Christian Versus Gay Rights Row: What’s Ultimately At Stake is the Credibility Of the Church’s Teaching

In the previous two blogs, I’ve explored some of the underlying reasons why the Church – the Catholic Church in particular – has taken the stance it has over the sexual orientation regulations in the soon-to-be-passed Equality Bill. The Catholic Church has claimed that one of the consequences of the bill would be that it would be forced to close down its adoption agencies, as these agencies would otherwise be obliged to seek to place children for adoption by gay couples, which would go against its teaching on marriage and the family.

Up to now, I’ve actually failed to see why it was said that those agencies’ current practice of placing children only with (straight) married couples or, in exceptional circumstances, with single persons would be construed as discriminatory towards gay persons on grounds of sexual orientation. This is because it’s not a case of rejecting gay people because they’re gay but because they aren’t married; and that the Church’s view is a) that it is in the best interests of the children that they should be brought up by a father and a mother who are married to one another, and that b) sexually active gay relationships are morally wrong and therefore children shouldn’t be brought up in such a context. So it isn’t on grounds of sexual orientation that gay people are being rejected but on grounds of the suitability of their lifestyle and home life.

For this reason, I came to the conclusion that the Church’s public position was to some extent tactical. In the first of the previous two blogs, I described it as a tactic to pre-empt the consequences of gay marriage being made legal. An exemption to the sexual orientation regulations obtained now would later enable Catholic adoption agencies to continue to select straight married adoptive parents rather than gay married ones without this being viewed in law as discrimination. In the second blog, I considered the perspective that the Church wished to establish its right to continue to preach that gay sex is wrong and that on occasions (e.g. in the case of adoption) this justifies preferential treatment being given to straight people over gay people. The moral condemnation of homosexuality these rights rest upon nonetheless risks appearing both unjust (potentially violating even the Church’s own teachings about homosexuality), and discriminatory in both the ordinary sense of the word and as defined by the new regulations.

All the same, it seemed to me that the Church would have a very strong legal defence if ever a complaint about alleged discrimination towards a gay couple seeking to adopt a child were brought to court. Firstly, the Church could argue that they were not discriminating between straight and gay people as such, but between married and unmarried couples. Even if gay marriage were introduced, the Church could still seek to uphold this distinction on the basis of its understanding of marriage and its belief that gay marriage is invalid. Secondly, the Church could maintain that it was not discriminating against gay couples on grounds of sexual orientation but on the basis of a couple’s behaviour and relationship situation, i.e. that they were sexually active in a way considered immoral by the Church.

Having now had an opportunity to look at the regulations – at least, as they have already gone into law in Northern Ireland – it seems to me that the Church would in fact find it difficult to make out a defence based on a distinction between discriminating against unmarried persons and against gay persons. (See clause 3 (b) (i), which could be applied to the use of marriage to disqualify gay people from accessing a service: unfair because marriage isn’t open to them.)

What of the distinction between denying the provision of a service to someone because they are gay (‘on grounds of sexual orientation’, as the Bill puts it: discrimination under the terms of the law) and denying it because of their gay sexual activity. There is a logical, ethical distinction to be made between these two things, and the Church’s teaching makes this distinction. In essence, that teaching could be stated as follows: one cannot condemn someone for being gay (i.e. having an inherent predisposition or tendency to act in a particular way), which is not dependent on a personal choice. But one can condemn someone for committing acts of immorality under an impulsion proceeding from that predisposition, which is dependent on choice.

If the Church is confident about the validity of this distinction, and the support it could give to a defence against accusations of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, why does it appear so reluctant to put the distinction to the test in a legal case that might arise from the new law? Rather, it seems willing to just fold over and let its adoption agencies close.

It seems to me that there are two reasons why this could be. First, any such scrutiny might reveal that in practice the Church’s own treatment of homosexuals often appears to be based more on repudiation of their sexual orientation as such than of their behaviour and lifestyles. For instance, the Church appears unwilling to consider any gay person as a potential adoptive parent. This could include even a single gay person dedicated to a celibate life. This stance could easily be adjudged to be discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation as opposed to sexual lifestyle. This perhaps reflects a toughening of the Church’s position on homosexuality in general under the present Pope. An example of this is that it has become more likely to be an impediment to any aspirations to becoming a priest if you openly admitted you were gay, even if you were completely committed to a celibate life.

