Should religious bakers be able to conscientiously object to making wedding cakes for gay marriages?

One of the main sticking points in the gay marriage debate is the question of how freedom of religion should be protected for devout religious people who do not want to participate in, or personally craft their goods for involvement in, same sex weddings. In this blog post, I want to think through some of the arguments and issues involved in allowing bakers (and florists, etc.) to refuse goods and services to gay weddings, on the basis of a religious conscientious objection.

Normal cases of conscientious objection

Let’s begin by recalling some standard cases of conscientious objection. There are two well-known areas where conscientious objection is specifically allowed in law in many countries. The first case is where a soldier, perhaps one drafted into the war effort, refuses service (especially active combat service) on the basis of a conscientious objection against fighting in the war. The second case occurs where a doctor, usually on the basis of religious beliefs about the sanctity of human life from conception, refuses to take part in performing an abortion.

A few points are worth nothing. First, in the usual cases, the conscientious objector is not objecting to performing an action that implicates them indirectly in some larger activity with which they have moral concerns. Rather, their moral concerns attach directly to the action they themselves are being asked to perform. The soldier is being put in a situation where he might have to actually kill enemy combatants. The doctor is being asked to perform the abortion herself, or to have it performed on her professional authority.

Second, given the convictions of the conscientious objector, the actions in question are very serious moral evils, even mortal sins. Given their beliefs, both objectors would consider the action in question to be the most heinous of crimes – murder.

Third, even when conscientious objection is protected in law, it may still involve the objector playing some role in the performance of a larger activity. The soldier may still be required to play a non-combat role in supporting the war effort. The doctor may still be legally required to let the patient know of the availability of medical options for terminating the pregnancy, and perhaps to refer the patient to another doctor willing to perform the operation.

Do these qualities also appear in the gay marriage issue? Consider civil marriage celebrants who have religious convictions against gay marriage. If such celebrants are allowed to conscientiously object, then the third issue will not really arise, provided there are plenty of other celebrants happy to perform the role. (This condition may not be fulfilled in rural settings.) I am a bit dubious about whether the second condition really applies – as to whether performing the wedding would be a grave moral sin. It is plainly not in the same category as murder. But there is no question that the first condition applies. The civil marriage celebrant is not merely being implicated in the wedding. They are taking part in it and it is happening under their authority. They are – quite literally – performing the wedding. For this reason, it seems to me reasonable enough to create a dedicated category of religious civil celebrants, and allow them to only perform marriages with which they are comfortable. (This policy is already a part of the main legislative proposals being put forward, and I will presume that any legislation following a YES result would include it.)

But what about bakers and florists? In these cases, the above-noted qualities of conscientious objection don’t apply. While bakers and florists may use their creativity and skill to infuse their work, their role is still only one part of the larger marriage ceremony. They create (perhaps bespoke) goods and services for the wedding, but they are at most indirectly implicated in it, and any sentiments expressed in their work are an expression of their customer, and not their own.

Still, while this may show us that use of the term ‘conscientious objection’ is not very apt in this case, that alone does not demonstrate that bakers and florists cannot be allowed to refuse service.

Existing exceptions for religious organizations

Religious institutions like churches, religiously-run schools and religious organizations have many powers to make decisions on the basis of their religious convictions, and to avoid the anti-discrimination laws that a normal business must accept. (This does not allow morally awful types of discrimination, of course, like race-based discrimination.)

But private, profit-seeking organizations like bakeries and florists are unlike officially designated religious organizations in lots of ways. For example, a religious organization’s beliefs and convictions can be known, and publicly expressed, ahead of time. This means that those seeking services need not be subject to rejection and moral posturing by service-providers at the point of sale. It means that those who disagree morally with the religious organization’s stance are free to make their own informed decisions about interacting with it and using its services. And it means that the religious organization’s hypocrisy on any of its standards can be called out.

The situation is very different for individual service-providers, if they are able to pick and choose which customers they serve. Indeed, if at any time they decide to relax their standards (perhaps for a very profitable service), or to change their policy for profit-related motives, there is no mechanism to prevent their doing so. Their decision-making can be entirely arbitrary.

Again, this does not show that bakers and florists should not be entitled to turn away those seeking their services, but it does show why it is quite reasonable to think that religious institutions should be allowed to discriminate, on a consistent and good faith understanding of their convictions, but that ordinary shop-keepers should not.

No easy answers?
One of the things that makes this issue difficult to sort out is that there are obvious cases where it seems wrong – and where it seems right – to refuse service on the basis of personal convictions.

An example where forced complicity in the action is odious would be a Jewish baker asked to bake a cake commemorating Hitler’s birthday for the local white supremacists. Another might be a florist being asked to send valentine’s day wishes and special floral arrangements to a man’s wife – and his girlfriend.

Equally, there are cases where a service- or goods-provider refusing service on the basis of their deeply-held beliefs is plainly awful. Being refused service on the basis of one’s race is the obvious example here. Worse still, if such practices were widespread, then they impact directly on any number of human rights, because of the way most developed countries rely on the market to deliver services and goods that provide substance to our rights.

But a few questions…

There are a few parts of this concern for conscientiously objecting bakers that I find a bit puzzling. These may not manage to show that they should not be protected in law, but I think they do illustrate that the practice is not innocuous from a social and moral point of view.

Consistency

Why aren’t bakers already refusing other irreligious weddings? (Such as baking wedding cakes for atheists, heretics and fornicators?) In fact, why aren’t their deeply-held religious beliefs appearing in myriad other places in their business practice?

If we can use the examples of Christians for a moment, think of everything Jesus said about the problems with the rich and the need to help the poor. This issue directly impacts on the nature of profit-seeking enterprises and the work they do, and who they do it with. It puzzles me that conscientious objection is suddenly becoming a serious political concern in the context of gay marriage, when – if religiously-based refusal of service really warrants legal protection – we would routinely see it in myriad other economic contexts.

Universality

Why is this issue  only being spoken about in terms of small business owners? Surely, if it is to be a legally enshrined right for business-owners to refuse service for religious reasons, then the same considerations will impact on employees (both those serving customers, and those performing the work) and property/venue owners (who may own the building, with the baker leasing the property). These people are just as likely to be religious as anyone else – but what happens when they find that their work or property is being used to provide services with which they harbor deep religious disagreements? Or even if they find that their work or property is being used to refuse services, on grounds they find objectionable on social justice grounds? Will these groups inherit the same entitlements to refuse consent as business-owners? And what happens in the inevitable case where these entitlements clash, and we have disagreements between venue-owners, business-owners, and employees?

