Dou­glas Mendes

In a re­cent in­ter­view in New York, the Prime Min­is­ter jus­ti­fied her gov­ern­ment's in­ac­tion in the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of same sex sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty on the ba­sis that there was as yet no con­sen­sus among the pop­u­la­tion on the ques­tion of "de­crim­i­nal­is­ing gays."

In fact, there was "tremen­dous op­po­si­tion" and she sin­gled out the Ro­man Catholic Church for spe­cial men­tion in this re­gard. It is there­fore not an is­sue on which the gov­ern­ment could take the lead at this time, she said. Rather, it is one for the peo­ple to de­cide, pos­si­bly by way of a ref­er­en­dum.

There are a cou­ple things which struck me im­me­di­ate­ly up­on read­ing the re­port of the Prime Min­is­ter's in­ter­view. First of all, the state of be­ing gay is not crim­i­nal, even though, as the law now stands, a non-na­tion­al can be pre­vent­ed by the im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties from en­ter­ing the coun­try be­cause he is ho­mo­sex­u­al. It is law­ful to be gay, but it is un­law­ful to en­gage in the nat­ur­al ex­pres­sion of one's sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

Sec­ond­ly, the fact that the coun­try was ob­vi­ous­ly di­vid­ed on the runoff con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment did not pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from ram­ming the mea­sure through the House and the Sen­ate. Worse yet, the Prime Min­is­ter was harsh in her crit­i­cism of Sen­a­tor Roach for dar­ing to sug­gest that she should put the is­sue to the peo­ple to de­cide.

The third thing that came im­me­di­ate­ly to mind was the re­cent sto­ry of a gay, Amer­i­can cou­ple, two men in their 60s and 70s, who have been to­geth­er in a sta­ble re­la­tion­ship for more than 30 years. They were stal­warts of their Catholic com­mu­ni­ty in Lewis­ton, Mon­tana. They wor­shipped to­geth­er. They were mem­bers of the choir. One of them played the or­gan.

They were well re­spect­ed and warm­ly wel­comed by their fel­low parish­ioners, their gay­ness notwith­stand­ing. The mis­take they made was to take ad­van­tage of le­gal de­vel­op­ments in the Unit­ed States and to ex­press their love for and com­mit­ment to one an­oth­er by en­gag­ing in the civ­il equiv­a­lent of the sacra­ment of mat­ri­mo­ny.

Where­as up un­til then they were seen by the church hi­er­ar­chy as card car­ry­ing Catholic prac­ti­tion­ers, they were swift­ly os­tracised by the parish priest, if not the parish­ioners them­selves. It was made known to them that they were no longer wel­come in the choir or even to wor­ship where they had done open­ly as gay men for more than a decade be­fore that. Pope Fran­cis has sig­nalled a more tol­er­ant ap­proach to sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The parish priest did not seem to have got­ten that memo.

So I imag­ine that the Prime Min­is­ter is right in point­ing to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of, shall we say, unchris­t­ian op­po­si­tion to the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of same sex sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty. The larg­er point of con­cern is the fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of the na­ture of hu­man rights which the Prime Min­is­ter's re­marks re­veal.

One of the pri­ma­ry pur­pos­es of a Bill of Rights in any lib­er­al democ­ra­cy is to pro­tect the rights of those among us in the mi­nor­i­ty. Were we to leave the de­vel­op­ment of fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms to the will of the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons vot­ing in a ref­er­en­dum, we would con­demn our­selves to the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor.

The ma­jor­i­ty would use the tyran­ny of their vast num­bers to op­press any mi­nor­i­ty they hap­pened to dis­like. Ex­am­ples abound, and it is iron­i­cal that at the same time as she hid be­hind the shield of ma­jor­i­ty opin­ion to jus­ti­fy in­ac­tiv­i­ty on this front, the Prime Min­is­ter was quite vo­cal, and jus­ti­fi­ably so, in her op­po­si­tion to the bur­geon­ing Is­lam­ic State in Iraq and Syr­ia which would use its ma­jor­i­ty, and mil­i­tary might, to op­press mi­nor­i­ty re­li­gious groups.

The view I am ex­press­ing in this col­umn is no doubt a mi­nor­i­ty view. It may up­set and even dis­gust some read­ers. But, as much as it is a mi­nor­i­ty view, and may in­flame the pas­sions of my de­trac­tors, I am en­ti­tled to ex­press it and the con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects me. I am free to do as I like and say what I want, as long as I do not in­fringe the rights of oth­ers.

The sup­posed uni­ver­sal par­a­digm of het­ero­sex­u­al love which feeds in­tol­er­ance against gays does not ex­ist. It prob­a­bly nev­er ex­ist­ed. For eons, men have fall­en, nat­u­ral­ly, in love with oth­er men, as have women with mem­bers of their own sex. What con­sent­ing adults do in the pri­va­cy of their own homes to ex­press that love is none of my busi­ness.

And it is none of yours ei­ther, even if it might up­set and dis­gust you. Even if you think it an abom­i­na­tion. It is not so­ci­ety's busi­ness to use its ma­jor­i­ty to tram­ple up­on the free­dom of oth­ers. So­ci­eties can­not long sur­vive when we give free rein to in­tol­er­ance.

What­ev­er our re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal or so­cial back­grounds, we must open our minds to the pres­ence among us of a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of our broth­ers, sis­ters, cousins and friends who con­sid­er it just as nat­ur­al to love some­one of the same sex, as is the colour of their skin. We do not op­press peo­ple, law­ful­ly, be­cause of their race. We should not op­press peo­ple be­cause of who they choose to love.

We are on the wrong side of his­to­ry on the ques­tion of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. We need to re­dress the wrong we vis­it up­on our neigh­bours. It is the hu­man thing to do.