.

Some people can envisage a devolved Scotland following the same sort of pattern. Some in these parts even look forward to the prospect, and they have a certain logic on their side. Home rule was supposed to offer a government, and therefore laws, appropriate to our society. So what if our society turns out to be less liberal than I might hope, or you might believe?

We had a whisper of this towards the end of last year, when civil partnerships were preoccupying Holyrood. One vocal group of the religious said, flatly, that "gay marriages" are simply wrong: wrong words, wrong intent. A variant argument was a little more subtle. This said that the majority of Scots were "not ready", for better or worse, to accept same-sex unions. So why impose the wishes of a minority upon them? Why create a legal status that the majority neither desired nor demanded? For their own good? What sort of democracy is that?

I doubted, and doubt, the premise: it strikes me that the majority are comfortable with civil partnerships. Then again, I have not canvassed every adult Scot. Nor have the MSPs who overrode the objectors. Nor have the objectors. Instead, all sides invoked three principles last year. They are fine principles. They are also deeply contradictory, and perhaps irreconcilable.
First, we run our society, as best we can, according to the wishes of the majority. Secondly, we respect the rights of minorities. Thirdly, we grant the greatest respect, in fact a moral privilege, to conscience. Which matters most, when push comes to shove? More importantly, which of these would you discard if there seemed to be no other choice?

The philosophers of politics and morals have been kicking this sort of stuff around for a very long time: that much I know. I may be a bit out of touch, but to my knowledge no breakthroughs on this front have been reported lately. Why should gay couples be denied the right to adopt? Simply because a minority, claiming to speak on behalf of a majority, invokes the right of conscience? That has been the liberal line.

So why, then, comes the response, should the rights of a homosexual minority be preferred before the rights of a religious minority? Answer: because all are equal before the law unless, of course, they are part of a minority that denies equality. So inequality is visited on this minority, in its turn. The pressing demands of conscience, in this case religious, are overturned.

None of this has much to do with my opinion. My opinion is that the campaign by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, supported by Anglicans and Muslims, to secure a right to discriminate under an anti-discrimination law is farcical. For my taste, they cannot expect public money to support their adoption agencies while insisting on prejudice against members of the public who happen to be gay.

Equality? That would be an end to the Act of Settlement, then? No discrimination? That would explain why Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic in any meaningful sense, dares not admit the fact while in office.

In my opinion, they should think very hard before they seek to bully governments, and avoid using the possible fate of children to buttress their demands. My opinion isn't the point, for once.
Even if it were, I would be obliged to add that a Roman Catholic conscience operates in an environment that is itself deeply bigoted. Equality? That would be an end to the Act of Settlement, then? No discrimination? That would explain why Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic in any meaningful sense, dares not admit the fact while in office. John Reid was very proud to become the first Roman Catholic Secretary of State for Scotland, but his pride was merely a measure of how horribly slow Scotland's progress has been.

Reid has stepped into the adoption row this week by stating, in effect, that faith must be subordinate to democratic government. True enough, as far as it goes. But what does the person of conscience do, cardinal or citizen, when fired with the belief that government is deeply, morally wrong? "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," says the Bible, usefully, at one point.

Secularists and atheists have never hesitated to adopt the same principle. That's no accident. I would be disgusted if Catholic adoption agencies won their discriminatory exemption from Westminster and Holyrood. Then again, I once spent a long time refusing to pay the poll tax. I called it a matter of conscience. I'm not sure I know what, if anything, has ever made my moral sense superior to any other.

History is littered with bad laws, democratically-enacted, that were overturned by principled dissent. Governments are run, equally, by people whose consciences impel them to ignore the majority continually. Capital punishment is the obvious cliche. Put it to a referendum and we would have hanging back tomorrow, so the opinion polls say. MPs know as much and yet they ignore the fact. Minority, majority and conscience: the relationships between the three shift continually.

Politicians who bother to think about it console themselves with the belief that they "lead" public opinion. Things that the majority once believed unthinkable are now taken for granted. But parliamentarians are also led by majority prejudices: there have been enough bad laws, enacted in panic and haste, to prove it. A good campaign, perhaps one launched by a powerful group of churchmen, can also tip the scales. Democracy's contradictions are not resolved in the process. Sometimes the majority yield. Sometimes the minority are wrong. Sometimes conscience and sincere belief are deeply misguided.

Historically, as it happens, the Roman Catholic Church has set store by individual conscience only when church and individual have agreed. That doesn't make Conscience, when it defends discrimination and denies equality, requires a little examination the claim of conscience less sincere, but nor does it raise mere sincerity to the level of principle. There are some truly sincere bigots around, after all.

Conscience, when it defends discrimination and denies equality, requires a little examination. Defiance of the wishes of the majority calls for a conviction that has been examined unsparingly. The defence of minority rights, meanwhile, calls for a question: do these claimed rights deny the rights and insult the beliefs of others?

In the row over adoption agencies and gay couples, we are awash with principles. No-one is entering this battle without them. You can picture it, almost, in terms of moral hierarchies. You could begin with simple loyalty, perhaps to church, or party or social group. You could tease out democracy's contradictions and ask what we really mean by "majority" and "minority".

We all dissent from something, at some time. The majority is composed of a collection of minorities.

When that dust settles, you are left with fundamentals. Are we guided by a god, or by our own makeshift, provisional conclusions?

Gays are people, whatever a deity says. That's a fact, not an inspired belief.

(Ian Bell - The Herald)

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