I think we are owed a detailed explanation of how religious-based refusals will work in the context of overlapping claims of employers, business-owners, employees, shareholders and property/venue owners, at least in any cases where they can reasonably complain that they are being forced to be complicit in an activity with which they have a good faith disagreement.

Reciprocity

In recent months, conservatives have been alarmed at several ways in which conservative advocates and positions are being treated in various arenas, such as cable channels refusing to play political advertisements advocating for the NO vote, or venue owners refusing to allow conservative organizations or speakers to hire their venues. Conservatives have also criticized sporting institutions, professional bodies and large corporations for intruding into politics when they advocate a YES vote. Sometimes, there has even been pressure for conservative/religious corporate executives and others to resign because of activist campaigns against them, and there have been successful campaigns and boycotts against companies on the basis of their non-progressive positions.

There are many different moral concerns implicated in each of these issues – but there is something they have in common: they inject political decision-making into arenas that are usually somewhat quarantined from such partisanship. In some cases, this is not very serious, such as footy teams coming out with a particular stance. But in others, it is very serious, such as campaigns trying to pressure organizations into sacking an employee.

Giving bakers and florists the license to refuse service does much the same thing. If it is okay for bakers to refuse service because they don’t want to be complicit in gay weddings, then surely that gives us good reason to think that cable providers or venue-owners should be entitled to refuse conservatives – and not even on the basis of threats of boycotts, but just because they have conscientious objections to their property and work being enrolled in the service of political positions to which they object.

Ultimately, what is good for bakers will be good for a whole range of industries. If designing, baking and writing the desired words counts as a free speech issue for bakers, then the same argument will apply for advertising platforms, sign-writers, search engines, cable television providers, function rooms, industrial printers, and more. If conservatives think it is wrong, unfair and socially damaging for all of these institutions to refuse services to those using them for conservative practices, then surely the same must be true for bakers and florists acting on the same principle.

‘Civic tolerance’
In making the above-noted complaints against discriminatory decision-making in the market, conservatives (in my view) rightly draw attention to how much we all rely on a level of neutrality from all sorts of service providers to make sure that our rights to services, travel, employment and speech are genuinely realized.

We could express this by appeal to a notion of ‘civic tolerance’. A citizen displays civic tolerance when they say:

“I disagree with your speech, action or practice, and I reserve my right to speak out against it, and to perform different actions in my own life. But I acknowledge that your speech, and your actions, and your practices, are bound to have material requirements, and that you will need various goods and services to perform them. (These may include: A venue to hire for you to speak at. A printing press to print your words. A television channel to play your paid political advertisements. A taxi to take you to your event.) Part of my tolerance of our political differences will be to treat you equally to all my other patrons, clients or customers, when it comes to the performance of my professional or business roles.”

It seems to me that this spirit of civic tolerance is an often-unnoticed and uncredited source of social harmony, equal respect, and the realization of human rights. It is a cultural norm against being a busybody or an extreme partisan, against a world where each of us are judged upon our personal and political views and impeded on that basis, and against a zero-sum vision of society as an endless contest against the other, where every available measure should be employed against those who think differently to undermine their power and silence their voices. Civic tolerance prevents us from being forced to live our lives in identity-based bubbles, where we only interact with people like us, because everyone else will subject us to their moralizing judgments before they decide whether to treat us as ordinary customers or clients. As such, it is a virtue that gives us space and freedom to live our own lives.

If I am right about this, then it turns out that ensuring conscientious objections for bakers is not very conservative at all. In fact, the desire of bakers to interject their own judgments about others’ practices into the provision of goods and services is one symptom of a much larger social movement (at least as prominent on the left as on the right side of politics) that is pressing back against traditional civic norms.

But even if it is morally worrying, does that mean it should be illegal?
If everything I have said here is on the right track, then we should be wary about the increasing practice of those on both sides of politics to inject their religious, moral and political views into ordinary civic, professional and commercial practices (except in the most vivid cases).

But does this mean I have made a case for such actions to be illegal – for the force of law to prevent their occurrence? It does not. To argue that something is immoral or socially damaging is not to show it should be prohibited in law.

But it does, I think, suggest that we should be wary about thinking about gay marriage in exceptional terms. It is not a unique area, walled off from the rest of the world. Countless types of goods and services provide us with the resources we need to act on, and speak about, our values. The provision of many of those goods and services conceivably could be refused by those who do not want to see their work playing a role in practices with which they disagree. If we are worried when this practice is used against those who share our religious or political persuasion, then we should be just as alert when it is used against others with whom we disagree. Having a consistent law that applies across the board ensures that we are not legislating one rule for us, and another for everyone else: a sure sign of injustice.

 

(This post is one in a series, looking at the arguments in the gay marriage debate.)

Gay marriage: ‘We should not even be having this debate!’

The argument that political debate on gay marriage is harmful, and should therefore be avoided or at least minimized, has been voiced by a number of those on the YES side, including at the very highest levels of government, and it remains an ongoing feature of the popular public discussion.

These arguments were initially made in the particular context of the conservative side of politics aiming to undertake a plebiscite on gay marriage. And in that context it was true both that the plebiscite was not legally necessary, and that it was a process that was bound to increase the visibility and heat of any ensuing debate. (As it unquestionably has, with ample vitriol, if not violence, on both sides.)

But many of the statements made on this matter – both at the time and since – have a quite general application, in the sense of bringing into question whether it is wrong for us to be having a dedicated public debate about this issue at all. For example, such arguments would apply to making an election issue out of the topic.

No doubt there are cases when the harmfulness of political speech does indeed provide strong reasons for shutting down debate on a topic. Hate speech constraints are a well-known example, and history furnishes no shortage of links between vicious racist speech and ensuing ethnic violence.

Yet any arguments for avoiding public debate on an issue must consider the moral costs of such a policy. In my view, there are deep ethical concerns with the argument that, on the basis of concerns with potential harms, we should avoid having a political debate about issues like gay marriage.

Let’s get clear about the principle at work here

Most often when this assertion is made, it is unclear what the deeper principle is that underlies its specific application in this case. In other words, if the argument against popular political discussion works in this case, then there must be other cases where it will also work, because there is some underlying principle that tells us when and how popular political discussion should be rightly avoided.

My attempt to give a sympathetic account of the underlying principle is as follows:

In cases where experts agree that popular discussion of a particular political issue will be damaging to a particular class of vulnerable people, we have a strong reason to avoid that debate.

