Dan O’Brien
We can’t close down debate on sensitive issues
LAST week in the Irish Independent, issues around politicians’ partners were discussed and with that the sexuality of aspiring Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar arose.
Elsewhere and separately on the Independent.ie website, photos of Mr Varadkar’s male partner were also published. There followed some criticism of both publications for raising the issue of a politician’s sexual orientation.
The thinking behind this criticism was that whether a politician is gay or straight is irrelevant to the holding of high office and that it should therefore not be part of public discourse.
All of this raises important issues around the nature of public debate that require teasing out.
It is necessary to state at the outset that prejudices and stereotyping of any group in society are wrong and must be challenged. It should also be said that it is more important to challenge such thinking when it affects groups who currently face discrimination or have done so in the past, such as gay people.
For instance, the still acceptable use of the description “pale, stale and male” is much less serious than sexist language directed at women because white men beyond the first blush of youth have not tended to be victims of discrimination in the past, while discrimination against woman still exists and was institutionalised until relatively recently.
The damage a prejudice causes and has caused should be a factor in how strongly it needs to be challenged.
How voters make decisions about the political leaders they choose to support, why they do so, and how these issues are articulated in public discourse are important matters.
Take a relatively uncontroversial example. Some Dublin voters may be more inclined to support an aspiring party leader who is from the capital on the basis that he or she has a similar daily experience to their own, and therefore could have a greater understanding of the issues and problems that they face.
Such voters might take the view that a taoiseach from Dublin would be more likely and more capable of addressing those problems than one from a rural background, who may be less plugged in to urban issues.
Someone taking such a view could have anti-rural prejudices, but they may well not. It would be misguided to make a blanket statement that where a politician comes from is irrelevant to his or her outlook on public policy issues. It would be wrong to assume that anyone who believes otherwise is prejudiced.
How some people view the issue of sexual orientation is not dissimilar. For some voters, issues around childcare and education are very important. It is my personal view that having direct personal experience of all issues related to a ministerial portfolio is not essential in general, and, in particular, that sexual orientation is irrelevant. But some people may feel it is relevant.
It is possible for someone who does not have a homophobic bone in their body to come to the view that a politician who does not have children and probably won’t have children in the future may not have as good a feel for children-related issues as a politician who has kids.
It is probably fair to say that the most important factors for most people in judging politicians are ability, judgment, work rate, capacity to communicate and track record of delivery and achievement.
But the background, age, world view and personal life of those to whom voters give great power are not irrelevant, at least for some people. Someone’s sexual orientation is part of what they are and to demand that everyone be blind to it is unreasonable.
It could even be construed as regressive, putting homosexuality back in the closet rather than treating it as a normal part of a person’s background.
How such matters are discussed feeds into a bigger issue. It appears as if a divide is opening up in Western societies between socially liberal internationalists, who espouse individual freedoms and diversity, and socially conservative localists, who value tradition and collective cohesion.
Although I am very much in the former group, it seems to me that my side is growing increasingly intolerant of the latter and willing to dismiss them with terms such as “deplorables”.
This is to be seen in another great diversity issue of the day: immigration. I find Ireland to be a better and more interesting place now than it was 25 years ago when few non-Irish lived here.
But not everybody feels the same way and my cosmopolitan preferences do not make me a better person than those who are more at home in a more homogeneous society.
While some people who favour less diversity over more may have prejudices against those who are different, that is not always the case by any means.
There are many decent people who are more comfortable living among others who share more points of reference than among those who come from different countries and cultures and with whom communication can be less fluent and easy for different reasons, including language and cultural context. People who feel this way may be parochial, but parochialism is not a prejudice.
Such people should not be dismissed by those who share my views on the net benefits of diversity, not least because they can make a valid case for the downsides of diversity – the sociologist Robert Putnam has found that societies that go through periods of becoming more diverse also become less socially cohesive, at least in the early stages.
DISCRIMINATING against someone because they speak a different language, worship a different god, have different colour skin or for other reasons must be confronted and challenged at every level.
Listening to and engaging with the concerns of those who are not socially liberal internationalists is also important.
So is avoiding the knee-jerk temptation to attribute to them the worst possible motives for their views and concerns.
A failure to do so risks driving more people into the arms of reactionary parties and movements who are all too quick to exploit alienation and marginalisation.