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A first-person account of manning the barricades against political correctness.
In 2006 I accepted an invitation to receive an honorary doctor of science
degree from Ryerson University in Toronto. When that was announced a powerful
storm of protest erupted from the activist gay community and their supporters
across Canada, demanding that, because of my views on same-sex marriage the
University withdraw its offer of the degree. That, in turn, generated an even
bigger media storm across Canada, in defence of freedom of speech.
One element of this "perfect storm" was many people expressing to me their deep concern about "what’s happening in our universities." One thing that is happening is a growth in moral relativism. This can lead to a loss, on the part of university students, of substantive values, certainly shared ones, or even ethical nihilism, in the sense that ethics becomes nothing more than personal preferences.
Postmodernism is now de rigueur in the humanities and social sciences. Postmodernists adopt a relativistic approach: there is no grounded truth; what is ethical is simply a matter of personal judgement and preference. Moral relativism means that values are all of equal worth and which take priority, when they conflict, is merely a matter of each person’s perception and preference. The result, paradoxically, is that "the equality of all values", itself, becomes the supreme value.
This stance ultimately leads, at least in theory, to extreme or intense tolerance as the "most equal" of equal values. But does that happen in practice?
That is where political correctness enters the picture. (I’m using this term as shorthand to cover a variety of identity-based social movements and the neo-liberal values that they espouse. I am not using it, as can sometimes happen, to describe people or their views or values derogatorily, which is not to say I agree with all of them.)
Political correctness excludes politically incorrect values from the "all values are equal" stable. It shuts down non-politically correct people’s freedom of speech. Anyone who challenges the politically correct stance is, thereby, labelled as intolerant, a bigot or hatemonger. The substance of arguments is not addressed; rather people labelled as politically incorrect are attacked as being intolerant and hateful simply for making those arguments.
Strategies for quelching debate
It is important to understand the strategy employed: speaking against abortion or same-sex marriage is not characterised as speech; rather, it is characterised as a sexist act or a discriminatory act against homosexuals, respectively, and, therefore, as, in itself, a breach of human rights or even a hate crime. Consequently, it is argued that protections of freedom of speech do not apply.
Another part of the same strategy is to reduce discourse to two possible positions. One must be either pro-choice on abortion and for respect for women and their rights, or pro-life and against respect for women and their rights. The possibility of being pro-women and their rights and pro-life is eliminated. The same approach is taken to same-sex marriage: One is against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and for same-sex marriage, or against same-sex marriage and for such discrimination. The option of being against such discrimination and against same-sex marriage, as I am, is eliminated. That is not accidental; it is central to the strategy that has been successful in Canada that resulted in having same-sex marriage legalised and maintaining the complete void with respect to having any law governing abortion.
In short, political correctness is being used as a form of fundamentalism, and fundamentalisms, especially "warring" fundamentalisms as manifested in the battles between religious fundamentalists and neo-atheist fundamentalists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, are a grave danger to democracy. They vastly widen the divides between us, creating an unbridgeable "us" and "them" when what we need is a "we".
Moral relativism and political correctness in practice
The issue that sparked the "Ryerson controversy", legalising same-sex marriage, is an example of what "pure" moral relativism and intense tolerance, as modified by political correctness, mean in practice.
While I abhor discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and agree that same-sex marriage could be a powerful message of the wrongs of that, I oppose same-sex marriage because of its impact on children’s rights. In choosing between adults and children, I believe we should give priority to children. I argue that children need and have a right to both a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents, unless the "best interests" of a particular child require otherwise, as in many adoptions. Marriage limited to the union of a man and a woman establishes that right; same-sex marriage eliminates that right for all children (which is why I oppose the redefinition of marriage), but support civil unions (which do not have that impact).
The Ryerson protestors sought to "deal" with me by labelling me. I was described as guilty of a hate crime; the new Ernst Zundel (who, like him, should be deported – they were grateful that I came from Australia and could be sent back there); a neo-Nazi; and a member of the Klu Klux Klan. My views had no place in the university, they claimed. This approach eliminated the need to deal with the substance of my arguments. It sent a very powerful warning to all those who might happen to share my views.
Was the Ryerson affair unique in our universities? I do not believe so. One current, very worrying example is the suppression of pro-life groups and pro-life speech on Canadian university campuses. Whatever our views on abortion, we should all be worried about such developments. Pro-choice students are trying to stop pro-life students from participating in the collective conversation on abortion that should take place. In fact, they don’t want any conversation, alleging that to question whether we should have any law on abortions is, in itself, unacceptable.
