Exclusion

"AUSTRALIA is supposedly a secular nation, so why does religion still define our laws?"

This is how Rebecca Fitzgibbon opened her opinion piece in the Mercury on May 23rd, which was about the influence of religious opinion in the gay marriage debate.  The basic premise of her argument seems to be that Australian legislative policy is unduly and improperly influenced by religious ideas.  Ms Fitzgibbon raises a number of points specifically relating to gay marriage and equality (whatever she specifically means by that).  The purpose of this post is not to engage with those arguments, but rather to challenge the fundamental assumption underlying her article - that religion and religious people should have no role in the Australian polity.  In her words:

Religion remains influential over our rights, affecting political discourse and decision-making on issues such as marriage equality, voluntary euthanasia, same-sex surrogacy, access to abortion, refugee processing and the rights of sex workers.

We will not be a truly democratic society while this continues because the religious morals that dominate these debates do not represent the beliefs of one-third of Australians.

I've singled Ms Fitzgibbon's article out, as it is recent.  The assumptions she expresses about the role of religion in public discourse are in circulation elsewhere, and so warrant some attention.

Firstly, the argument goes that Australia is a secular democratic society, not a religious society.  A significant proportion of its population holds to no religion, or to a religion that is not Christianity.  It follows that the Australian population does not all hold to Christian morality or belief. Therefore it is wrong for Christian morality or beliefs to influence public debate.

I hope that putting the argument this simply makes plain the inherent fallacy.  The argument rests on the assumption that secularism is a neutral position - that it does not contain any value judgment or belief about God or the supernatural.  The assumption is that secularism is a position that can be adopted by everyone, as it is neutral.  Therefore, the only legitimate mode of argument in our democracy is one that ignores the questions of God's existence.  A person may believe in God's existence, and order her private life accordingly, but must not carry this over to the public sphere. To do so is to improperly affect public debate and discourse.

But that assumption is false.  Secularism is not a neutral position about God's existence; some space that all can occupy and meet in equally.  It contains a positive belief about God: either that he does not exist, or else that he is irrelevant to society and its public affairs.  Secularism therefore permits a person with a certain view about God (that he doesn't exist, or that he's irrelevant) to argue from his convictions, while requiring a person with another view about God (that he does exist and is in fact sovereign over society) to abandon his convictions in public discourse.  But why should this be?  Why should some people have to abandon their convictions in public discourse, while others do not?  This is not equality, nor is it democracy.

The second strand of the argument is connected: it says that a person without religion should not be bound by religiously motivated laws.  This argument is again misconceived.

Whether or not a person is bound by a law does not depend on the motivation of those promoting or passing the law - it depends on whether the law has been passed by the properly constituted authority (the Parliament) according to the proper processes.  That is what the rule of law in a democracy is all about.  Consider Australia's many illicit drug laws - they are supported by many (not all) people, and passed by most (not all) Members of Parliament.  No doubt the motivations of those supporting the laws vary - some from harm-minimisation considerations, others from a desire to stifle crime, others from a paternalistic viewpoint of protecting potential users, others from a moralistic view of restraining intoxication.  But whatever the motivation, the laws were passed by proper processes, and bind everyone in the country.

The situation with same-sex marriage is similar: a person may oppose a change to existing law on religious grounds, on aesthetic grounds, on sociological grounds or on anthropological grounds.  Whether the law is changed or not does not depend on motivations, but on argument, persuasion and, ultimately, numbers.  

So what can the assertion even mean, that a non-religious person shouldn't be bound by religiously motivated laws?  How would I work out what laws I'm bound by, and which ones I can safely ignore?  Does the atheist drug-smuggler have a right to a recount, based on the religious motivation or affiliation of those MPs who passed the anti-trafficking law?  Do we call each MP to ask why they voted for (or against) a piece of legislation?

In fact, our democratic institutions work best when the freedom is preserved to express our deepest convictions, and to express them persuasively and with passion.  Of course this requires that all parties in the democratic process have the respect for each other to listen to argument, and to respond to the argument that is actually made.  When this occurs, trust in the institutions themselves is strengthened, the people believe more firmly in the democratic process and are more likely to trust the outcomes of those processes (whether they like them or not).  

What is the alternative?  That opinion becomes muted to please those in authority or influence; or that some convictions or opinions are declared to be unutterable bigotry by some elite.  In such circumstances, trust in democracy and in the democratic institutions is eroded.  The outcome seems a foregone conclusion.  The elite will have their way.

Unfortunately, in many of the debates that Ms Fitzgibbon mentions, the rhetoric of rights and equality is used as a method of stifling the voices of those who argue from a position of faith in God.  


So what is to be done?  I think three things:

1. Be bold. Don't be afraid to voice your convictions.  Be self-critical, to make sure that they are sound: based on good evidence and sound reason.  But do be respectful of others when you speak!
2. Be humble.  Listen well to what others say.  Don't jump to conclusions - ask questions.  Ask questions to clarify what someone means.  Ask questions to test how far they're willing to go.  Ask questions to see whether their assumptions are valid or whether they're unsustainable.  Ask questions!
3. Teach.  Kids tend to be vulnerable to the sort of rhetoric (and sometimes vitriol) that is spread about in highly controversial debate.  We need to teach our kids how to calmly and rationally state and support a position, and how to cut through the tangle of personal attack, hidden assumptions, sloganeering and faulty logic that characterises much current public debate.