Liaisons proscribed for a reason
THERE was particular stress on the word ‘‘consensual’’, as the presenter spoke, during the TV1 news programme, of Cabinet Minister Iain LeesGalloway being sacked for having a consensual sexual relationship with a staffer in his ministry, the tone suggesting some doubt about whether, given that the affair was consensual, it was fair to discipline him.
Some of those writing in newspapers about it, or interviewed on radio and TV, including National Party leader Judith Collins, expressed that opinion, saying a private sexual relationship didn’t justify sacking.
That’s delusional. The Prime Minister was clear about the reason for Mr LeesGalloway’s dismissal: she carefully pointed out that she wasn’t making a moral judgement on Mr LeesGalloway’s affair, but acting to enforce the professional standards required in his work.
His affair was unacceptable, not because of sexual immorality, but because of the power imbalance between a female employee and a cabinet minister boss. Such standards have, for millennia, been accepted in professions such as medicine, forbidding sexual relationships between a doctor and patient. Similar rules apply to clergy and those they pastor.
At least before the rise of the #MeToo movement, there’s been less automatic acceptance of such standards in bossemployee relationships (Mr LeesGalloway’s offence was particularly egregious because he was minister for workplace relations).
Most people, would accept that an incestuous sexual relationship between a parent and their child is wrong, and has rightly been proscribed (and not just for genetic reasons) throughout history in almost all societies.
Sexual relationships between doctor and patient, clergy and parishioner, and boss and employee, are similar in principle to incest between child and parent, in that the imbalance of power intrinsic to such relationships makes truly free consent, even in a socalled ‘‘consensual’’ relationship, impossible.
Sceptics may, rightly, point out that the workplace is one of the significant places where people meet and romance flourishes, that doctors in remote areas may have difficulty finding a partner outside their patient list, and that clergy may have a similar problem
For doctors, the rule is absolute — the patient must find another doctor before the relationship can become sexual (for some therapeutic relationships a sexual relationship, even if the patient is no longer under that doctor’s care, is forbidden for life).
Civis may be regarded by some as oldfashioned, but makes no apology for regarding sexual intercourse not as mere recreation (now that’s a loaded word with respect to sex) but, ideally, as the mutually giving, joyful, physical expression of a committed, long term, loving relationship. And if those in a situation where there is a power imbalance feel attracted, and wish to take their relationship further, there is a traditional (and moral) solution — courtship and marriage prior to any sexual relationship.
For example, Civis is descended from a clergyman who fell in love with his future wife when she was a 16yearold parishioner in the Lancashire parish where he first worked as an assistant curate. Grandmother came to breakfast on her 21st birthday wearing an engagement ring, and told her parents she was going to New Zealand to marry him (he’d returned there nearly two years earlier).
MPs are often separated from their families, and many develop a sense of entitlement — no surprise that Parliament is renowned for undermining marriages and other longterm relationships.
An affair, while wrong, and probably destructive of longterm relationships and family, isn’t of itself a sacking offence.
But an affair such as Mr LeesGalloway’s, involving an employee in his ministry, is, and he (and Ms Collins) should have known it was unacceptable.
Sadly, it seems that if, as the Francis review recommended, a Code of Conduct for MPs is adopted, it will have to spell that out in onesyllable words.
What a performance by Michael Hurst in Tom Scott’s The Daytime Atheist on Tuesday night. Despite cramped conditions and dodgy sightlines, the audience was absorbed by the funny, lyrical, brutal, tragic, hopefully cathartic, monologue. Superb.