David QuinnA mature democracy should find space for people’s conscience rights says David Quinn
Following off-the-cuff remarks made by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at a meeting of The Iona Institute last week, the issue of a conscience clause for those who do not believe in same-sex marriage and do not wish to facilitate same-sex weddings has surfaced again.
Archbishop Martin did not expressly call for a conscience clause – that is not his style – but he did seem to give strongly backing to the notion of conscience rights.
Responding to a question, he wondered out loud why it was that religious solemnisers will not be forced to celebrate same-sex marriages but nothing similar exists for lay Christians.
He remarked: “what is this saying? It’s saying, yes, there is a conscientious question and we respect the conscience of priests.
But what about the lay Christian in the same difficulties – does he not have freedom of conscience? Is his conscience different to mine as a priest? I don’t believe so.”
Tiernan Brady of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network dismissed any possibility of a conscience clause out-of-hand. He said it would like giving opt-outs to white racists.
Anyone with a different view could be treated under law as the equivalent of a racist bigot”
Former Fianna Fáil Minister Pat Carey, who recently came out as gay, dismissed the idea on the grounds that we are now a “mature, pluralist democracy”. (Why don’t “mature” democracies make provision for people’s conscience rights?)
The emergence of conscience rights as an issue in the marriage referendum which will take place on May 22, happened in the same week that the case of Ashers Bakery went before the courts in Belfast.
A few months ago Ashers refused to bake a cake because their customer wanted it to bear a slogan in support of same-sex marriage.
The owners of Ashers are Christians and so they refused. Even though same-sex marriage does not even exist in the North, the Equality Commission took a civil case against them.
Ashers is being backed by the Christian Institute. The Christian Institute commissioned an opinion poll to coincide with the court hearing this week.
It found that only 27% of adults in the North think it is right for the Equality Commission to take Ashers to court, while 71% disagree.
And 77% believe the Commission should not be spending public funds pursuing Ashers through the courts.
Poll results
Respondents, who were from all faiths and none, were given various scenarios and asked whether they should be grounds for taking someone to court. The poll showed that:
• Over three quarters (79%) believe a Muslim printer should not be taken to Court for refusing to print cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
• Over eight in 10 (82%) believe an atheist web designer should not be forced by the Courts to design a website promoting the view that God made the world in six days.
• Almost three quarters (74%) believe a printing company run by Roman Catholics should not be forced by legal action to produce adverts calling for abortion to be legalised.
A legal opinion commissioned by the Christian Institute said that if the court finds against Asher then printers faced with the above scenarios would have to print off anything the customer wanted regardless of their own beliefs. In other words, conscience would count for little or nothing.
Supporters of same-sex marriage have insisted all along that allowing same-sex marriage will harm no-one and will simply allow two people who love each other to get married.
We now know that this is untrue.
If we permit same-sex marriage then anyone with a different view could be treated under law as the equivalent of a racist bigot.
In other words, the view of practically all of humanity to this day, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman (or more than one woman where polygamy is permitted), will be seen as so completely unreasonable that in certain circumstances it should be punishable under law by fines or even imprisonment.
Of course, opponents of a conscience clause will claim that until relatively recent times most of humanity believed in slavery. But there is the extreme comparison again. Is believing that marriage is by definition the union of a man and a woman really the same as believing in slavery?
Is believing children ought to be raised by their own mother and father (a belief that has always attached to the age-old view of marriage) really the same as believing in slavery?
End game
Comparisons like this in fact make very clear what the end game of many same-sex marriage supporters is; they want to make belief in man/woman marriage and in motherhood and fatherhood as unacceptable as racism.
This is why the debate over same-sex marriage is so incredibly high stakes.
Over time, as the view that believing in the ‘traditional’ family is equivalent to racism takes hold, the law will become more and more intolerant of those who continue to hold to it.
In many cases those people will be religious believers whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and so on.
They will increasingly be forced to keep their views on the family and marriage to themselves and they will be effectively barred from any business that has anything to do with weddings if they do not wish to facilitate same-sex marriages.
Over time, the pressure may even be applied to religious celebrants to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Archbishop Martin has a point when he asks why religious celebrants should have their conscience rights protected and not lay Christians.
The trouble is that eventually the State may conclude not that both should have their conscience rights protected, but that neither should.