Some people are going even further: they want to force students to act against their conscience as a condition for graduating. The group "Medical Students for Choice" would like to make performing an abortion a "required procedure", that is, a student would have to competently perform an abortion in order to graduate. Delivering a baby at term is not a required procedure. I do not need to emphasise the dangers of this in universities, no matter how worthy one’s motives in promoting a certain stance. The most fundamental precept on which a university is founded is openness to ideas and knowledge from all sources.
The closing of the university mind
As well, over the last year or so, I have been dis-invited from three events. That has never happened before in my nearly 30 years of speaking engagements. And, probably uniquely, the withdrawals came from opposite ends of the values spectrum. One withdrawal was because my views were seen as not being pro-life and in another as not being pro-choice. Only a speech that would be preaching to the converted was seen as acceptable.
In the other case, a diplomatic explanation was given, but my hunch is that the university administrators, fund raisers, and public relations professionals involved were frightened of facing protests for having invited me. No one knows how many invitations are not issued because of fear of controversy. The cumulative effect is a silencing: And such silence is golden in more than a metaphorical sense -– potential donors are not offended.
Ryerson University received many calls from people saying they would never donate to the university again, if they conferred the honorary degree on me. A past Principal at McGill University received similar calls in relation to another controversial issue on which I spoke publicly, demanding that I be fired or they would never again donate.
Moreover, I was told that last semester law students at McGill had considered asking other students not to enrol in any of my classes as a means of public protest against my views on same-sex marriage, but changed their minds because that might have "made them look bad", especially as law students who should be defenders of rights such as free speech.
One of my classes was invaded by students, with TV cameras filming them, and had to be abandoned as they carried out a mock same-sex marriage. I’ve received very large amounts of hate mail, been the subject of an on-line protest petition and needed security precautions when speaking in public, all because I believe all children – including those who are gay as adults - need a mother and a father which opposite-sex marriage gives them and same-sex marriage takes away.
And, if that is how I’m treated, imagine how students, or even junior faculty, who hold views that are seen as not politically correct or, sometimes, just too conservative, feel. They are fearful of speaking out and feel intimidated.
What happened to shared values?
The further deep concern is that this conflict within our universities, and dealing with it by shutting down freedom of speech, might be a micro example of a much larger problem outside the universities. We might be at risk of annihilating some of our most important shared values and that creates a situation that threatens society itself. We can’t hold a society together in the long-term without shared values, that is, without a societal-cultural paradigm: the story about ourselves that supports our most important principles, values, attitudes and beliefs, one that we tell each other and all buy into in order to form the glue that holds us together. Tolerance alone, and especially unbalanced by other important values, is nowhere near enough to found that story.
To ensure our story does not disintegrate and continues to be enriched, we must engage in mutually respectful conversation. The public needs academics to speak freely – and respectfully, openly, honestly, and without threat of repercussions - about contentious but important societal problems. That requires respect for freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and academic freedom – the latter of which is meant primarily for the benefit of the public by allowing academics to feel they can speak the truth, as they see it, to power. The Ryerson events were in breach of all those freedoms.
Our universities should be models for the larger society of crossing the divides that separate us, not of widening them. In the broader context of our contemporary multicultural, pluralistic democracies, we must engage in mutually respectful conversation across those divides.
Margaret Somerville is founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University in Montreal. Her essay "Brave New Babies" will appear in MercatorNet later this month.
THANKS TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS TO THE DEBATE.
COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED.
Article 15 section 2 of the charter of rights and freedoms should be removed. It nullifies all other rights with a broad stroke of a brush that can be interpreted any way these self serving bureaucratic assholes want. If this were a contract (which it is between the people and the government) I would refuse to sign it. With a loophole that big they can do anything they want by separating people into these ill defined “groups”. Who defines these groups? Why are we being sorted into racial classificatios? I recall other governments sorting people out by race throughout history. They too used the victim rationale. The result was never good. When they came for the Jews I said nothing because I was not a Jew....
Amfortas said: “We need to be Intellectually Honest if we are to call upon others to defend our ‘right’ to utter, stutter, strut or otherwise ‘express’.”
Actually, no. While intellectual honesty is important, we have an absolute right to spout absolute nonsense. It comes with the free exchange of ideas. No one can ever be trusted to decide if another person’s ideas are worthy to be said.