Now I need to stress that this is just my attempt to portray the general principle. A YES proponent might actually have something subtler in mind. But this principle will give us something to start with, and may help us devise an improved one in due course.

Some questions. Actually, lots of questions.

If something like the above principle is meant to justify calls to avoid debate, then an array of serious moral questions arise.

Question 1: How strong is this ‘strong reason’?

It’s pretty straightforward that the above considerations do create at least some reason to avoid a public debate, in the sense of not starting one unnecessarily. If there is widespread support for a policy across all major parties, or if a government that announced the policy as part of their election promises, and then was voted into power with a sufficient majority to legislate that policy, then it makes no sense to start up a debate that would carry serious costs, and with little benefit. The legislation should just be completed in a quick and expeditious matter.

But it is very different to say the reasons are strong enough to actively discourage a public debate that is already occurring – or to say that we should avoid discussion on an issue where there are large-scale (and passionately held) divisions across the voting population, for example, in a case where polls indicate that about a third of the population disagrees with the majority opinion.

Question 2: Who are the experts on whether harms will occur?

The principle above, if it were to be rigorously followed, would place an awfully large amount of political power in the hands of the ‘experts’ who make judgments about the harms involved. After all, they will be effectively empowered to decide which issues are to be quarantined from normal democratic deliberation.

Presumably these experts will be professionals (like psychologists or psychiatrists), or academics with the relevant specialities. Naturally, most of what these experts say would be accurate and evidence-based. But universities and professions are subject to the same frailties (moral and cognitive) as every human institution – especially once that institution is granted political power. I do not think one needs to be excessively cynical about human behaviour to think that there are serious worries with this arrangement. Whether or not power corrupts, there can be little doubt that it attracts the corrupt.

Question 3: Who are the experts who decide who will count as vulnerable?

The same concerns will arise for the question of who gets to count as vulnerable – and who gets to make that assessment. But the situation here is worse than with the prior question. In this case, the questions are less about strict sciences like psychology, and more about evaluations about the moral significance of different sorts of vulnerability. Apart from some really obvious cases, this is something that different political philosophies are bound to see differently. (Consider: do all vulnerabilities count? What if it turns out that some white supremacists are extremely defensive and emotionally vulnerable? Should we care? Or not?)

Furthermore, some philosophies may even wonder why we should focus on vulnerable people at all. Maybe all speech that can have significant harms should be discouraged and avoided – even if those harms would befall people who are not otherwise considered vulnerable, such as people who agree with the majority position on an issue. But making this modification to the above principle would greatly expand its application, placing even more power in the hands of experts.

Question 4: Is this a special case?

Perhaps it might be responded that it is okay to avoid debate in the special cases where the issue is a morally straightforward one, about which no reasonable person can really have any qualms or questions. But as I am hoping to show with this blog series, on the issue of gay marriage, there are certainly concerns that a reasonable person may at least want to raise, and get considered on the merits. Now I think that considering these arguments on the merits gives us very powerful reasons to legislate in favour of gay marriage. But that is a claim about the end results of a critical discussion. It is very different from the claim that we do not even need a critical discussion.

Perhaps instead it might be objected that we do not need public discussion in the special cases when the issue is really just a question of equality before the law, and of fundamental human rights. But there may in fact be arguments – such as the ones I have already made this blog series – that (at least initially) challenge whether the issue really is one of equality and fundamental rights. Shutting down the debate on these issues will shut down any possibility of debate on whether this is an issue on which we should in fact be shutting down debate. In other words, following this debate-avoiding principle on an issue also shuts down the meta-debate about whether this is an issue that should be subject to the principle.

Moreover, even if the issue is unquestionably about fundamental rights and equalities, that doesn’t necessarily tell us whether other important rights and freedoms are implicated in the policy change, and how these should be managed, and what compromises might need to be implemented. Again, we would need public debate to think through, and sort out, these issues.

Question 5: Why aren’t other things done to avoid the potential harms?

Suppose it was beyond dispute that an aggressive, divisive political dispute on a given issue would create substantial harms on vulnerable people. It may also be true that this result could be avoided by paying attention to other parts of the social context and political situation. For example, if one wanted to improve the tone of political discussion in order to bring down the level of divisive heat and anger, then political parties and activist groups could make either bilateral or even unilateral commitments to improve their own behaviour in such discussions. They could try to live up – with self-restraint, discipline and dignity – to a code of conduct that eschews any use of language the other side might find derogatory, and that tries to listen and respond carefully to other’s viewpoints. Events could be organized with like-minded discussants from the other side of the debate, where polite, reasonable and adult discussion could be exemplified. 

No doubt this sounds fanciful, and it is probably impossible to imagine parliamentary question time in Australia without our political leaders booing and hooting at each other like unruly children. But the underlying point remains true. A whole array of social behaviours and practices lead to any given social outcome. To say that A leads to B may be true. But it may also be true that A only leads to B in the context of background social conditions X, Y and Z. And it may be that if we really cared about B, and thought that B was an outcome of over-riding importance that we needed to avoid, then we should be bringing X, Y and Z into the discussion as well. (If that means we have to impose kindergarten-level codes of conduct on our political leaders when they engage in formal debate, then so be it, I say.)

Question 6: How are decisions to be made if they are not to be publicly discussed?

This is perhaps the most significant query. Once the experts have had their say about what counts as a harm, and what counts as a vulnerable person, and everyone has agreed that having a discussion would be too costly (or maybe this judgment is also made by the experts?), how on earth is the actual decision to be made? It cannot be to simply make no decision, and to leave things as they are, because, a) leaving things as they are itself constitutes making a decision, and, b) the entire point of the YES argument in this context is to change the existing law.

Perhaps the idea is that the decision-making will still occur by the parliament or the reigning political party, but without any significant public discussion. But I struggle to believe that anyone would accept this line of argument unless they knew they already had the numbers at the time they voiced it. It is also perplexing why we should solve the issue by appeal to elected leaders, given that a key part of the justification for respecting democracy is – at minimum – that the voters have been sufficiently informed about the leaders’ political views on the relevant issues. More thoroughgoing justifications for democracy can even include appeals to public deliberation itself – exactly the property that the above principle aims to shut down.

Conclusion

The key point here is that the arguments for shutting down public discussion look – on their face at least – to be profoundly undemocratic, and therefore to have serious implications in terms of procedural justice, public accountability, the legitimacy of law, and the human rights of communities to political participation and self-determination.