Second, and more fundamentally, if the Church is often in practice not capable of applying the distinction between sexual orientation and sexual lifestyle even in its dealings with its own members, this makes it more difficult to uphold the validity of that distinction in doctrine. Whereas it is possible to elucidate that distinction in great detail and clarity in theological exposition, it is more difficult to validate it in the more ordinary parlance required to explain it in a secular courtroom. At a human, emotional level, it is rather hard to relate to the idea that someone can be condemned for their sexual desires and actions but not for that aspect of their personality and nature (their sexual orientation) of which those desires and actions are an expression. If the Church suddenly found itself in the dock of a criminal court, would the cold, rational explanations of theology suddenly appear as just that: inhuman, unfeeling and lacking in empathy towards real flesh and blood human beings?

The Church appears to have decided not to risk such a situation and the possibility that it could undermine the credibility of both its moral teaching and human compassion with regard to homosexuality. But if this is the case, it is a great shame. Because, ultimately, the Church’s teaching does not rest upon cold logic but on the calling to a love that is greater, more joyful and more human even than that which can be experienced through any form of sexual expression – gay or straight.

Discrimination In Moral Judgements: Further On the Gay Rights Versus Christian Morality Issue

There is a more challenging interpretation than the one I put forward in yesterday’s blog for Christian calls for the right of churches, Christian organisations and individual believers to deny the provision of particular kinds of ‘service’ to gay individuals or couples – based on a moral judgement about their lifestyle – to be given legal protection in the Equality Bill due to be passed into UK law in April of this year. This is that the churches are concerned to ensure that they can still legally refer to active gay sexuality as being morally wrong in itself, and that this judgement can then provide sufficient justification in legal terms for services such as the provision of a double bed in a guesthouse or the processing of applications to become adoptive parents to be denied to gay couples. In other words, it might in fact be that the need to justify such a denial of service to gay couples on the basis that they are gay – rather than, merely, that they are not married – is an intrinsic requirement on the part of the churches, rather than just a tactic to ensure that services of this sort could still be denied to gay couples if gay marriage were introduced.

In short, the churches wish to protect their right to express and act upon a belief that there is something specially and uniquely immoral about gay sexual acts on top of the fact that they are a form of unmarried sex: that gay sex is more immoral than extra-marital straight sex. This would in part account for the fact that, in the examples of dilemmas of conscience that might arise under the new legislation, only the denial of a hotel room or adoption services to gay couples was emphasised, not the fact that on principle the same services ought to be withheld (and, in the case of Catholic adoption agencies, are withheld) from unmarried straight couples.

The Bill is about equality, and the judgement that gay sex is a graver sin than unmarried straight sex could be interpreted as an example of inequality: of unfair discrimination in moral judgements. The churches are essentially demanding the right to continue to condemn gay sex in stronger terms than unmarried straight sex but do not consider this to be a case of inequality but of truth. In other words, they are resisting a possible effect of the Bill: not just that sexually active gay persons have equal legal rights to straight persons, but that gay sex itself is more or less explicitly and officially acknowledged as morally equivalent to straight sex / marriage, i.e. no better and certainly no worse than straight sexual relationships – equal.

The churches should be more upfront about these implicit assumptions underlying their position. Are they in fact taking the view that gay sex is more immoral than straight sex in almost all its forms, apart from adultery and child abuse, for instance? There is little doubt that the Catholic Church’s official doctrine is that gay sex is a more serious deviation than extra-marital straight sex from what it considers to be the only legitimate form of sexual expression: unprotected genital sex within (straight) marriage. The Church of England’s position is more ambiguous, both doctrinally and in practice owing to the large number of more or less openly active gay clerics in its ranks.

This latter fact suggests a possible test that could be implemented in law to assess whether the refusal to provide a particular service to a gay couple was made on the basis of a genuine conviction that it would be morally wrong to do so, and therefore could merit the award of an exemption. The sincerity of the organisation’s moral stance could be measured by the degree of consistency with which it applied the same criteria to its own ‘personnel-selection’ procedures. In the case of the Catholic Church, it would be evident that being a sexually active gay man would pretty much disqualify you from applying to become a priest, unless of course you succeeded in keeping that part of your life under cover. Therefore, the unwillingness of Catholic adoption agencies to process applications from gay couples could be deemed to be a genuine expression of the Church’s moral convictions, applied to itself as much as to others. Whereas, in the case of the Church of England, it could be argued that it would be inconsistent for an agency to make out a case that their refusal of service was genuinely based on the Church’s teachings if in fact those teachings were not upheld systematically within the organisation of the Church to which that agency was affiliated.

