‘I’m personally opposed, but. . .'

The following opinion piece was published as part of my Principalities & Powers column in the 22 September 2003 issue of Christian Courier:

In 1984 the then-governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, made a famous speech at the University of Notre Dame, one of the best known Catholic universities in the United States. As a Catholic Christian himself, Gov. Cuomo used the occasion to clarify the way his faith affected his conduct in public office, particularly with respect to the abortion issue. Recognizing that his church condemns abortion in no uncertain terms, he affirmed his church’s teaching, indicating that he and his wife would never themselves have considered ending a pregnancy prematurely. Yet as a public office-holder, he believed it improper to impose his personal moral beliefs on others. In this way he justified his own pro-choice position on the issue.

Since then many other Christians in public office have taken the same approach, which amounts to saying, “I’m personally opposed, but. . . .” This strategy is almost always applauded by the secular media, whose representatives are formed from their earliest days by the assumption that religion is a purely private matter, never to intrude upon ordinary political discourse. When someone enters the political arena claiming to favour a particular position, and if it is known that her religion plays a role in this, the secularist mindset invariably cries foul.

In a recent National Post opinion piece, Claire Hoy pointed out the incongruity of this response. After all, every political agenda entails the imposition of a particular policy on one’s fellow citizens who may disagree with it. Thus when Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives won the 1988 election, they quite naturally used the opportunity to impose free trade with the United States on this country, despite the fact that it was disliked by anti-free-traders. Yet even among the latter, few claimed that Mulroney was doing something intrinsically wrong or undemocratic.

However, it is only when a political leader’s motives are known to be overtly religious in origin that this “imposition” is suddenly deemed illegitimate. Yet Mary Ann Glendon argues that when people advance their moral viewpoints in the political arena, they are proposing, not imposing. This is simply what democracy is about: citizens propose their preferred policy alternatives and defend them in public debate, after which they are voted on and implemented. “It’s a very strange doctrine,” writes Glendon, “that would silence only religiously grounded moral viewpoints.” By contrast, justice requires that, if secularists of the various ideological persuasions are permitted to advance their own agendas, so also should be the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Christian Coalition, and similar groups.

In a way one can understand secularists attempting to exclude from political deliberation those viewpoints that would explicitly undermine their own hegemony. For the past three centuries the followers of the secular ideologies have looked upon traditional religions as deeply divisive, seeing themselves as better positioned to keep domestic peace than their Jewish, Christian and Muslim fellow citizens. Thus they have no difficulty privileging their own point of view above that of these others.

However, it is harder to see why so many Christians have acquiesced in their own marginalization in the public square. Why would Gov. Cuomo so easily accept the secularists’ terms by sidelining his own moral convictions concerning the protection of the unborn? The cynical answer is that the abortion issue was simply not all that close to his heart, and there may well be something to that. But, more to the point, he and many other Christians are part of a culture where the marginalization of one’s ultimate beliefs is understood to be the normal state of affairs. The time has come to break through this apparent normality and to open up the public square.