To be sure, the above arguments are not definitive, and it may be that a principle can be fashioned that avoids these moral concerns, and that shows that decision-making on the gay marriage issue (and other similar issues) should be protected from popular political discussion. But I submit that this argument has not been made. Until it is, I think it is premature to assert that this is a discussion we should not even be having.

(This post is one in a series, looking at the arguments in the gay marriage debate.)

Slippery slopes in the gay marriage debate

One of the increasingly common concerns voiced in the gay marriage debate is one of unintended consequences and – in particular – slippery slopes. The thrust of slippery slope arguments is that a policy change (that may seem okay if it is just considered in isolation) will actually lead over time to a dire situation, and that it will be difficult for us to prevent this slide into catastrophe.

We often hear commentators scoffing at these arguments, as if they were nothing more than a sneaky rhetorical ploy. And sometimes it is true that an appeal to a slippery slope argument is the last resort of a debater who has becoming convinced that the argument cannot be won on its merits alone.

But the fact remains that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these arguments. Slippery slope arguments can be true, valid and even decisive. Public policies do have unintended consequences in the short term, and can lead to situations that are not easy to avoid or undo. To find out whether a given slippery slope argument is fallacious, it must be analysed on the merits.

In this post, I intend to do just that, and to consider the merits of the slippery slope argument, and its application in the context of gay marriage.

The slippery slope argument

Making a slippery slope argument involves justifying three separate premises.

1. Having made this policy change, further changes will subsequently occur, perhaps with or without explicit political decision-making or electoral control;
2. It will be difficult to stop those changes, or reverse the policy, at a later point.
3. These further changes will lead to a dire situation.

If these three premises can be vindicated, then the slippery slope argument is both valid and sound.

The ‘dire situation’

Sometimes it turns out that the slippery slope argument falters at Premise 3. A social change may gradually occur whereby the ‘dire situation’ – from the new perspective, caused in part by the original change – actually doesn’t look so bad after all.

It is true that this can sometimes be a worry, and that new practices may normalize behaviour that should have remained morally concerning. But there are countless examples where the reverse turns out to be true, and when society plainly improves because of what it has learned and re-thought on the basis of the initial policy change.

For example, when the rights of man were first declared in America and France in the eighteenth century, some wondered where such declarations might lead – Votes for the poor? Votes for those in minority religions? Votes for colonized people? Votes for women? Those who warned of the slippery slope to universal suffrage (voting rights for all adults) turned out to be absolutely right. The more that the franchise was extended to responsible, rational adults, the more it seemed reasonable and fair to extend it to the remaining groups of responsible, rational adults.

In this case, even though the slippery slope warnings turned out to be true, nowadays the idea of universal suffrage is a consensus moral position, held across the political spectrum. Having arrived at the ‘dire situation’, the entire citizenry has decided that not only is the situation not dire at all – but it is a very good thing, and indeed something of a profound achievement by our civilization.

Why won’t we be able to stop at a sensible place?
Premise 2 is usually where the argument is at its weakest. If the slippery slope argument is to convince people who would otherwise allow the policy change to happen, then it needs to function in a context where, a) many would agree that the change itself is okay, but, b) they are deeply worried about the prospect of the dire situation.

But if that really is the case, then it is hard to see why this very fact will not make it possible to stop the changes at an appropriate point in the future. This is why most slippery slope arguments made in the context of democratic decision-making are seriously flawed. If there is a sizable amount of the voting population that is happy about the current policy change, but is worried about the dire situation, then why can’t electoral pressure be used to draw a line at the point where the majority of the electorate believe things have gone too far?

In some cases, the proponent of the slippery slope argument may have something very important to say here. They may be able to point out that the policy change actually shifts the manner in which future political decisions will be made, or that the policy change will shift enormous amounts of power (political power, media power, social power or – in the scariest situation – raw military power) in such a way as to dramatically alter whether it will be possible to slow, stop or reverse course in the future.

Consider a policy change that redraws voting districts, where any future decisions about this issue would be made by leaders elected on the basis of those new districts. In this case, the policy change in question alters the context in which future decision-making takes place, making future changes more likely, even as they make it harder for an opposition group to get into power and reverse course.

Another example would be a practice of appeasement against a military aggressor – where by the time it becomes clear that the military aggressor cannot be appeased, the opportunity to prevent their consolidation of power has been lost.

This does mean that slippery slope arguments are always sound in these contexts – but it does mean they should be taken very seriously.

However, I submit that the vote to give same sex couples the power to legally wed is not analogous to these sorts of examples. It does not mark a shift in the nature of political decision-making in any way that will make it difficult for future majorities to respond to policy changes happening in other areas, such as in education, or with respect to free speech or freedom of religion. In each of these cases, and on each of these issues, electoral majorities have proved to be pretty good at getting their way in the end. They have political representation, access to a free press, the capability to mount social media campaigns, and so on.

In other words, I agree it is possible that the change in allowing same sex marriage will have some undesirable future consequences in some context or other. This is true of gay marriage, because it is true of absolutely all changes in law – and indeed of all decisions not to change the law when the social/political/economic context is itself changing. Unintended consequences are just a brute fact about human societies and social decision-making.

However, the legal change to empower same-sex marriage will not alter the ways in which future electorates will be able to give effect to their views about what is, and what is not, socially desirable. If undesirable policies do arise in terms of future education, free speech or freedom of religion, then the electorate will be in a position to do something about it.

For this reason, I think we have good reason to reject slippery slope arguments on this matter, at least and until a persuasive case can be given that shows specifically how the three above-noted premises (and Premise 2 in particular) can be justified.

One final problem with slippery slope arguments
One final concern with slippery slope arguments may not be that they are false or untrue. To the contrary, they may be valid and sound – but still not be sufficient to sway our decision-making on the matter. Howso?

Simply, the slippery slope argument does not make the case for the original issue go away. It just adds an extra consideration to the mix. Even if valid, there is no guarantee that the risks of the slippery slope are morally more important than the initial policy change itself.

So there are two reasons debaters dislike slippery slope arguments being used by their opponents. One is because it can take a lot of time to work through all the new factual and moral claims that would be required to vindicate (or rebut) the slippery slope argument. And in most cases, the result is unlikely to be anything more definitive than assessing the balancing of probabilities one way or the other.

But the other reason slippery slope arguments are problematic is that they distract attention from the central issue at hand. It is one thing to demand that decision-makers pay heed to potential knock-on consequences and other risks. But it is another for those concerns to so dominate the discussion that people wind up somehow forgetting that the law will also have direct and immediate consequences.