If this is indeed the basis for the churches’ concerns about the Bill, then they should have the courage and honesty to admit and articulate it openly, i.e. that they believe gay sex to be morally wrong and that this conviction on occasions requires straight and gay people to be treated differently: discrimination on the grounds not of sexuality but of morality.

But there is clearly a danger for the churches in being more open about this. Firstly, they run the risk of alienating what is perhaps now the majority in our society that does not share the view that gay sex is any more immoral than straight sex. And this would also involve alienating many in the churches’ own ranks – gay or straight – who are more accepting of homosexuality.

The more serious risk is that this moral position would appear to be discriminatory in the other sense: that the doctrine could be seen as being intrinsically unfair, and could also be seen as being applied inconsistently in a manner that reveals homophobic prejudice. For example, it could legitimately be asked why the Church believes any kind of sexually active gay relationship is always worse than straight sexual practices. For instance, isn’t a loving, committed gay partnership (one that could provide a secure family for an adopted child, in some cases) morally better than a loveless, promiscuous straight sexual lifestyle? The Church had better have some logically (and organisationally) consistent and compassionate answers to such questions if their position is to have any credibility.

Furthermore, it would need to be made clear that the churches’ teachings are that it’s the behaviour and lifestyle of gay individuals and couples (active sexuality) that it rejects on moral terms (leading to the denial of adoption services, for instance) not the fact of those individuals being gay. This is both because that is what the official doctrine states but also because this differentiates actions taken on the basis of that conviction from discrimination. Discrimination involves denying rights to a person based on some aspect of their identity, i.e. in this case, because they are gay. Refusing to accept someone as a candidate to become an adoptive parent cannot therefore be for this reason, which is discriminatory in fact not just in law under the proposed new legislation. Therefore, the denial of service can only be because of a person’s or couple’s behaviour and relationship situation (that they’re sexually active), not because they are gay. Those church organisations or individual believers who do take a moral stand and risk prosecution under the new law had better be sure that their actions are motivated by rejection of the sin not of the sinner: based on moral condemnation of gay sex and not prejudice towards gay persons in themselves.

Is It Discrimination To Reject Gay Couples As Adopting Parents?

I’ve felt I’ve been missing something in the row that’s erupted over Catholic, and today Anglican, protests over the supposed fact that the Equality Bill – due to be passed into UK law in April of this year – would require Christian adoption agencies to accept gay couples as potential candidates to adopt a child. I’ve been unable to understand why this was thought to be the case, assuming that a sensible compromise would in practice be implemented, whereby local authorities would just not refer gay couples to Catholic agencies that they worked with in order to pre-empt any conflict of conscience from arising.

If a gay couple for some reason decided to approach a Catholic agency of their own volition, then the agency – after the law has come into effect just as before – is under no obligation to take anyone on if they don’t think they are suitable parents. If the reason that is given for a couple’s unsuitability is that they’re gay, then this would potentially come into conflict with the new law, as far as I can see. But why can’t the reason be given that it’s because the couple are unmarried, and that the Church believes it’s in the best interest for children to be brought up by parents in a stable marriage, an institution which in its view is limited to unions between a man and a woman?

I checked the website of the Catholic Church in this country, which prominently displays the open letter addressed two days ago by the leader of the Church in the UK – Cardinal Cormack Murphy O’Connor – to the government. It appears that it is indeed the policy of the Church that its agency accepts only married couples or, in limited cases, single individuals as potential adopters: single people are sometimes preferred, for instance, if children have been victims of abuse by parents of a particular gender.

So why is there a problem about stating that couples are not being rejected for adoption because they’re gay (which would be discriminatory under the terms of the law) but because they’re unmarried? That would be no more nor less discriminatory than under the prevailing legislation, and a strong argument could be made that the policy reflected the Church’s view about what was in the child’s best interests. And it’s these interests that should ultimately be paramount, something which is often lost from view in all the arguments centring on adopters’ rights.

