August 4, 2010
BS
There’s so much wrong with the Conservative’s “Big Society” nonsense it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s try anyway.
Firstly, the Big Society exists already, just not where the Conservatives want it to. Tory policy of slashing local public spending is in fact more likely to decimate than invigorate the real Big Society.
Secondly, the Tory vision of Big Society is based on bare ideological assertion. Voluntary groups are staffed by volunteers, who are by definition amateurs. Take away the centralised finances allowing these volunteers to organise and how will volunteer amateurs be able to provide anything, lacking as they will the finances required for service-provision? The fantasy that services provided by trained professionals can be replaced with spontaneous volunteer groups, and without significant falls in quality or reliability, reflects right-wing preferences for a smaller state, not serious policy-making.
Thirdly, the Big Society is pure political spin. It was originally deployed during the election campaign to distract from the pain the Tories were proposing to inflict upon Britain. Although tough talk on the deficit initially played well with the electorate, voters became skittish as voting-day arrived. The Big Society rhetoric allowed the Tories to move the debate onto something else, distracting attention from the scope and scale of their proposed cuts, and present themselves as more than just heartless cutters.
And it’s fulfilling exactly the same purpose now: comment and debate is dedicated to the vacuous “ideas” underlying the Big Society, and not what the Treasury is already getting up to. This process of spin and distraction is aided when organisations like Demos run polls finding that there is no support for the Big Society, but then issue high-profile press releases claiming the exact opposite.
Fourthly, underlying Big Society rhetoric is a common, but lazy and inadequate, conception about the virtues of “community” versus “the state”. This lazy and inadequate view begins by assuming that small communities are always loving and caring places, where people necessarily trust and help each other because of spontaneous bonds of common fellow feeling. By contrast when the big nasty state combines with large-scale society, people become “atomised” and fear their neighbours, refusing to help each other. “Community” disappears, allegedly making life much worse for all concerned.
There may actually be some truth in this: small communities arguably are less “atomised” than large ones, and people may lose something important accordingly. But the laziness and inadequacy kicks-in when it’s forgotten that there are also bad sides to small communities. Often such communities will be characterised by dominant individuals or groups imposing their views and demands upon others. Hence, for example, homosexuality has typically been better-received and tolerated by large “atomised” western societies than by the small, close-knit communities that we’ve allegedly lost with tragic repercussions.
What large societies characterised by active states can do is help free individuals from the “tyranny of the community”. Rights can be secured and enforced for women, gays, minority groups and others who would otherwise be at the mercy of the prejudices and powers of local dominators (who in the West have typically been older, white, heterosexual and male). So: withdraw the state and you might get better community bonds, and that may well lead to people helping each other out more. But what you might also get is the abandonment of the vulnerable to the capricious mercies of the more powerful.
Which makes the following especially worrying for anybody able to recognise that questions of society, community and the state are complex and unlikely to result in easy, straight-forward or convenient answers:
“A scheme to protect women from domestic abuse by removing violent partners from the family home is being scrapped by the Government as part of its drive to cut public spending.
Under the so-called “go orders” planned for England and Wales, senior police would have been given the power to act instantly to safeguard families they considered at threat.
Violent men would have been banned from their homes for up two weeks, giving their victims the chance to seek help to escape abuse.
But Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has decided to halt the scheme, which was due to be piloted this autumn and be rolled out nationwide next year”. (h/t)
2 women die every week in the UK as a result of domestic violence.1 in 4 British women suffer domestic violence at some point in their lives. But don’t worry, the voluntary sector – the loving local community which would have saved these women already if the state weren’t getting in the way – will no doubt spring into action to defend battered women.
Or then again, maybe not.
May 29, 2010
David Laws and Gay Equality
Upon the recommendation of Sunder Katwala, I’m blogging this small observation about the resignation of David Laws.
Sunder has a good analysis up here (and longer version here). He covers a lot of important points about the way we now view homosexuality in politics. But I feel he has missed the most striking – and significant – aspect of this entire debacle.
When it first emerged that David Laws was at the centre of a financial scandal, his response – apparently backed by both his party and their Conservative coalition partners – was to claim that he’d used £40,000 of taxpayer money to rent a room from his partner with the aim of hiding the fact that his partner was his partner. In other words, Laws appealed to his own desire for privacy – not wanting to be a publicly known gay figure – as a mitigating factor for his financial impropriety.
