Michael Stevens: Simple-minded certitude of anti-gay groups frightening

COMMENT

Amanda McGrail, of the Maxim Institute, writes of the limits of tolerance, and, of course, tolerance does have its limits. She and her ilk often test mine.

She doesn't explicitly state where these limits lie in her case, but the bounds appear fairly narrowly proscribed. Maxim's website states it wants a "fair, just and compassionate society", but it seems to expend an inordinate amount of time attacking homosexuals in the media: hardly fair, just or compassionate.

Just why are we homosexuals so threatening to far right Christian groups such as Maxim? There is no philosophical or rational argument to treat homosexuals differently from any other humans, just as there is no rational or philosophical argument to treat people with different coloured skin or of a different biological sex differently.

We are all fully human, as capable of behaving well, badly or indifferently as each other. We all deserve to be treated as fairly, justly and compassionately as each other.

The main reason, then, falls back to religion, in Maxim's case an Americanised form of Christianity alien to our culture and to a particular interpretation of the Bible which is the foundation for all they believe and do, and in this reading homosexuals are all sinners, and disobeying God.

God has entrusted Maxim and its followers with the truth, and they want us all to know it. Such simple-minded certitude, misplaced as it is, is both admirable and frightening.

Society, as it has undergone the process of modernisation, has learned that much of what it used to believe when it depended on the sacred books for all its knowledge was, in fact, wrong.

The sun doesn't turn around the Earth, the world wasn't created in six days 4000 years ago. We know now that epilepsy is not caused by demonic possession, as there are no such things as demons. We no longer burn spinsters at the stake as witches, nor do we stone adulterers.

Since the Renaissance, there has been a vast explosion in our knowledge of the universe and how it works, and how we view our place in the world.

The philosopher Peter Singer developed the idea of the widening moral circle. In it he traces, among other things, how society, as its knowledge has increased, has come to accept more and more people within its definition of being morally worthwhile persons, with full rights in the body politic.

For example, it wasn't so long ago that women were treated by the law as children, unable to fully look after their own lives without male guardianship. The apartheid regime in South Africa was justified as fulfilling God's ordinance by the Dutch Reformed Church.

The widening moral circle has demanded that these idiotic, barbaric and inhumane oppressions cease.

This knowledge and the spirit of the Enlightenment are what they are really reacting against.

As science and knowledge have increased, and as society has seen fit to cast off the deadening shackles of superstition, so the authority of the church and those who lay claim to interpreting God's will have been challenged.

When so much of the teaching developed from the Bible and other similar pre-modern religious texts is shown to be in error, where can people such as Amanda McGrail turn?

Maxim expends an inordinate amount of time attacking homosexuals. The Civil Union Bill is but the latest attempt. I cannot see how anyone else's marriage can be lessened or changed by two men or two women choosing to commit themselves to each other, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, till death parts them.

Indeed, the number of gay men and women who want to have such recognition of their relationships made part of the law speaks of the often overlooked but real and deeply entrenched conservatism of many gay people.

For many, being gay has been a totally unexpected occurrence in their otherwise humdrum lives, and they have little if any truck with the more obvious aspects of gay life.

They simply want to settle quietly in the suburbs and get on with their lives. And they want the full legal rights that society extends to others.

New Zealand is not a Christian nation. We have no formal state religion. One of the things that makes nations such as this so attractive is the freedom to believe and live as one wishes.

But these beliefs are a private matter. The state has a role in ensuring that people are free to follow them, but it also has a duty to ensure that one group's particular religious standards are not imposed on other people, as Maxim tries to do.

What really upsets Amanda McGrail and Maxim is that recognising homosexuals as full moral persons with full rights is another blow against the authority of their interpretation of the Bible. They claim they want justice, fairness and compassion, but only on their terms, and they covertly seek to impose their religious beliefs on society.

Christianity is a personal choice, sexuality is not. In the interests of a fair, just and compassionate society I am happy for Amanda McGrail and others like her to practise their beliefs, because I believe in an open society. I can tolerate her and her odd beliefs.

But once they try to get their religious prejudices enshrined as law, I protest.

* Michael Stevens is an Auckland student. He is responding to the view of Amanda McGrail, of the Maxim Institute, that opponents of the Civil Union Bill should not be labelled intolerant.