One cannot disagree with the thrust of what David says - “all ideas are not equivalent but the right to express them is” - but we must take care in determining what is a worthy idea and what isn’t. Do we confer upon people the right to express ideas just so that we might express our own? Or do we apply the test of Intellectual Honesty to such expressions; their’s as well as our own?
We live in an age where even Voltaire’s ascribed words (he denied ever saying that he would defend to the death a right to express, as ridiculous) are used, ironically, as an excuse for expressing our prejudices, disguised as opinion, masquerading as ‘idea’.
Ideas flit through a mind, unbidden and incomplete. Most are not even our own. They ‘gel’ into conviction while we sleep. We let them slip out to roam free, barely looking back to see what they are getting up to.
While we have the right to express opinion, we do not have the right to form that opinion in any way we want. Without studying all aspects, follow and expand and conclude the ideas, consider all the arguments, all the relevant knowledge available, and judge their validities and strengths, we express a mere .... prejudice.
There is a moral issue. We need to be Intellectually Honest if we are to call upon others to defend our ‘right’ to utter, stutter, strut or otherwise ‘express’.
Margo, I’m the most liberal person I know but I have to confess that I don’t know what the Canadians are thinking. The free exchange of ideas is crucial to the survival of democracy. Ideas can’t be expressed without hurting someone’s feelings. So what. People who are strong in their beliefs, as I am, don’t fall apart because someone disagrees with them. Perhaps this is just a phase for Canada as the McCarthy years were for America. One can only hope.
Amfortas said…
“it is reasonable to think that many are fearful but I would also suppose that most are simply apathetic or inarticulate. The ‘silent majority’ get on with their lives trying to navigate as easiy a life as they can. Hanging onto a job and not rocking the boat is probably more prominent in their thinking.”
This is an important observation, especially in reference to the situation in Canada. But even the famously polite (to the point of timidity) Canadians seem to have had enough as indicated by the current reactions to the Human Rights Commissions abuses and the Morgentaler scandal. If only we could keep up the momentum, who knows? Maybe Canada could shake off the deadly Trudeau’s legacy and become a democratic country again.
David Page said…
“Every age has its political correctness. It isn’t restricted to just liberals. It must, of course, always be resisted regardless of political or religious bent. Teachers who hold liberal views on gay rights face constant attack in many American states.”
While the first statement is correct (in the 1930s, for example, it was politically correct to believe in euthanasia), the rest of the quote confuses principles with political correctness. The former will always clash but we cannot have a meaningful discourse without them, while political correctness forcibly excludes any discourse (like any other totalitarian ideology.)
David, I’m “against political correctness across the board” in the sense of using it as a tool to shut down freedom of speech and belief, instead of engaging in mutually respectful conversation. I object to PC-ness when it’s a form of fundamentalism - that is, a person sees only one side of an issue of which there is more than one side, and won’t tolerate the other side’s views being expressed. Fundamentalists see only one side and want to impose their views on everyone else. I object to all of them - which is not to say I disagree with all their beliefs, including as I’ve said some PC positions.
You use the example of teachers, however, and that raises further considerations. To what extent do teachers of children (as compared with of adults) have absolute rights to teach their particular beliefs? Teachers’ freedom of conscience and belief must be respected, so, for instance, they should not lose their job on such grounds, but what they may teach is a further issue that must wait for another discussion.
And I agree with Amfortas “that all ideas are not equivalent”; the belief that they are is at the base of a moral relativism approach to values - i.e. that all values are equal and just a matter of personal preference.
To return to my “fear theme” in my previous comment: I was astonished by how many people, including major media in Canada who disagree with me on same-sex marriage, described me as courageous (I’m not) over the Ryerson affair. But what their use of that word indicates is that they would have felt fearful of speaking out in a similar situation - we see courage where someone acts in a way we’d be fearful to adopt. So maybe the best response to PC-ness is to work on reducing fear of voicing disagreement (which I emphasize again, must always be done respectfully).
Amfortas, all ideas are not equivalent but the right to express them is. From Margo Somerville’s own testimony it would seem that she has been free to state her opinions. In conservative areas this is absolutely not so. As for backlash, the last forty years of American politics has been a backlash to the granting of long overdue civil rights for black people. And has everyone forgotten the political correctness of the House Un-American Activities Committee. When the FBI investigated someone in the ‘fifties they would ask neighbors if the person being investigated socialized with Negroes. This was proof, it seems, of lack of patriotism. Political correctness is nothing new. And it is the conservatives who are now playing the victim card.