Part of the problem appears to be political. Adoption is being used as another ‘test case’ for the bill in the same way that the right for hoteliers and B&B owners to turn away gay couples was advanced two weeks ago as an illustration of how the new law supposedly violates Christians’ freedom of conscience. In both cases, the examples in practice appear not to add up: Christian adoption agencies wouldn’t be obliged to take on gay couples because they could say they consider only married couples; Christian guest-house owners – before and after the new law is passed – wouldn’t be obliged to accept anybody they might consider unsuitable if it’s their property they’re denying access to – and on grounds of consistency, they ought to turn away unmarried straight couples for the same moral reasons. So these arguments are being brought forward as emotive, rhetorical illustrations of a conflict of conscience that in practice should hardly arise, in order to apply pressure for exemptions to be granted or modifications to be made to the bill.

However, on further examination, there does seem to be a more fundamental issue. As stated above, the Church on occasions accepts single people as adoptive parents. Gay individuals – whether in a relationship or not – are by definition single, according to the Church, which regards the idea of gay marriage as invalid. Therefore, it is conceivable that a gay person who approached a Catholic adoption agency on an individual basis – but who happened to also be in a stable relationship – could claim that (s)he was being discriminated against on the grounds of sexual orientation if (s)he was not taken on by the agency. By referring to gay couples rather than gay individuals in the letter, the Cardinal is distracting attention from this issue. But it’s ambiguous situations such as this that make it necessary for Christian agencies to be granted an exemption because then they are allowed in law to make sexuality an explicit reason for rejecting an application to become an adoptive parent.

So much for gay individuals. But another fundamental logical and philosophical / theological issue that appears to be at the heart of all this is the question of gay marriage. If it’s accepted that it’s discriminatory for gay individuals or couples to be denied access to goods and services on grounds of sexual orientation, then on principle it could also be held to be discriminatory that gay people were denied the right to marry. If gay marriage came into law, this would make it much more difficult for the Church to employ the argument set out above: that they accepted only married couples as adopting parents. This is why the Cardinal’s letter makes great play of the traditional Catholic concepts of marriage as essentially a union between a man and a woman, which creates the context in which a child can be most fully nurtured and brought up happy and secure. And this provides another explanation for the need for Church agencies to be granted an exemption that explicitly refers to a couple’s sexuality and gender as the reason for their not being accepted, rather than their marital status.

So what we have here are the opening salvos in a battle whose ultimate stake is the status and future of marriage itself. The examples of conflicts of conscience affecting hoteliers and adoption agencies only really make sense in this conflict: gay couples can be turned away without any legal consequences if that’s all they are – unmarried couples, disapproved of for that reason. But if gay marriage came into law, then it would be necessary to state explicitly that the reason for those couples being rejected was that they were gay.

But the fundamental question remains: is it discriminatory – in fact rather than in law – to reject gay individuals or couples as adopting parents because they’re in a gay relationship? And secondly, is it discriminatory to deny gay couples the opportunity to get married? I refer to rejecting gay people as adopters ‘because they’re in a gay relationship’, rather than ‘because they’re gay’, because it would surely be both discriminatory and contrary to Catholic teachings to dismiss single persons as adopters because of their sexual orientation: the Church does not teach that it’s wrong to be gay but only that it’s wrong to have gay sex; and, as stated above, it does consider single people as adoptive parents in particular circumstances.

I do not in fact think that it is discriminatory for the Church to uphold a particular ideal of the family into which they seek to place children through adoption. That’s being true to their faith mission and to their duty of care to the children as they see it. But, by the same token, one could say that this rule presupposes exceptions, or should I call them exemptions? In other words, there might be cases in which even Catholic adoption agencies could take the view that it would be in the best interests of a child to allow him / her to be adopted by a gay parent – even one in a relationship – if, for instance, the adopting parent were already that child’s main carer and they’d established a loving relationship. The Church, it seems to me, neatly side-steps these conflicts of conscience by referring such individuals or couples to agencies that will take them on. And Catholic adoption agencies must come across hundreds of similar cases where what appears to be in the best interests of the child does not quite fit the Catholic model of the perfect family. Perhaps the Church’s position would look a little less discriminatory if its agencies were allowed to show a little more discrimination (discernment) in differentiating between unsuitable and suitable gay individuals or unmarried couples (gay or straight) that might in fact make wonderful adoptive parents.

