Cardinal Keith O’Brien
First published by Scottish Review, 06/11/2012.
It’s the five-letter word that can no longer be used in public, the personal insult that’s beyond the pale and shuts down public discourse quicker than any reference to National Socialism in a Twitter stream. Unusually, for the English language, it has absolutely nothing to do with bodily functions, sexual or excretive. Yet, as Nick Clegg discovered the hard way, even the suggestion that you might be thinking of describing opponents as “bigots” is enough to ensure you’re in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
So, little surprise that the self-described “lesbian, gay and bisexual charity” Stonewall has caused a stushie by awarding its 2012 Bigot of the Year Award to the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien. To be honest, though, he’s hardly an unexpected choice: several previous “winners” of this “award” — which recognises individuals who have “gone out of their way to harm, hurt or snub lesbian, gay and bisexual people” — have been churchmen, such as the current Bishop of Hereford, Anthony Priddis. (Other winners have included Daily Mail columnists Melanie Phillips and Jan Moir, Tory MP Chris Grayling and the Democratic Unionist Party’s Iris Robinson.)
Given that most award ceremonies are as much about promoting the organisers as any of the people on the stage, I’m guessing that calling the cardinal the most bigoted man in Britain has successfully raised the profile of Stonewall among the general public, especially north of the border. Yet I do wonder at the cost; the choice of the cardinal — by a judging panel including the Scottish crime writer Val McDermid — appears to have really touched a nerve, what with all those calls for Stonewall’s public (and indeed commercial) funding to be withdrawn.
Why is this, I wonder?
Firstly, I think this year’s award isn’t just an attack on a particular individual; it’s not even an attack on the Catholic Church in an increasingly sectarian-conscious Scotland, but – given the cardinal’s leading role in the campaign opposing equal marriage – a direct strike against the ‘Scotland for Marriage campaign’ and their desire to keep ‘the current definition of marriage’ intact.
There is a plenty at stake on this issue, especially for a Scottish nationalist government that, while clearly ‘minded’ to introduce equal marriage as part of its ‘progressive’ vision for Scotland, is also under political pressure to build support across the country in the run-up to the independence referendum. No wonder we were treated to that rare occurrence of Alex Salmond hurriedly agreeing with Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson (herself a Stonewall award winner this year) about the unsuitability of Stonewall using such ‘pejorative’ and ‘personal’ terminology.
Secondly, despite them having a footprint in Edinburgh (ironically enough, in a former Catholic Apostolic church), this strikes me as a clear example of a very London-centric Stonewall dismissively tossing a grenade into local Scottish politics with little or no regard for the consequences, especially for those who have been working on these issues for years.
At almost the same time as the Stonewall awards, Scotland’s own Equality Network won a Herald Society award for its much-praised equal marriage campaign. Now, no one would deny the Equality Network’s long determination to the equality cause, but it has conspicuously gone out of its way to forge relationships and partnerships with a wide range of individuals and organisations across Scotland (including numerous faith groups that are supportive of equal marriage), and has also made a real effort to positively engage in debates with those opponents who are willing to do so.
Thanks to this more grounded, more inclusive, more – dare I say it? – mature approach, I believe it’s no surprise that equal marriage is significantly closer to the statute books in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK. And yet, thanks to the blatant attention-stealing antics of Stonewall and its awards ceremony, there was little media coverage of the Equality Network’s much deserved recognition. That’s particularly annoying when you consider how relatively slow off the mark Stonewall was when it came to supporting equal marriage in 2010.
The SNP’s John Mason has called for both sides in the debate to use more balanced language, rather than attempting to ‘wind up…and upset the other side to get a reaction’ – although, as an opponent of same-sex marriage, it’s interesting that he didn’t say something similar after some of the cardinal’s comments. Of course, with such comments, Mason is unfairly reducing the whole issue to this latest fight between the cardinal on one side and an unreasonable Stonewall on the other. But is he right in suggesting the B-word is ‘unbalanced’ language?
According to that august institution the Oxford English Dictionary, bigotry is ‘intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself’. The US-based Merriam-Webster dictionary goes further, defining bigotry as either ‘the state of mind’ or ‘acts or beliefs characteristic of’ someone who is ‘obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance’.
Now, it’s clear from his comments to BBC Radio Scotland that Stonewall Scotland’s director Colin Macfarlane believes that the cardinal and this year’s other nominees fitted those dictionary definitions. ‘The people that were nominated for Bigot of the Year have this year called gay people Nazis, they have compared them to bestialitists and to paedophiles, and one of the nominees suggested that gay people should be put in front of a firing squad and shot dead,’ he said. ‘So I think what we are doing is highlighting the very cruel, very nasty, very pernicious language that is being used by some people.’
Yet does using more pernicious language to highlight pernicious language actually help the situation, or just help it spiral out of control? Regardless of the provocation, shouldn’t campaigners always opt to turn the other cheek? Interestingly, back in 1999, one of the main themes of Russell T Davies’ groundbreaking Channel 4 drama ‘Queer As Folk’ was that the only appropriate response to homophobia was to boldly say ‘Fuck Off’. Ironically enough, at the time, Stonewall’s then director Angela Mason appeared on Channel 4’s ‘Right to Reply’ to condemn the series as ‘damaging and pretty awful’, though that might have been because of the drama’s portrayal of underage sex in the week Westminster was about to vote on equalling the age of consent.
Friedrich Nietzsche warned us to be careful fighting monsters, lest we became monsters ourselves; is it even possible to describe someone as a bigot without, by definition, becoming a bigot yourself? Is that an inevitability we must work hard to avoid? Personally, I believe that anyone who says that same-sex marriage is a ‘grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right’ is ignorant, cruel and (above all) lacking in human empathy and imagination. But I’m also aware that, by saying what he has done in the past, the cardinal all too often succeeds in making me a bigot too. Which, to be honest, is why he angers me most of all.