Yes, Margo, it is reasonable to think that many are fearful but I would also suppose that most are simply apathetic or inarticulate. The ‘silent majority’ get on with their lives trying to navigate as easiy a life as they can. Hanging onto a job and not rocking the boat is probably more prominent in their thinking.
The average person has average courage and does not wish to confront. The answering phrase does not come easily or immediately and few consider that hindsight is also foresight for the next time some PC harridan slaps them down. Sometimes the PC is so absurd as to cause astonishment and the natural reaction is to be stunned momentarily. The ‘moment’ passes.
To David Page, I might point out that all ideas are not equivalent. PC inclined people calumnise the few opponents to their their views with epithets like ‘Backlash’. Even Adolph Hitler used the victim card.
Every age has its political correctness. It isn’t restricted to just liberals. It must, of course, always be resisted regardless of political or religious bent. Teachers who hold liberal views on gay rights face constant attack in many American states. The intent is to silence them. They are the politically incorrect ones in these areas. If you are against political correctness across the board then I am right there with you, but if you are only bothered by liberal political correctness then you are part of the problem.
Continuation of comment by margo somerville…
Another problem is that anyone who expresses ethical concerns about abortion is immediately labelled religious and pro-life in the political sense, another impact many politicians want to avoid. I had a reporter do this to me yesterday. When I said I believed abortion was always a very serious ethical issue and I would legally restrict it after 12 weeks gestation, she said “Oh you’re Pro-Life then”. I explained that I did not belong to any pro-life organization (I do not belong to any organizations or sign petitions or take on advocacy roles and so on, to remain as neutral an observer as I can). I asked her why she felt she had to label me and she responded quite aggressively and quickly terminated the interview.
Margo Somerville
PS: After responding to Amfortas and describing the support I have received for my views on the dangers of political correctness, it occurred to me to wonder whether those of us who do not believe it is a good development in society, have underestimated how many people would agree with that belief and have overestimated how many would disagree with it. If that is correct, in making those errors, we may have given political correctness and its proponents more power than it and they would otherwise have.
Political correctness has generated fear to disagree on the part of people who hold beliefs or values that are regarded as politically incorrect (and just to be clear, I agree with some politically correct beliefs, just not all of them). It is that fear which causes people to silence themselves, which means the politically correct belief prevails, even if it is a belief that is held by nowhere near a majority. In other words fear causes those who disagree with the PV view to self-impose silence. But PC-ness cannot be effective in doing that unless we allow it to be. It’s particularly concerning when politicians suffer from this fear and decide to be silent, as many of them are - or they endorse the PC view, even though it seems at odds with other values they profess to hold.
We can see this self-imposed silence in Canada: It’s politically incorrect to believe there should be some law on abortion and holding such a belief is equated to a failure to respect women. Pro-choice advocates claim, repeatedly, that a majority of Canadians agree with the situation of having no law at all governing abortion. Yet polls consistently show that 65 to 70 percent of Canadians think there should be some law, at the latest at viability. The reason for the discrepancy is probably politicians fear of raising issues like abortion, which means the majority’s voice has no forum.
continued......
In a nutshell, the problem with the new secular orthodoxy/piety known as political correctness is twofold: it is by nature sentimental (as opposed to rational), and it ignores objective reality. It also uses language in a manipulative fashion (the “newspeak”, of course) and constantly talks about “tolerance” while being intrinsically intolerant. Numerous historical parallels come to mind, especially among totalitarian ideologies.
For the record, in response to Amfortas, my own university, McGill University in Montreal, its highest administrative officers from the principal down,and all my colleagues without exception, in particular my gay colleagues, have been strongly and openly incredibly supportive of me, personally. They don’t necessarily agree with my views or arguments - and they also say that openly - but they adamantly stand behind my right to freedom of thought, speech, and opinion, and academic freedom. I have also been very surprised and touched by how many academics and other people with whom I disagree publicly about many issues have contacted me to say they totally agree with me about the dangers of “politically-correct-received-opinion” shutting down free speech in Canadian universities and Canada, in general. Some have concluded with a smile saying at last we’ve found something we can agree on and that they look forward to disagreeing with me in the future in many debates in the public square. It’s very reassuring to receive these responses and let’s hope they indicate that the situation might not be as dire as it sometimes appears to be.
Margo Somerville
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