In this case, the main, direct effect of the law is that it will empower a certain group of couples in committed and loving relations to formalize and celebrate their love and commitment in just the same way as other couples in their society do. That is the one change we can absolutely guarantee will happen. While it is worth taking slippery slope arguments seriously enough to consider them on the merits, it is never worth losing sight of the actual direct change that will occur, and the justice and legitimacy that may reside in that change.

(This post is one in a series, looking at the arguments in the gay marriage debate.)   

Religious convictions and gay marriage law: Two issues, not one

Should a religious conviction be a good reason for voting one way, rather than another?

In the gay marriage debate, we often here refrains like: “As a devoted Christian (or person of faith), I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and so I oppose same-sex marriage”. Such statements can make it seem that particularly devout religious people have special reason to vote NO, once they ascertain that their scriptural and religious authorities dictate that marriage is between a man and a woman.

But this misses the point that there are at least two issues of moral and religious conviction in play here, not one.

What does my religion say about marriage and homosexuality?

The first question is the obvious one that springs to mind. Presuming for the sake of argument that I am a religious devotee, I will of course want to enquire into what my religion (and my interpretation and understanding of that religion) says about marriage in general, and homosexuality in particular.

Now I am not a theologian, or any sort of expert on scripture, religious authority (like the papacy) or religious interpretation. So for our purposes here, let’s simply accept that I (as a devoted religious citizen) can – on the basis of a reasonable interpretation of my religion’s commandments – decide that my religion forbids same-sex marriage.

This decision about what religious authority requires will have obvious implications for my own actions. For one thing, it will impact powerfully upon what I will do in my own personal life. Obviously, I will have strong reason to not get married to a same-sex partner. Also, I will probably want to encourage my friends, and educate my children, to follow the same religious convictions.

As well as these ramifications for my own personal behaviour, my religious convictions will also have political relevance. Most importantly, I will not want the law to prevent me having these convictions, speaking about them, and acting upon them. That is, I will want to protect my freedom of religion to follow the dictates of my God and my tradition. This does not mean that 'anything goes' in terms of how I can treat others, but it certainly does provide an important reason for me to ensure the law provides room for me to act upon my religion’s commandments in my own personal life. (In a later post, we will talk about the implications here for conscientious objection.)

What does my religion say about the relationship between religion and law?

There is another, further way my religious convictions might turn out to have political implications. Having decided that my religion says that marriage is between a man and a woman, I might vote in order to ensure that this understanding of marriage is reflected in law.

This is a very different application of my religious views. Why? Because in this case, I am no longer using my faith to determine how I will live my life, but using my faith to determine how others will live their lives. The religious articles of faith I possess are now impacting on the law that coercively governs all citizens, including those of different sects, different religions, and the un-religious.

While in my personal life, I could move more or less immediately from an evaluation about my religion’s requirements to a decision about how I should act, in the case of democratic voting, the move is not straightforward.

The reason this move is not straightforward is that my religion, and my commitments to my religion, may also give rise to powerful reasons to resist imposing my religious views on others through the force of law.

Three considerations about the relationship between religion and law

There are three types of reasons my religion might give me pause before I vote on the basis of my religious convictions.

The separation of church and state

The first reason is that my religion might itself declare that there should be a gap between church and state, and that the former should govern our personal, spiritual lives, and that the latter – in having charge of our social and interpersonal lives – should be based upon secular (or at least non-sectarian) principles. Consider, in this light, Jesus’ command to, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Now of course it goes without saying that all religious quotes are subject to varying interpretations, but I think it is fair to say that at least one sensible interpretation of this saying is that there is an important distinction between the temporal and the spiritual spheres, and that our political decisions may rightly include consideration of temporal factors and issues that we do not need to consider in our personal and spiritual affairs.

It should be pretty clear that if there is to be a distinction between church and state, then this cannot be realized if we live in a democracy where everyone votes simply as if their own religion’s dictates should apply to everyone. If there are enough voting Catholics to take control of both the upper and lower houses of parliament, then (in such a world) the entire society can be required to eat fish on Fridays, to criminalize homosexuality, to be punished for blasphemy, and all the rest. The distinction between church and state will exist in name only. The fact that this doesn’t happen (even in cases where religions command a strong majority) is because many religious people acknowledge a distinction between the temporal and spiritual fields.

Tolerance and social peace

The second type of reason is that my religion may say things about tolerance, and about social harmony, that give me pause before imposing my views upon others. If my religion says that other views should be respected, and that non-religious people should be persuaded, and not forced, into religious practice, then this will affect the way I vote on such matters. Similarly, my religion might speak a lot about the importance of social harmony and peacefulness. If I think that forcing other people into religious practices they do not themselves accept is a sure recipe for internecine divisions and sectarian conflict, then this will shape how I contribute to political decision-making on the basis of my religious convictions.

These were the sorts of lines of reasonings that led John Locke – the 17^th Century political philosopher and devout Protestant – to mount some of history’s most powerful and influential arguments for religious tolerance in his Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke did not laud religious toleration, and a separation of church and state, despite his religious convictions – he did it because of his religious convictions.

The right to freedom of religion

The third type of reason recalls the importance (mentioned above) of my being able to act on the basis of my own religious convictions – and therefore of my right to freedom of religion. When my own co-religionists are in the majority in a democracy, I might not perceive any tension between my religious liberties and the practices the majority enshrines in law. But demographic shifts are possible, and so too are changes in people’s religious convictions. If the majority comes to hold a different religious view to mine, then I might suddenly perceive a very powerful tension between democratically made law and my own religious liberties.

For this reason, in order to protect my (and my family’s) religious freedoms, I might be better placed in trying to ensure that no-one’s particular religious views can be enshrined in the law. True, I lose the benefit of seeing others conform to my religion’s view about proper practices. But if I am (and those who think like me are) successful in safeguarding all citizens’ freedom from having religious practices and institutions imposed upon them, then I guarantee my own religious freedoms even in a future scenario where another group commands a democratic majority. The constraint imposed upon me when my group held a majority opinion becomes a freedom granted to me when I hold a different view. That, after all, is how rights work.

What should we conclude?

I am not here providing any sort of definitive moral (much less religious) case that these three types of reasons are decisive in the gay marriage debate. Whether that will be true or not depends on the specific religion in question.

What I am arguing is that a religious devotee deciding about how to vote on gay marriage is – by the very nature of that vote – coming to a stand on all of these three types of reasons. For devoutly religious people, simply considering what the religion says about gay marriage is far too narrow an engagement with their religious scriptures and authorities. It is also essential to consider what the religion says about the relationship between church and state, what the religion says about tolerance and social harmony, and what the religious community thinks about the importance of protecting rights of freedom of religion.

