Amanda McGrail: Time we stopped giving each other unqualified labels

COMMENT

The debate over homosexuality has revealed a disturbing level of confusion about tolerance - the new golden rule. Uri Khein is the latest to confuse true tolerance with homophobia, an oft-used term which is shallow in meaning but rich in emotive sensation and intimidating force.

A phobia is an irrational or overwhelming fear. To apply the term to a disapproval of homosexuality is a deliberate abuse of language, yet subtle enough to manipulate thought.

We will hear a lot more about the virtue of tolerance with the introduction of the two civil union bills due to be tabled and voted on for the first time next week. Together these bills confer the legal status and privileges of marriage to same-sex couples, and are being promoted almost entirely on anti-discrimination grounds.

Consequently any opposition to these bills is already being labelled intolerant. This is not a new debating technique. Once people are conveniently put into boxes, complete with unqualified labels, the ideas can simply be ignored.

But the value of ideas doesn't depend on who promotes them. Ideas stand or fall on their own merit, and it is the ideas which must be addressed.

One such idea we must critically examine is how the meaning of "tolerance" has changed. Our freedom to think and speak independently is under threat.

True tolerance has limits. People don't tolerate everything and neither does the law. From children to politicians we approve, disapprove or remain neutral. How we respond to that judgment varies in intensity from active opposition (intolerance), to passive indifference or tacit approval (tolerance), and finally enthusiastic promotion (preference).

Intolerance is the response, not the stimulus. We have all encountered behaviour we didn't like, whether in the supermarket or on the road. And we display true tolerance every time we restrain ourselves from denting an idiot's car, or from giving some smart-mouthed teenager a piece of our mind.

It is how we behave or act on our opinions that renders us intolerant, not merely the opinion itself. There is a world of difference between acting hatefully and holding a contrary opinion. To say they are one and the same is misleading and probably dishonest.

If holding a different opinion is all it takes to qualify someone as intolerant, then we are heading towards the thought control of totalitarianism. New Zealand may be closer to this than we think. The Sentencing Act passed in 2002, introduced hate crime. Crimes against members of one group are deemed worthy of greater punishment if motivated by hate.

Homosexuals are one of these special groups. Why is crime against a homosexual worse than crime a person who doesn't belong to that group? Aren't all people equally valuable? Hate crime is a real threat to freedom: it is the state punishing thought, not just action.

Helen Clark understands this well. When asked in an interview with the Express newspaper how she intends to combat homophobia she replied: "We legislated against hate crimes." She went on to say that "through continuing to set the tone of tolerance, acceptance and diversity, you just have to further marginalise such people. Hopefully one day nobody will think that way."

Helen Clark is happy to be intolerant of those who disapprove of homosexuality, and she has no problem with using legislation to marginalise them. Like Archbishop Vercoe, she, too, has a vision of the future. Not a world without homosexuals, just a world without disapproval of homosexuality - a world without any reference to the absolute.

This is the other alarming new face of tolerance, the belief that it can be coerced by the Government and still be genuine. It can't. Tolerance must be voluntary to be meaningful - anything else is merely compliance with controlling orders.

British academic and author on political correctness, Dr Frank Ellis, notes the significance - that silence, in the face of intimidation which masquerades as the defender of tolerance, is deeply threatening to society.

A society is not truly free if people have to pretend they approve of something which they don't. Genuine tolerance is a wilful choice. The new tolerance doesn't mean graciously putting up with something you don't like. It even means more than approving of all sexual behaviour. It now means to approve of all sexual behaviour equally, to have no preference at all.

The Civil Union Bill and Omnibus Bill engineer equal treatment of sexual relationships. This is a world apart from individual equality before the law. Tolerating homosexual relationships is no longer enough. The Government now wants to say they are the same as marriage.

This is not tolerance. It is denial. Marriage is unique from every other relationship form. To recognise this distinction in law is not unjust. It is vitally important to the next generation.

The impending legislation will force a long-overdue debate about marriage, but let's be civil and reasonable in the process. We all need to have courage enough to say what we believe - and to handle what we don't want to hear. Let's leave the labels at home.

* Amanda McGrail is a communications assistant at the Maxim Institute.