Illiberal liberalism and political correctness - an unhappy combination.

Someone who was until recently a follower of mine on Twitter, and who was also among my Facebook friends, last week 'blocked' me on the former and 'unfriended' me on the latter.  This person is a trustee of the British Humanist Association and Vice-President of the Media Society.  He runs a PR company in London and is a former York city councillor and Labour parliamentary candidate.  His name is Paul Blanchard, and I name him for three reasons: firstly, he is very loquacious on social networking sites; secondly, naming him somehow 'earths' what I want to say; and thirdly, he gave me no opportunity to respond to his emotive barrage of insults before cutting me off.

What brought all this to a head - we'd had heated disagreements before in which there were times when he went beyond what most people would regard as common courtesy - was a post I put on Facebook following the election of the new pope.  Under the post, 'God bless Pope Francis', Blanchard wrote that the new pope had said that the adoption of children by homosexuals was 'a form of abuse' and said, sarcastically, that the Pope seemed like a 'nice guy'.  I had not heard what the then Cardinal Bergoglio had said, and I responded by saying something to the effect that I would prefer to see for myself what he had actually said on the matter; I added that I thought that the ideal was for children to be raised by a mother and a father.  This stimulated an interesting discussion, in which a couple of friends of mine disagreed with me, but in a perfectly reasonable and rational kind of way.  A good discussion followed, in which I was able to clarify my position.  I made no reference at any point to homosexual relationships or sexual activity within them - I restricted myself to the point with which I started; namely, that all other things being equal, a family unit with a mother and father, preferably married, provides the best and most stable environment for children to grow up.  This claim is, as is well known, backed by by clear evidence.

Some time later, Paul Blanchard decided to enter the discussion again; he called me 'homophobic' and accused me of being bound by the 'stupid' Bible (to which, incidentally, I had made no reference).  He had clearly assumed, without foundation, that I held the view that homosexual persons were not suitable people to bring up children, even though I was careful not to even imply such a thing; indeed, I acknowledged that there are excellent gay parents in precisely the same way that there are excellent single parents.  But I did re-emphasise that I believe that the norm, or ideal, is that children be brought up and nurtured by a mother and a father.  I believe that, since the relationship between a man and a woman is generative of life, gender and sexual complementarity cannot be assumed to be purely incidental to the nurture of children.  I might add that, regarding gender complementarity, I regret that women are still outnumbered in parliament and that, of all students training to be primary school teachers, only around one in ten is male.

I am quite happy for people to disagree with me and, indeed, I often post comments on Twitter and Facebook on order to try to stimulate or provoke a discussion.  But the exchange with Blanchard shows an alarming trend in contemporary society.  It's fair to say, I think, that we live in what could be termed a liberal environment in which personal freedoms are valued highly.  There has been a trend for decades now towards certain kinds of equality and non-discrimination towards people on the grounds of such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability.  This trend is to be welcomed, though I can't help but note the irony that whilst this has been going on, a reverse trend has been taking place within the economic arena, but that's another story, and for another day.

For all the progress that appears to have been made towards creating a non-discriminatory environment, it would seem that certain groups have become fair game for the most appalling ridicule.  The attitudes of people like Paul Blanchard bear this out very clearly.  For all their professed liberalism and regard for freedom, they are clearly very happy to ridicule religion.  They want to banish religion to the private sphere of individual lifestyle choices and, as a consequence, 'thin out' the fabric of public discourse.  The one thing that is not permitted in the liberal paradise is to say anything which appears to cut across the new orthodoxy.  So, when someone like myself tries to uphold traditional marriage and what many people still regard as an ideal for raising children, we are immediately denounced as homophobic, medieval, Bible-bound and so on - this is even when no mention at all has been made of gay sexuality, and when it has been conceded gladly that gay people can make good parents.  It seems that, in the brave new liberal utopia, anything goes except the view that perhaps not anything goes, or even falls short of an ideal.

Some of this unthinking condemnation of anyone who seeks to uphold what are often denounced as 'traditional' views is due to an increasingly suffocating political correctness.  This, along with a liberalism that, left unchecked, can easily mutate into a kind of tyranny, is a very unhappy coupling.  In the end, Paul Blanchard decided that he could not even bring himself to have anything more to do with me.  The free, open discussion which should be one of the principal characteristics of a truly liberal society is either banished altogether, or made to take place within a very narrow space which has been circumscribed in advance by those who trumpet their non-discriminatory credentials from the rooftops whilst at the same time bearing (most of) the hallmarks of a tyrant.  Any supposedly liberal society in which this is the case is severely impoverished, for the taboos which held people captive in the past have simply been replaced with new ones.

Paul Blanchard himself, as I made clear earlier, is no off-the-wall loose cannon.  He is prominent in organisations which make serious claims to respectability.  Imagine the way he and others express themselves outside the public arena and among  those who share their prejudices.