So when providing a full justification or explanation of how they voted, religious devotees should appeal not only to the passages in the scriptures that set down the church’s stance on marriage and homosexuality – but also to appeal to what the religion says about these three further and very significant factors.

None of this should be very surprising

In other contexts, the types of reasons I have been discussing here are routinely accepted by devoutly religious people. Religious devotees may well possess deeply-held and unshakable convictions about proper eating, clothing, cleanliness, sexuality, worship, charitable giving, and so on. But they do not suppose that, on the basis of these views, they should agitate and vote for laws that will bind those people who do not share their religion. They allow others outside their religion to legally do things that are sinful according to their revealed law. These sinful but non-criminal acts would include, for example, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, use of contraception, atheism, apostasy, blasphemy and so on and on.

In many respects, for all these above-noted sins, it just seems common-sense to think that the law should not follow the idiosyncratic dictates of a particular religion. But for some reason, religious devotees, and even religious authorities, seem not to apply the same sorts of considerations about political and legal decision-making to the issue of gay marriage.

Conclusion

My aim has not been to show that it is wrong to incorporate religious thinking into one’s political decision-making. In fact, I have been arguing the very reverse. I have suggested that it is wrong to apply only a superficial and narrow engagement with one’s religion into political decision-making. In decisions that affect other people, and the laws that govern them, many different religious-based considerations matter, and warrant careful reflection.

(This post is one in a series, looking at the arguments in the gay marriage debate.)
   

Same-sex marriage and marriage equality: The arguments

Australia is currently engaged in a plebiscite on whether to change the law to allow same-sex couples to marry. Predictably, this has prompted a lot of debate on the issue. But for people trying to think through the arguments for and against gay marriage, and to understand their relative merits, the popular discussion can be pretty frustrating. Politicians and commentators on both sides of the issue often simply assert their position, rather than putting forward clear and detailed arguments supporting their stance. Even when we are lucky enough to receive a careful and sustained line of reasoning, it is rare for the opposing side to take it seriously, and address the argument on the merits. Instead, opposing sides tend to just caricature the other side’s arguments, or brush them aside as unworthy of careful consideration.

Yet, in my view, very few of the arguments that are given for either position are so bad that they can be rejected out of hand. Often there is at least something that can be said for them, and some care and attention is required to see how well they can stand up to critical examination.

The purpose of this little series of blog-posts is to try to unpack some of the arguments we hear on both sides of the issue. Rather than uncritically accepting or rejecting these arguments, the series attempts to think rationally and seriously about them, before evaluating whether they provide good reasons for favouring one side or the other.

Normally I like to mention that nothing I say here is meant to be the definitive and final word on the subject, in the sense that I have been known to make mistakes and change my mind. (See the rider in my profile on the top right.) But this caveat goes doubly true for this series of posts. Why? Well, as John Stuart Mill famously observed, a person who knows only his or her own side of the issue knows little enough of that. Precisely because we don't hear these arguments set down in detail by their proponents, it can be hard to know exactly how the line of reasoning is supposed to work, or what responses might be made by the authors of the arguments against various objections to their reasoning. So while I do my best to give each argument a fair hearing and objective appraisal, there may well be alternatives and objections that I have not considered.

In terms of my own position, I may as well say at the outset that I am in favour of gay marriage, and plan to vote YES in the plebiscite. But anyone coming to this blog in the hope of finding a series of devastating rebuttals against the NO position probably will leave disappointed. As we will see, I do not think that all the arguments (much less all the statements and practices) of those in favour of a YES vote are necessarily good arguments. Nor do I think all of the arguments put forward by the NO camp are silly or sneaky (as is sometimes alleged).

Anyway, for those who are interested in thinking seriously about the moral issues in play on this issue, I hope they will find much food for thought.

The first post deals with whether gay marriage is really just a question of equality, and you can find it here.

(For some of my earlier reflections on gay marriage and conservativism, see here.)

Conservative arguments for Gay Marriage: Marriage is too important to be left to the prudes

It’s widely believed that conservatives are and should be opposed to gay marriage. I’d like to argue the opposite. While it is rarely either fashionable or politically correct, conservatism is a respectable political standpoint that emphasizes the importance of tradition, institution, virtue, stability, family, local ways of life, and a community’s moral fabric (see my earlier blogpost: http://hughbreakey.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-meanings-of-conservatism.html). But like every political theory, it can be used as a rhetorical device for people pursuing other goals entirely. I argue that gay marriage is a site where the conservative should take a principled stand against the prude. I survey what I take to be the three main arguments as to why the conservative might wish to prohibit gay marriage, and I aim to show that – far from supporting such a stance – the conservative has powerful reason to pursue the reverse course. Conservatives need to start taking marriage seriously.

Preliminaries

What follows is a conservative argument; it takes as its basis the sorts of considerations that conservatism as a political theory takes seriously. It is not, however, a religious argument – religion will be relevant to what follows inasmuch as religion shapes the traditions and moral fabric of a society, but no further. I won’t pretend to answer questions purely of religious doctrine. (Though, since I speak to a predominantly Christian society, it is perhaps worth at least noting that I am unaware of Jesus saying anything whatsoever about homosexuality, and that no-one – at least, no-one who has a daughter – could possibly be convinced to take on board the morality relayed in the tale of Sodom.)

At the outset, the ‘liberal’ or justice-based reasons for allowing gay marriage are straightforward enough. That is, the law should treat all people equally, and a liberal society should not dictate what forms of life its citizens choose to pursue. When it comes to questions of the good life, the liberal state should be ‘neutral’ amongst all of the different lifestyle conceptions.

A conservative, it goes without saying, will hardly be impressed by such claims. Particularly in the context of marriage. In such a case we are not talking in terms of criminalization and toleration. No-one is demanding that homosexuality be outlawed, which many conservatives would acknowledge to be an unacceptable violation of individual liberty. Instead, the debate is only in terms of what should be recognized, encouraged or valued in a community. That is where the dispute lies in this question. And surely, the conservative will say, here, at least, there can be no question of liberal ‘neutrality’. If the liberal wishes to outlaw all marriage, and allow only civil union (if that?) to have legal recognition, then they may with consistency lobby for such a policy. But what the liberal cannot do is to accept the prerogative of society to uphold and value certain relationships (like those anointed with marriage) and then complain of its non-neutrality in making that valuation. Of course such a valuation is non-neutral – that is just what it means to evaluate.

