Joyce McMillan: Support for intolerance is flagging

A freedom of choice must extend to those with alternative views as well as those with traditional beliefs , writes Joyce McMillan

WHEN it comes to marriage, they do things differently in France, and in many other parts of Europe too. In France, they realised as long ago as 1789 that marriage is primarily a legal contract, an agreement between two people to spend the rest of their lives together, and to become each other’s legal next-of-kin. So at a French wedding, the civil ceremony at the local town hall is necessary for every couple, to marry them in the eyes of the law; then, according to their own preference, they can proceed to the church, mosque, synagogue, meeting-house or temple for a religious marriage service, or head straight to the restaurant or pub, and begin the celebrations.

As we all know, though, that is not the British way. Here, we have traditionally licensed religious organisations to carry out legal marriages; civil marriage, in a register office, was not introduced in England until 1836, and in Scotland until 1855.

And more than 150 years on, that historic association of marriage with religion still lingers in the public mind, often discouraging unbelievers from marrying at all, and causing bellows of outrage from traditional religious leaders, whenever the state seeks to organise marriage law in ways that fail to reflect religious views.

Hence the ferocity of the row over the tentative proposals, in both England and Scotland, to allow religious groups – if they wish – to solemnise same-sex marriages; and hence this week’s thunderous intervention in the debate from the imams of the Glasgow Muslim community, who have decided to join Cardinal Keith O’Brien, and some other senior religious leaders, in asserting the right of the major faiths not only to define marriage according to their own lights, but to demand that the state itself supports that definition, and helps to enforce it.

Now there is no denying that this intervention from the leaders of Glasgow’s Muslim community presents Scotland’s SNP government with something of a political dilemma; the party has recently been making strong headway among Muslim voters in Glasgow, and the imams – like the leaders of the Catholic church, back in the days when parishioners were more likely to heed their views – are threatening a mass withdrawal of political support from any party which introduces legislation of which they disapprove. And Scotland’s party of government will no doubt respond – at least until after next month’s local elections – by adopting a stance of masterly equivocation, as it tends to do whenever confronted by powerful vested interests; five years on from its first election victory in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP leadership still retains its disturbing Blairite habit of talking the talk on 21st century social democracy, while clinging to the belief that it can somehow achieve it without upsetting any of its powerful supporters.

Yet in the end, there’s not much doubt about what the Scottish Government’s response should be, both in welcoming the robustness of the debate over gay marriage in Scotland, and in making its decision about the legislation. In an increasingly secular society, where traditional religious leaders are often given a role in moral debate that far exceeds their real influence over their communities, no self-respecting government can be seen to be using legislation to support definitions of marriage – or any other relationship – which so clearly confuse moral principle with patriarchal tradition. Morality requires equal treatment and respect for all in our society, whereas traditional patriarchy requires the ostracisation of homosexuals, and their exclusion from the institutions of the family. No modern government should have much difficulty in choosing between these two positions; and it should be made clear to the major faiths that the price of their own freedom to practise their beliefs, and to run their organisations accordingly, is their respect for the freedom of others, who may see things differently.

When it comes to the vigour of the debate, though, it seems to me that the SNP government – and everyone in Scotland – should relish the pleasure of living in a plural society where such a diversity of views exist, and can be expressed with such force. In a courtroom in Norway, as I write, the self-confessed killer of 77 people, Anders Breivik, is defending his actions by conjuring up a mythical world in which Norway is being overrun by Muslim fundamentalists, people who – in his view – understand nothing of the “European” values that Breivik, in his madness, seems to imagine he represents.

Yet here in Scotland, we are living with the reality of a debate in which the faultlines between tolerance on the one hand, and fundamentalist tradition on the other, clearly run not between different cultures and faiths, but within each faith, and through our whole society. In expressing their implacably negative views on gay marriage, the imams of Glasgow have in fact been less extreme in their language than Cardinal O’Brien; and whatever other differences they may have – probably not many – the religious leaders of Catholicism and Islam in Scotland will clearly be making common cause on this issue over the coming months.

And this is how it is in a genuinely multi-cultural society, where people come to learn – sometimes very fast – that humanity is indeed one family, and that every community has its happy families and gay uncles, its authoritarians and its liberals, its hate-filled bigots and its true believers – the ones who walk a path of love, compassion, humility and prayer, every day of their lives.

Pinning the idea of evil or intolerance onto some vaguely unfamiliar ethnic group has always been the last political refuge of the frightened, the dim-witted, and those twisted by hate.

And as we in Scotland plough our way through the gay marriage debate, and perhaps towards a different kind of future, we can at least congratulate ourselves on this: that we know that bigotry and intolerance, often around issues of faith, have been part of the story of this country for many a long century; and that in challenging it, we confront not some external enemy, but an ingrained part of ourselves – one which many of us now yearn to understand, acknowledge, and finally let go.