What’s striking – and pleasing – is the fundamental acceptance of this line of reasoning. Even though it wasn’t considered enough, and Laws has consequently had to resign, the point is that Laws’ hiding his homosexuality was indeed accepted as a mitigating factor and not a further revelation doubling the scandal.
It’s hard to imagine that this would have been the case even 15-20 years ago. The first openly gay MP – Labour’s Chris Smith – only came out in 1984, and Laws would have been the first openly gay Lib Dem if he’d come out before being elected in 2001. As Sunder notes, newspapers like The Sun until relatively recently ran stories about Britain being run by a “gay mafia”. Not so long ago national newspapers – and indeed, Governing parties – frequently implied that homosexuality equaled pedophilia.
Although this is a disaster for Laws’ personal career, and many gay rights advocates might feel dejected that in 2010 a top politician still feels the need to hide his sexuality, the big-picture story here is a positive one. As I noted when David Cameron stumbled through his Gay Times interview, these are in fact signs of progress.
Of course we’re not yet at the level of full gay equality. That would be a world in which sexuality is as irrelevant as having brown eyes. But when a national politician can plausibly claim that he committed financial impropriety to hide his sexuality, and this is viewed with a degree of sympathy rather than further disapprobation, things are getting better.
Having said that, you can’t be helping Boy George wield the axe and slashing public services after you’ve claimed £40,000 of taxpayer money against the rules.* On balance, Laws had to go. The interesting question now is what Cameron’s right-wing backbench loons make of all this – and whether they use it as a stick to beat the Coalition leaders and undermine this centerist LibCon arrangement.
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* Although the irony here is that Laws would have personally profitted if he had stuck to the rules.
April 5, 2010
How to think about…Gay Equality and Bed&Breakfasts
So I have a short weekend off and the Conservative Party kindly validates some recent blog posts. Firstly, that gay equality matters and that the broad media condemnation of homophobic slip-ups indicates that social attitudes are signficantly changing for the better. Second, that the Tories are in a terrible bind about dealing with the rapidly changed status quo on homosexuality. Witness Cameron’s dalliance in condemning Grayling. He’s stuck between the rock of the media and the hard place of the Conservative grass-roots, many of which were probably muttering that Grayling “got it right”.
Of course Grayling did not get it right. But from a few conversations I detect that some are apprehensive about exactly why. “After all” – an apparently sensible thought goes – “surely B&B owners running their own businesses have a right to turn away anybody they choose?” Indeed. Whilst we might think Mr Jenkins is a nasty bugger (and one with bad business sense) when he turns away Mr and Mrs Harris on the grounds that he doesn’t like their shoes, surely we wouldn’t want the state to legislate that B&B owners can never turn anybody away? After all it’s their business, right? So surely B&B owners must be able to reserve the right to refuse admission, or else their freedom to run their business in the way they want is impinged? Accordingly, why should they have to accept gays if they don’t want to? These are seductive thoughts – so as usual watch out for distractions.
The first red herring to be aware of is connected to Chris Grayling’s foolishness: that there is somehow an important difference between hotel owners and B&Bs, on the grounds that on is a “home” and the other a “business”. Peter has a good post up demolishing this. He also helpfully characterises the dividing-lines as properly understood: between those who say “you cannot refuse gay people under any circumstances”, and those who say “hell no, if it’s your business you can refuse whoever you want – it’s your (legal) right to be a homophobic bigot even if that makes you a morally bad person and the actualisation of your bigotry a morally bad act”. As Peter says, those are the only two coherent positions – a home/business distinction a-la-Grayling cannot be sustained.
Red herrings thrown over-board, let’s get back on target: why is it OK for the state to legislate against banning gays, when we want to say that businesses can retain a right to refuse admission more generally? Let’s start by considering B&B owners themselves.
A first thing to note is that homophobic B&B owners are certainly having their freedom restricted if the state says they can’t actualized their bigotry. Their freedom to be homophobic is, undoubtedly, constrained. To which I say: “and a jolly good thing too”. The freedom to be homophobic is not an important or valuable freedom – indeed, it’s the exact opposite. This is (to cut corners) because discrimination on the grounds of people’s sexuality is a moral evil and I want to see less of it in society, which will in turn become a better place. Homophobes have their liberty constrained? My liberal heart bleeds.