Argument 1: Prizing what is going right. Gay marriage does not pay due respect to traditions (in this case marriage) that are functioning and important to the society

One of the basic conservative insights is that ‘critique’ has no privileged place in political discourse. In other words, criticism of society is not any more important than singing its praises. Thinking that the society that guides you or the authority that constrains you is doing something wrong is no remarkable intellectual feat (every two-year-old instinctually does this countless times every day when they don’t get their own way). To the contrary, understanding and respecting what a society does right is at least as important as reflecting on what it does wrong. With this in mind, the conservative may worry that gay marriage pays insufficient attention to what is going right in our society – namely, the (mostly-)functioning institution of marriage. In particular, it might be a concern that the reform wants to remake an institution – marriage – that is, for all its problems, still a profound source of meaning and security in our modern world.

I mention this point only to reject it. The proposed reform does prize what society is doing right. The argument for the reform is that marriage remains, for many, a valuable and fulfilling institution, and that the stamp of social approval on a commitment between two loving people is a desirable thing. That seems to me the best press marriage has had since divorce rates were first publicized. Indeed, one could imagine that the conservative could feel quietly vindicated about the desires of gays to be married. That gay people wish to be married is an endorsement of many deeply held conservative beliefs. Radicals for many years now have been predicting and advocating the demise of the ‘bourgeois’ institution of marriage and the family. That a group of people systematically excluded from the institution feel a desire not to spurn it, but rather to be included within it, is – it seems to me – an emphatic rejection of the radical and anti-conservative stance. It underscores that committed, stable, long-term loving relations between partners is indeed a deep need and value in many human lives, and, all the more, that the social sanction, recognition and approval of such relationships by the community is more relevant than ever. Both these points are exactly what conservatives believe and are straightforward rebuttals of radical predictions.

Argument 2: Gay Marriage is not socially valuable as it does not contribute to childbirth and child-rearing.

Marriage can be viewed as a socially valued institution because it is a necessary condition for propagating children and effective child-rearing. Both of these are legitimate concerns of the conservative, since they both carry plain implications for the survival of the society. On such a basis it might be argued that, as gay marriage does not contribute to this valuable social outcome, it is not therefore worthy of the same social and legal recognition.

Ethicist Professor Stephen Cohen (UNSW) recently responded to such arguments with a ‘shame on you’ accusation, suggesting that proponents of this view are advancing it only to cover up their real concern, which is with what they perceive as the immorality of homosexuality (which will be covered in the following section). He may well be right, but I will here take it as an argument on its face worth consideration by the conservative.

It is often responded to this argument that marriage is not centrally organized around propagation and child-rearing. Married couples are not required or even necessarily encouraged to have children. Marriage vows usually contain no declaration of intentions to raise children; often children are not mentioned at all. Persons who have no physical capacity to have children can be married. Persons who have no intention of having children – who are explicit in rejecting any such intention – can be married. Contraceptive methods of all types are available to married persons. Persons who have deliberately removed their capacity to have children (such as through a vasectomy) can be married. Indeed, the point here is not only that they can be married, but that there is no sense in which they are not socially perceived as being genuinely married. No one is attempting to deny them this status. It is not held, for instance, that if Amy and Bob really took their marriage seriously, they would have children, and that until they do, they are really just enacting a sort of ersatz version of marriage.

There is a conservative response to all this. The point might be made that social approval and recognition of stable, long-term, loving relationships between men and women in general is worthwhile, so that those that do go on to have children are more likely to have such relationships. In other words, it is easier to support and value the broad type of relationship in question than just to target the instances where that relationship is really socially valuable (viz. when it includes child-rearing).

Now this response is plausible enough, so far as it goes. The problem is only in thinking that this is any sort of reason not to allow gay marriage. The entire response is founded on the idea that it may be worth socially encouraging a type of relationship in general so that it can be assured in the subset of cases where it really matters for the community (when children are involved). If that is right, however, then it is obvious that gay marriage is worth approval for just the same reason that heterosexual-marriage-without-children is. Namely, in order to emphasize to everyone in society the value of the committed, long-term loving relationship between two partners.

Two further points are worth noting, in this regard. First, if marriage really is a bulwark to child-rearing, then gay marriage matters because gay couples can – of course – have children. They can adopt or foster children, and lesbian couples with access to sperm donors can also have children. A bisexual person may have had a child in a previous relationship, but now be in a gay relationship. And so on. Prohibiting gay marriage in all such instances would amount to a society deliberately prohibiting a child from being reared under the aegis of the institution which (the conservative response believes) is fundamentally designed for that purpose. A secure and stable home life suitable for rearing children does not depend upon a heterosexual couple being in residence; the crucial thing is the security and stability itself.

The second point is that it is highly doubtful that the only reason the conservative values marriage is because of its consequences for children. Marriage is often held by conservatives to be the central glue that holds a society together, and this is because it forms a strong, stabilizing part of a larger web of social relations. Similar to but more potent than friendship, marriage cements, so far as possible, parts of the social fabric together. Furthermore, it encourages socially useful traits like prudence, investment, temperance, sacrifice, loyalty, trustworthiness and productivity. So too the institution plays a role in the understanding of other social relations: aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, brothers- and sisters-in-law, and so on. Married people are for the conservative not valuable simply as breeders. And if this is right, then the conservative reasons for valuing and promoting marriage apply with equal force to gays as much as heterosexuals.

Argument 3:  Including gays into the institution of marriage will weaken the sanctity of that institution.

Granting that the desire of gays to be married is good news for the institution of marriage (as concluded in Argument 1), it may yet be argued that allowing their inclusion could weaken the power and significance of that institution. The thought here is based on the view that many people view homosexuality as immoral, disquieting and/or disgusting. Now it may be in some sense unfortunate or even bigoted that many people think this way, but that judgement does not prevent it from being a fact that they do. And if many people do indeed hold those views, then their perception of the sanctity and specialness of marriage can only be undermined when it henceforth includes gays within its compass. Some of the meaning of marriage will have been eroded, and that is a concern for the conservative.

But which of marriage’s meanings are we upholding? Doubtless there is a tradition, or part of a tradition, that celebrates a man and a women specifically committing to each other; that is, it matters that it is a man and a woman.

But there is another tradition, or another part of the marriage tradition, that holds that what is special is the love itself, the commitment itself. It holds that these elements are what are being picked out as worthy parts of a life well-lived, and an important part of the social glue that holds us all together. Now if that is right, then the question of gay marriage asks us to choose which parts of the marriage tradition are important. Because if it is the lifelong love or commitment (or at least the noble and determined attempt at pursuing these) that is worthwhile and valuable, then we cannot pretend that they are not worthwhile and valuable wherever we may find them.

