Ben’s moving account of his participation in last week’s SBS Insight program on marriage equality revealed the costs of public involvement in issues that matter personally. He felt himself judged, humiliated and seen as less than human by many who responded to him. It is impossible not to admire his extraordinary courage to persist in the face of such pain.
For me Ben’s experience also raised a larger question. Is it ever possible to have public discussion of questions that matter for human lives and society between people passionately committed to their opposed positions, without the participants judging those on the opposed side or feeling judged and humiliated by them?
My liberal instincts say that it should be possible. My experience argues that it is not possible, but that a proper hygiene in public conversation could reduce the judgment and hurt.
My experience has been mainly of Catholic conversations, sometimes between Catholics, and sometimes part of a broader conversation about society. Some of the questions debated have been about personal morality – divorce, for example, abortion, IVF, and homosexuality. Others have been about social morality – the Vietnam and Iraq war, for example, the nuclear deterrent and Australian treatment of asylum seekers.
These questions are all distinctive. But at different times each of them was passionately fought over. Some people on each side were judgmental of their opponents to the extent of denying their human dignity. Some people felt themselves judged and disrespected as human beings.
Certainly those who argued that the Vietnam War was morally unjustifiable were often accused of moral cowardice and of displaying contempt for soldiers who had died. Protagonists on each side of the debate attacked the character and motivation of their opponents. In religious communities in the United States, some members served as military chaplains, while others served time in prison for their opposition to the war. Judgment and hurt were constant and to my mind unavoidable realities.
Among those to whom the ethical dimension of Australian asylum seeker policy matters, too, judgment and hurt at being judged can be seen on both sides. Opponents of the policies find it difficult not to judge the common humanity, integrity and motives of the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader. In turn they find their own integrity and motives called into question.
If judging and being judged as less than human are so inevitably and unfortunately bound up with discussion of what is right and wrong for individuals and society, what is to be done?
The response of some is to let it all rip. Public discussion of questions important for society is necessarily robust, and if you want to participate in it you must be able to give and take wounds. Denigration of the character of your opponents is par for the course, and you give as good as you get.
In conversation about what matters this approach is counterproductive. The participants no longer test the truth of their own convictions against the arguments of others, but try to make their own position win. Ethical discussion becomes an exercise of power and not a shared search for wisdom.
Another approach is to give up on ethical conversation about how to live because of the judgment and the hurt that it involves and, for some, because of its inherent uselessness. We must accept that we shall have different views on what matters, and focus pragmatically on what we can agree on.
This is seductive, but it also has problems. Serious ethical questions about what matters always involve winners and losers. To leave the morality of a war aside and get on with fighting it, for example, is fine if you are a winner or an observer. But the dead, wounded, destitute and displaced deserve more than to be seen as the detritus of the best deal we could reach.
A better approach is to honour the large ethical questions about what matters, to recognise the likelihood of judgment and hurt, and to reflect seriously on how this can be avoided. This means first attending to those with whom you disagree first as people and not as objects of your argument.
In Catholic conversation this can be difficult. When challenged about church teaching there is a long tradition of first defending it in technical and alienating terms that ordinary listeners would naturally assume to imply condemnation and distaste. Any qualification that there was not intent to hurt will seem condescending and dishonest.
A better way is that shown by Pope Francis recently. When asked about homosexuality and he said, ‘If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, well who am I to judge them?’
Such a response starts by listening to your conversation partners, reaching for a language that is shared and leaving room for your own opinions to be changed. Of course this is not a magic bullet to stop judgment in its tracks. But it does make space for respectful conversation.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.