On the question of gay marriage as a case of principle – rather than as something that might cause practical problems when attempting to deny services to gay couples – I don’t think any credible case can be made out for regarding the Church’s denial of marriage to gay people as discriminatory. The Church takes a particular view, which is not that of the state and the law, about what marriage is and to whom it is available; and nothing would change about that if gay marriage was introduced as a civil institution. However, what the introduction of gay marriage would require would be a re-examination and re-formulation of what marriage means for secular society today, and in particular what rights and responsibilities towards others it should involve. One of those rights arguably being the right to adopt, so long as one is likely to make a good parent. In this context, the Church needs to examine the implications of what it is saying about gay people and parenthood. Are they in fact implying that gay people per se can’t be proper parents, in the psychological and spiritual sense of parenting that’s at stake in adoption?

In a forthcoming blog, I aim to discuss how we might redefine the institution of civil marriage, in part to take account of gay marriage.

Big Brother Is Watching You: Why Jade Goody’s Demonisation Was Timely

Big Brother Is Watching You: Why Jade Goody’s Demonisation Was Timely

Let’s accept for the moment that the row about the supposed racist bullying on Celebrity Big Brother has been blown out of all proportion to the actual offence (see blog of 21 January). I’m not saying it wasn’t offensive, as clearly, many thousands of viewers genuinely were offended. But it certainly wasn’t racist. Jade Goody’s words and actions expressed racial prejudices and stereotypes, that’s clear. But that doesn’t equate to racism. Jade didn’t say and do what she did because Shilpa Shetty is ethnically and nationally Indian but because she felt she was being looked down on by someone who thought they were socially superior, and because she was jealous. Bitching rather than bullying.

The terms ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ have become cheapened. Anyone who dares to say or even think anything that implies a prejudiced or negatively stereotypical view of another race or culture can now be labelled a racist; whereas, in fact, such views are an inevitable part of human nature and ignorance, and are often no different from the stereotypes different European nations have always nurtured about each other: French frog’s leg eaters, German sauerkraut munchers, etc. No one would seriously call these ridiculous clichés racist. Or would they? One thing’s for sure, people had better be on their guard from now on and mind their language, because the PC thought police have been alerted: Big Brother is watching us!

The fact that so many worthies – politicians, religious leaders, cultural commentators – have joined in the chorus of condemnation leads one to wonder what particular nerve this incident has touched. Jade has been made a scapegoat: not by the angry lynch mob seizing on a hapless bystander in order to seek vengeance for a violent rape or child abuse; nor by a racist political party blaming the Jew or the Asian for all its countries ills. No, this act of scapegoating has been endorsed by some of the highest moral authorities in the land. So it must be serving a particularly acute purpose for British culture at the present time.

Jade has been made a scapegoat because the BB antics have shown up the claim that Britain is an inherently tolerant nation to be a lie. The reality, as revealed by reality TV, is that we’re all a bit racist like Jade and her co-contestants: carrying within our heads any number of more or less unconscious prejudices about people of other races and cultures, which we perhaps sometimes voice in private or even rehearse in the silent realm of our unspoken thoughts; but never in public, never on TV before an audience of millions. That is clearly unacceptable. It’s unacceptable because it’s broken a taboo that’s become more powerful even than the former sexual taboos. We can now say the F-word as freely as we like; but say or do anything that has a hint of racism about it, and we deserve no place in the Big Brother house.

The important point is that the idea of tolerance has recently become a central plank in the project to define essential British values and virtues around which the integration of different cultures and religions can be achieved. Shilpa Shetty – a sophisticated, Westernised, successful career woman – stands as a symbol for this integration. One could say that she both symbolises the increasing integration of modern India into the global economy and culture, and serves as a model for a similar integration that many would like to see taking place between the West and the Muslim world. In this sense, Ms Shetty is the antithesis of the traditionalist Muslim woman who wears a veil out of deference to her husband and obedience to her faith. Just imagine the furore and international crisis that would have been sparked off if they’d put a devout, veil-wearing Muslim woman into the Big Brother house instead of Shilpa Shetty, and if she’d been the victim of racial abuse and bullying!

