Gregory Campbell got a poor hearing at the West Belfast Talks Back debate last week. He was OK as long as he stuck to talking about politics – people disagreed with him but they listened before they disagreed. It was when he tried to express his views on a moral issue that people stopped listening.
The point under discussion was the matter of gay marriages and physical attacks on homosexuals. Gregory's line on the subject was clear. He was opposed to the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle and hence to gay marriage. He was equally opposed to physical attacks on homosexuals or any other minority group.
Well. The not-so-neutral chairman Noel Thompson made it clear that he rejected Gregory's views and seemed to suggest that opposition to homosexuality could encourage physical attacks on the gay community.
A young man in the audience declared that he was gay and told Gregory "I'm just the same as you". Around the hall, the general response was that Gregory's stand on homosexuality showed him to be prejudiced and perhaps homophobic.
So much for tolerance. Like the rest of us, Mr Campbell has a right to his views on homosexuality and to a respectful hearing on those views. If a Muslim had replaced Campbell on the panel and expressed the same views, would the audience have been as quick to condemn him? As for the slippery slope argument – that disapproval of homosexuality encourages violence against gays – one might as well argue that a nationalist view of Irish affairs encourages the killing of unionists.
Mind you, Gregory wasn't the only one under siege in recent days for expressing his views on this subject.
When the Pope declared gay unions to be morally evil, he came under heavy fire from a variety of sources, including Sinn Féin. The reasons given for saying the Pope should have kept his mouth shut? (i) The Catholic Church itself is drowning in a sea of sexual abuse charges; (ii) the Catholic Church should practise tolerance and inclusiveness towards everyone.
Five seconds of reflection reveal this as shaky reasoning. The fact that a large number of the Catholic clergy have been shown to be child abusers should surely be an incentive to the Pope, not a disincentive, to speak out against what he considers to be morally wrong. That's his job – that's what popes do. As for inclusiveness, Churches are by definition inclusive of those who share and practise a particular religious faith and exclusive of those who don't. That's their function.
Which brings us to the funny/ironic bit of the whole affair. There was a time when the Catholic clergy were condemned for interfering in Irish politics. Southern politicians lived in fear of a belt from a crozier. In the north a few decades back, a bishop's letter was read out in all churches, urging the faithful not to vote for a particular party.
Those days are gone. In their place we now have politicians pronouncing on matters of morality. Priests, bishops, cardinals and even the Pope receive regular chastising blows from media commentators and high-minded politicians. That the deliverer of the blow may no longer be a Catholic is seen as no barrier. In fact, a lapsed faith is often waved as a kind of qualifying credential for clergy-bashing.
Let's get a few things straight. Gregory Campbell is entitled to have any views he wishes on homosexuals or any other group. What he is not entitled to do is to act in a hostile way towards such people, whether that emerges as verbal abuse, physical abuse or discrimination. The Pope is in a rather different position from Mr Campbell. He heads up a Church, which by its nature concerns itself with matters of right and wrong, good and evil.
Sometimes his thinking coincides with a liberal view of the world, as in his denunciation of Bush's aggression against Iraq.
Sometimes it is at odds with the liberal view of the world, as in his denunciation of homosexuality as a way of life. We may not agree with all papal pronouncements; but to denounce them as a disgrace when in fact they're a duty makes little sense. The young gay who told Gregory that there was no difference between them was wrong. They are different – but equal.
And respect for difference is a cornerstone of republicanism. When Wolfe Tone called for Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter to take on the common name of Irishman, he wasn't asking them to abandon their religious or moral perspectives on life. Nor should we expect those two sincere men, Gregory Campbell and Karol Wojtyla, to abandon theirs, or pretend they don't have them.