Secondly, the case is different with the hypothetical grumpy B&B owner who turns people away at random. Certainly that sort of behaviour is undesirable and not very nice. And I wouldn’t want to be at the mercy of such a host. But ultimately it’s a minor piece of unpleasantry. Compared to the evil of homophobia (the deep and lasting insult that homophobic behaviour inflicts, the inconvenience caused due to sheer unabashed intolerance, not to mention the potential fear and shame that may follow acts of homophobic discrimination), random refusal to accommodate is exceedingly trivial despite temporary inconvenience and irritation.
Now let’s look at the people on the receiving end. If you are the unfortunate victim of a grumpy B&B owner who turns you away because he doesn’t like your shoes (or whatever) that’s annoying. But it’s also likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. By contrast, if gay people can legitimately be turned away simply because they are gay this puts them at the mercy of homophobes (of which their remain many) and thus makes it much harder for gay people to plan holidays, or life more generally. It also means that they can neither anticipate nor expect the levels of respect, accommodating behaviour and routine acceptance that heterosexual couples take for granted. This puts homosexual couples in an unstable position regarding the ability to plan their choices and therefore their lives, and even worse puts them at the mercy of bigots who may happen to have control over resources (in the present case, places to sleep for the night). Generally it means gay people’s lives are made more unpredictable, less convenient and less empowered than those of heterosexuals. And that’s straightforwardly wrong, because the morally unimportant fact of a person’s sexuality should carry no such (unequal) consequences for their lives.
Which leads neatly to the question of state enforcement. It’s not obvious that a law against “turning people away because you happen to feel like it” would be unenforceable. Yet it’s equally not clear that the benefits (such as they might be) would outweight any likely costs; think of all the B&B owners forced into accepting rowdy destructive vandals if they couldn’t retain a general right to refuse addmission. Hence there’s not much point in such legislation. Whilst some unluckly people might randomly get turned away by grumpy B&B owners, the ability to refuse entry more generally has clear advantages to B&Bs that want to accept only people who respect other customers and the premises themselves.
By contrast there are multiple reasons to make it illegal to discriminate against homosexual couples. Firstly, enshrining and enforcing the legal right of gays to be treated equally will help mitigate or eliminate the inequalities arising from homophobic discrimination described above. Sure, the freedom of homophobic B&B owners is thereby constrained – but again that’s not something I take to be a moral loss, especially as there will be no adverse business effects upon B&B owners from not being able to turn away gays (as there would be if B&B owners had to accept anyone and everyone).
Secondly, by enforcing such legislation the state can play a huge role in re-shaping moral attitudes, which in turn promotes a more diverse and tolerant society where the unpleasant and morally objectionable consequences of sexuality inequality are vastly reduced.
This second point may strike some as scary and over-bearing. But it really shouldn’t. It’s largely due to government -led or -funded programmes, coupled with extensive anti-discrimination legislation, that over the past 30 years has resulted in the unequal treatment of women, gays and ethnic minorities becoming increasingly taboo, illegitimate and unacceptable. Even if problems remain and there are mountains left to climb, society has come a long way from the days of “No dogs, No blacks, “No Irish”, when women kept kitchen and poofs received electroshock “therapy”.
Government legislation has had incalculable benefits in this regard, because by making many kinds of discrimination illegal it has in turn made them increasingly illegitimate. And this really matters. It is not fear of the law that dictates most people’s actions, but the enormous power of popular morals and shared opinions. These condition people’s world-views and set the bounds of normality within which they determine what is and is not acceptable behaviour. If homophobia is perceived as popularly illegitimate then it will die away. Allow it to remain normal and hatred of gays will continue, with all the nasty consequences that follow.
A lingering worry will nonetheless be nagging some readers: “but shouldn’t the state be neutral and not take a moral stand? Or else are we not on the road to indoctrination and moral dictatorship?” To which I reply: “would it really be ‘morally neutral’ to allow homophobic bigots to be homophobic bigots, ensuring such activity remains legitimate in our society?”