That wouldn’t have been racism, though, would it? That would have been, in fact, a rather uncomfortable combination of cultural and religious prejudice, and what many would perceive to be justifiable criticism and suspicion. That perception would be held by many of the people who now condone the scapegoating of Jade Goody for alleged racism. Far better to have an all-too similar example of prejudiced attitudes and behaviour that can be simplistically characterised and vilified as purely racist. Then there can be no confusion between racism and Western hostility towards traditionalist Islam; they can be kept in safe, distinct categories. One is bigoted hatred towards people ‘because of the colour of their skin’; the other is justifiable reluctance to tolerate traditional practices that appear to entrench potentially destructive cultural divisions. One is irreconcilable intolerance of difference; the other is intolerance of irreconcilable difference. However, both embody fear of, and prejudice towards, the Other.

So turning Jade into a hateful caricature of a racist has come at an opportune moment: it allows a clear distinction to be made in the eyes of the British public between unreasonable racism and reasonable criticism of Islam. And, at the same time, the ritualistic collective washing of our hands from the stain of racism allows us to demonstrate to the Muslim community that we are not racist like Jade, nor crudely Islamophobic; but that actually, we believe in fairness, unity and equality between different races and cultures: that – unlike Jade – we do really tolerate difference and wish only to bring about a society in which all people and cultures can be treated with equal respect.

Except that – in the person of Shilpa Shetty – it’s not difference that’s being embraced but a vision of assimilation. Even more than East-West integration, Ms Shetty symbolises the arrival of India as a power in the West: the aspiration of modern India and ethnic Indians to compete on level terms – or even on superior terms – with Western nations on the global stage. Jade, on the other hand, tapped into an undercurrent of resentment about the growing economic and cultural success and influence enjoyed by India and ethnic Indians, in this country and globally. India is asserting itself proudly and rapidly becoming an invaluable cog in the Western economy, which is increasingly dependent on the services and skills provided by Indian firms at a fraction of what they would cost using Western staff. What was especially insulting towards Indians in some of Jade’s remarks was that they exemplified a stereotypical image of India as backward and dirt-poor: an attitude inherited from the era of Empire, when India was indeed in a highly inferior and dependent position in relation to the West; the age of the Indian take-away not that of the Indian take-over.

So it’s not really Indian cultural differences that are being defended in the BB case against the ‘racist’ that wants to keep ‘subordinate’ races in their place. Rather, it’s the right of Indians and India to be more like us – more like us, in some ways, than we even are ourselves. So much so that the posh-speaking Shilpa exemplified almost a complete role reversal: she was the classy, well-mannered ‘princess’ speaking perfect grammatical English; while Jade felt relegated to the category of the retrograde, ill-mannered underclass speaking crude and ungrammatical English. English, in other words, like what it’s spoke in England today; not as in our imperial past, which is how it is learnt in India. Jade’s was the response of the former colonial nation that fears that its former slaves will become its masters: irrational and unjustifiable this may be, but there is not a total absence of anything in reality to make those fears seem believable to some. But for the liberal intelligentsia, Shilpa symbolises a righting of historical wrongs: the right to equal access to the benefits of Western civilisation that were denied to Indians under the Empire. The right, that is, to be an equal partner in our continuing imperialism: the ethical imperialism that seeks the global triumph and vindication of 'our values' – those 'Christo-liberal' values of economic, social and personal freedom, equality and unification to which only the ‘extremist’ (rabid racist or fundamentalist Muslim) could possibly object.

Only those, in other words, who are pariahs because they beg to differ.

Big Brother, Little Britain: Have We Suddenly Become an Intolerant Society?

Big Brother, Little Britain: Have We Suddenly Become an Intolerant Society?

What a lot of cant has been written and spoken about the Big Brother ‘racism’ row this week! For a start, it is not at all self-evident that the behaviour and remarks about the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty made by celebrity contestants Jade Goody and others do qualify as racism. Prejudiced and insulting they may be; but racism is an extremely strong term. One can have racial prejudices without being racist. Racism implies having a hatred towards an individual or ethnic group simply because of their race or religion. I don’t think Jade Goody’s antagonism was motivated – at least not primarily – by race hate. Channel 4 was right to state that they were unsure whether the hostility shown towards Shetty Shilpa wasn’t more to do with cultural and class differences. And I believed Jade herself when she disowned any racial motivation in what she’d done. Of course, there can be unconscious fear and dislike of other races; but I don’t think any human being alive is totally immune from that.