Here’s an analogy: It would be like a person at a football match needing to check the skin-colour of the player who took a specky to determine whether it really was a great mark, or not. Put aside the racism of such a person; that’s not the issue here. The issue is that the person doesn’t get footy. They don’t understand – they are blind to – the values internal to the sport. They are unable to apprehend the act according to the standards of the marking contest as set down by the sport’s tradition and practice: bravery, altitude, strength, skill, quality-of-opposition, stakes and so on. And if a sporting body did believe that race mattered when it came to such questions, it would be defying the internal values of the sporting tradition. In other words, a conservative about the sport – a ‘custodian of the game’ as Don Bradman aptly expressed it in the context of cricket – would have every reason to be horrified by such a distortion of the standards of excellence of the sport, by the infection of the tradition with standards imported from outside its practice.

So too, I submit, for marriage. For all those who value the institution’s eulogizing of steadfast love and commitment, through thick and thin, as the guiding star of its tradition, the demand that gays be excluded from marriage can only diminish their respect for the institution, and cut against the perceived grain of its tradition. For now they are being told they got it wrong, and despite everything in all their vows about love and sacrifice through thick and thin, marriage wasn’t really about such things after all. The exclusion from gays from marriage was consonant with the internal values of marriage only when society held a variety of views on homosexuality – in particular that it was a form of insanity, and rightly illegalized – that implied that gays couldn’t really love and commit in the ways sanctified by marriage. Without the support of these now widely debunked myths, the internal values of marriage apply to gay partnerships as much as they apply to heterosexual ones.

The fundamental point here is that traditions are always contested and often conflicting, and the conservative needs to be aware (as Roger Scruton himself makes clear) that for this reason it is impossible to uphold every tradition at once. The conservative stands here at a crossroads, needing to decide which tradition of marriage will be upheld. The one that is responsive to a long-standing felt immorality of, or distaste for, homosexuality? Or the one that unreservedly makes central lifelong love and steadfast commitment? I submit that, when conceived on these grounds, no conservative can opt for the former. The latter picks out exactly the values and virtues of marriage that are prized by the conservative; it foregrounds the qualities that make it contribute to the moral fabric and ongoing resilience of the community. To believe that a dislike of gays is sufficient to warrant their exclusion from the institution of marriage is not to take seriously the worth of marriage.

The same point, too, can be made with respect to religion. (Now I’m not religious myself, so I’m drawing here on Rev. Noel Preston’s illuminating thoughts on the issue here: http://www.journeyonline.com.au/showArticle.php?articleId=3368) There is an important part of the marriage tradition that values and celebrates a couple coming together with God, deciding to intertwine their lives together and with their Maker. Now if that decision and commitment is what is valuable (either in terms of a life-well-lived, or for the life of the community), then that is a reason to respect it wherever it is found. This is not to say that every religion needs to marry homosexuals; that is of course a question of religious doctrine. But the question here is the one confronting the conservative, weighing up what traditions to sustain in cases where they must choose.  As before, it is the noble and uplifting elements of marriage – love, commitment, holiness – that are on the side of the institution as it might be enlarged to include gays. And it is a quite different set of elements and traditions being invoked by those who would prohibit it. The traditions clash, and the conservative must choose which will triumph at the expense of the other.

But for the genuine conservative, there is no choice whatsoever here. A marriage tradition that downplays the values and virtues of lifelong love, companionship, stability and steadfast commitment as they rank in comparison to the gender of the participants is no marriage tradition at all. It splices from the tradition exactly the values and virtues that make it precious from a conservative standpoint.

                                                         *                      *                      *

The foregoing arguments combine to make a simple point. Conservatism – or, at least, conservatism as a political theory, with its focus on tradition, virtue, moral fabric and the survival of the society – is not the same thing as prudishness. The prude believes that what everyone else does sexually is the prude’s business. The prude wants to know what is being done by others, and wants to control what is being done by others. But there is no political theory of prudishness. No-one pretends that one person’s salacious desire for prying and intruding into other people’s sexuality constitutes any reason that society should cave in to that desire. So the prude presents their desires as if they were grounded conservative arguments. They are like the drunk who searches for his lost keys under the streetlamp, not because there is a good chance they are there, but because it is the only place he is likely to find them. The prude cannot pretend they have justice or liberty on their side; traditions of human rights don’t accept the law intruding into such private matters and lifestyles. Conservatism, however, does allow that such private acts can fall within the appropriate scope of law, and certainly of rightful public opinion and sanction. So the attempt is made by the prude to colonize the conservative stance. But to say that the conservative agrees that sexual and other ‘private’ matters are fair game for social concern is not the same as saying those matters must be constrained in whatever way the prude desires. For there are many traditions at work in any functioning society, not only prudish ones. And some of those traditions, such as the values internal to the institution of marriage – steadfast love and lifelong commitment – are not ones with which the conservative should wish to trifle.

Ultimately, the conservative throughout history has known that it is the internal enemies that are the most dangerous. If what I have argued here is right, conservatives must remember that their concerns and goals are not the same as those of the prude, and they must be ready, when necessary, to battle the enemy that seeks to infiltrate their ranks and speak in their name. This, I think, is the serious point behind the popular tweet by Morgan Freeman: ‘I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.’ In other words, the charge here, another version of Cohen’s shame-on-you, is: ‘You’re not a conservative and you should stop pretending you are. You are not animated by genuine fears for social values and traditions. You are a prude (or maybe you just have a taste for institutionalized meanness). You are just one more person who thinks society should be structured to conform to your every prejudice, with no serious thought whatsoever of what that might do or mean for our society and its institutions.’

One final point in closing. Sometimes the ‘argument’ given for gay marriage is just given as: ‘C’mon, its 2012! Why are we still arguing about this?’ On its face, this can seem mere assertion, and can present social change as being inevitable progress against the embarrassing bigotries of history. Such a position may seem to be something the conservative will rightly want to guard against. But it is worth remembering that traditions and practices are not museum pieces. Some cultural practices are journeys; they have their own internal momentum (consider the archetype of conservative social practice: the common law).  The blithe assertion that it is 2012 is, in its way, an appeal to our society’s traditions – some of them centuries old. It says that we are still continuing on the journey our ancestors set us upon; that they bequeathed to us unfinished business that we have been lax in attending to.

It’s 2012, and it’s high time we started taking the tradition of marriage seriously. It is too important to be left to the prudes.