Neutrality on such questions is a chimera. Whether the state acts or omits there are always moral impacts. To remain “neutral” is fictitious nonsense; it means doing nothing directly, but thereby giving free license to bigots. Better that the impact of the state be geared towards promoting diversity, toleration and the delegitimation of homophobic bigotry.
Yes, the state is moralising when it bans homophobic discrimination. But given the power of legislation to shape public morals, the state is always moralising even when it ostensibly does nothing. I say we embrace this truth and ensure that the state moralises in the right direction, rather than deluding ourselves that such choices can be avoided by hiding behind an imaginary fig-leaf called neutrality.
March 25, 2010
Cameron’s Gay Rights Gaffe
David Cameron did himself no favours stumbling his way through an interview with the Gay Times:
The Guardian covers the story well, predictably condemning Cameron. The Independent does so too, and The Mirror agrees. It’s hardly surprising that these left-leaning papers are putting the boot in. They’re generally disposed to attack the Conservatives, and leftist publications tend to be more supportive of gay rights.
But it’s also interesting that Sky News and ITN covered the story, which originally broke into the mainstream via Channel 4. These news channels are hardly known for their pioneering pro-gay rights agenda – but they’re all carrying the story. Perhaps more surprisingly, the right-wing Telegraph is carrying the story on its news pages with a fairly critical angle, whilst The Times news blog declared “Cameron loses plot in gay interview”.
What’s especially significant here is both that the story is being widely covered, and that Cameron is being widely criticised. Not just for his indecision, but also for the fact Tory MEPs are apparently supporting homophobic actions in the European Parliament. This – as well as Cameron’s inability to answer questions about gay rights in a satisfactory manner – is being criticised across the political spectrum. That Cameron felt the need, post-interview, to re-iterate a Tory “commitment” to gay equality indicates that this was a major slip-up.
What does this tell us? Most importantly, that being homophobic is no longer publicly acceptable in our society.
As recently as 2003 Cameron supported the viciously homophobic Tory-introduced “Section 28″, which banned teachers from “promoting” (which in practice meant even discussing) homosexuality in schools. Yet since becoming Tory leader he has back-tracked heavily on this, apologising for Section 28 last year.
A cynical view would be that Cameron simply wants the “gay vote” – and it’s true that he has been courting it. But this goes deeper than short-term electoral tactics. The way that Cameron is being chastised – and described as committing a “gaffe” – across the media spectrum indicates that it is now deemed illegitimate for public figures to be homophobic and to fail to profess a robust commitment to gay rights. Twenty, or even ten, years ago it’s not clear that failing to answer questions on gay rights to a relatively obscure gay publication would have been seen as a major failing on the part of a public figure. Today it is.
This is what progress looks like. Public opinion is crucial in politics. As I’ve noted before, governments ultimately rest on little else. Insofar as homophobia is deemed increasingly illegitimate, politicians and those in positions of institutional power will be forced to acknowledge the importance of gay rights. This will increasingly create an environment in which those rights have to be upheld and made meaningful by private and public actors.
Of course there remains a long way to go. Most of the trash dailies did not carry this story. Predictably I can find nothing in The Sun, Daily Mail or Daily Express. The explanation why is complex, but the likelihood is that such newspapers don’t believe their readership are interested in gay rights (and may even be homophobic) so these papers don’t feed their readers stories about gay issues. More cynically, such publications may not want to paint Cameron in a bad light on this issue because they have no desire to stigmatize homophobia. (For a comparison here, think of Nick Davies’ claims that the Daily Mail routinely spikes stories about black people because such reports are not deemed “middle England” material). But also, let’s remember that as right-wing publications these outlets are not inclined to criticise the Conservatives two months before an election.
However, this simply indicates that the de-legitimisation of homophobia – and the need for public figures to take gay rights seriously – is not a universal attitude in our society. Yet. But given the scrutiny and criticism Cameron is coming-in for across the broadcast media and the higher quality press, this is indicative of how far we as a society have come. Remember that only 43 years ago having gay sex was a criminal offence in England – and astonishingly was only decriminalised in 1980 and 1982 in Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.
In these troubled times, we must smile and remember that some things do get better.