The reality of whether or not Jade and her co-contestants have acted in a racist way has become less important than the need to banish any appearance of racism from our TV screens. For once, reality TV has done its job and exposed racism for what it mostly is: petty, bound up with silly cultural stereotypes, and just part of the language and coping mechanisms through which people of different classes and backgrounds vent the frustrations of having to live together. But it’s not race hate, in this instance at least.

The irony of it is that it’s some of the champions of Britain’s supposed intrinsic tolerance that have been most up in arms condemning the behaviour of the contestants as symptomatic of – in Archbishop John Sentamu’s words – “an ugly underbelly in society only too ready to point the finger at the foreigner, or those who might not fit in”. Well, I’m sorry; it’s condemnation of Jade in these terms that shows Britain up as an intolerant society just as much as her actual words and actions. Those remarks are classist and prejudiced in their turn: based more on a stereotypical image of ill-educated, working-class racism than the reality of what went on. I think the biblical injunction applies: do not condemn the splinter in your brother’s eye until you remove the plank from your own.

Jade has become if anything more of a scapegoat than the scapegoat she supposedly made Shilpa into. As with any scapegoating, it’s been necessary to distort and exaggerate the supposed evil Jade represents; and then cast it onto an acceptable object for our derision: an ignorant, ‘undeserving’ celebrity from a ‘white-trash’ background. In this way, she can be fully separated out from the mainstream of tolerant, educated, middle-class Britain to which people of all races – such as Shilpa Shetty or John Sentamu – have the right to aspire.

There’s a word for this: inverted racism. But let’s not confuse it with race hate. Let’s just call it verbalising class and cultural prejudice. A necessary outlet, indeed, to ensure we can all still get on together.

Britain As a World Power: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Six)

Britain As a World Power: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Six)

According to news reports, Tony Blair is to give a speech today in which he will put the case for Britain retaining a role as a “major player on the world stage” (sounds like himself after leaving his post as PM), i.e. remaining what you might call a ‘world power’. In Blair’s view, this is important above all in the context of the fight against global terrorism, whereby Britain has a duty – alongside its allies – to stand up for the values it believes in.

Most people would agree that it’s important to try to defeat homicidal terrorist organisations and prevent any further atrocities such as 9/11 or the July 2005 London bombings. However, most British people would now, I think, be sceptical that the best way to do this is to send our troops to former outposts of the British Empire such as Afghanistan and Iraq to wage futile wars we cannot win, in the usual sense of the term.

But I’m not intending to enter the debate over the ‘War on Terror’ here. What Mr Blair’s sense of Britain’s global mission exemplifies, it seems to me, is what I termed the ‘British’ value of ‘ethical imperialism’ (see the second blog in this series, dated 3 December). The idea that Britain in and of itself – irrespective of the degree to which our European allies are prepared to co-operate with this mission – has a moral duty to remain a world power and help lead the struggle against the evil of terrorism is a clear inheritance of the British Empire and the ethical purpose that Britain always strived to bestow upon its imperialism. This purpose was then – and is now increasingly once more becoming – one of establishing and maintaining a particular Western form of civilisation, which elsewhere I’ve referred to as ‘Christo-liberalism’: an ambiguous combination of social and economic liberalism with an ethics and humanistic spirituality derived from (but not necessarily completely consonant with) traditional Christian beliefs.

Wanting to help defeat murderous terrorism, and maintain international peace and security, is one thing. But with Blair, this comes with a mission: ultimately, that of defending and perpetuating a vision of Britain’s very identity as in some sense indissociably bound up with Christo-liberal values and the future of Christo-liberal civilisation. Whether this set of values is in itself coherent and capable of building cultural integration and national unity within Britain is a debate in itself. Whether this set of values is the flagpole on which British forces should be pinning the Union Jack in battles against Muslims (as if this could defeat ‘Islamist’ ideology rather than inflaming it) is of course another.

But really, is it sustainable for Britain (or should that be Tony Blair?) to keep posturing as a world player? In the business world, most people agree that in the era of globalisation, the real powers in the 21st century – along with the USA – will be Brazil, China, India and Russia. Islamism could be seen as an attempt to reunite the Arab-Muslim world into a rival power to these massive states. Curiously, Afghanistan and Iraq are frontier lands between the Arab-Muslim world and three of those 21st century powers.

Dear old Little Britain, on its own, doesn’t have a prayer. Don’t we need to reinvest our energies, and – in the context of the threat of climate change – energy, into trying to build a sustainable economy and security situation in partnership with our European neighbours?