Tolerance can never be without limits. And this was perfectly evident in Scotland this week, as Kate Forbes – a leadership contender in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National Party – derailed her campaign on day one. Forbes wasn’t a politician in 2014 when same-sex marriage was made legal in Scotland. But when asked on Monday if, hypothetically, she would have voted in favour, Forbes was unequivocal when she said no. Her faith – and membership of the evangelical and socially conservative Free Church of Scotland – simply would have prevented her from doing so. Though she was quick to add that she would not seek to overturn the legislation as it stands now.
Naturally this prompted a flurry of outrage and declarations of Forbes’s ill-suitedness to high office. There is simply no place in the contemporary West – so the argument goes – for a politician to harbour such arcane notions, especially when those notions are informed by religion.
The simple fact that ideology obtained via faith is no different from ideology obtained any other way has eluded the grasp of many. Nevertheless, it is true that Forbes would not make a good leader of the SNP. But not because of her membership of any church nor her adherence to any faith. Rather, because she has demonstrated a profoundly poor political judgment in failing to prepare a better answer to the very predictable gay marriage question.
[ Ireland For All march the beginning of movement for tolerance, say organisersOpens in new window ]
If falling at the first hurdle were an art form then Forbes would be a master. But it is ludicrous to suggest that Forbes is unfit for office because of her creed. Just as it is wrong to suggest that anyone’s religious affiliation should preclude them from public life. A society genuinely committed to the tenets of social liberalism would see Forbes squarely defeated at the ballot box and not shut out of the race on a priori grounds. Because maintaining any claim to being a diverse and tolerant society means tolerating ideologies divergent from our own.
We cannot pretend to care about religious pluralism so long as we are not willing to accept that different religions often come bearing beliefs many of us find abhorrent. For anyone who self-defines as progressive this is a necessary realisation. It is also an increasingly rare one. But that is exactly the dishonesty at the core of contemporary liberalism.
I cannot help but think of the Ireland For All march last weekend that called for “diversity not division.” Ireland is lucky and ought to be proud of its generally forward thinking and tolerant disposition. The mainstream (rightly) tends to insist on inclusion – whether that be refugees, migrants, racial or sexual minorities.
But it seems that those happy to boast their inclusive values have a much harder time when it comes to the ideological other: the social conservative, the extremely devout, the economically cautious. Perhaps that really is the limit of our tolerance. It is a pretty strange one. Not least because ideological diversity is inevitable in a multicultural society made up of the old and the young; the religious and the irreligious; and the native and the immigrant. But because when it comes to asking important, cosmic questions – like, what are our shared values? – only by working together might we ever begin to access the truth. Even if that means – perhaps especially if that means – talking to those we find contemptible.
Otherwise we look like little more than a nation addicted to the PR kudos of superficial diversity, without dealing with any of the complications that it brings. We should not forget that demonstrating tolerance for ideas we are already convinced about isn’t really tolerance at all. What is there to ‘tolerate’ about gay marriage if you – like me – have always been completely convinced of society’s obligation to permit it?
It is not a particularly difficult ask of someone to countenance that which they already believe is a moral good. Real tolerance exists in the grey area – accepting those who you do not instinctively agree with, working with those who you think are wrong. Of course this is not an argument against principles. Society would quickly disintegrate into flabby nothingness if we had no sense of right or wrong.
We can disavow Kate Forbes’s views, find them disquieting, acknowledge they are intolerant themselves. We can challenge them. But we cannot see them as a basis for ostracisation from public life. The adherents of any faith – Forbes, for example – shouldn’t be able to impose the diktats of that faith on the electorate without their consent. In many senses that is the beating heart of any liberal and secular society. But the Enlightenment values of pluralism and religious tolerance – first considered by the likes of Voltaire and Locke – are important too.
We can either understand diversity – in all its senses – as essential to our flourishing. Or, we can harshly set the parameters of acceptable beliefs and punish those who fail to adhere. So long as we continue to do the latter we cannot maintain the fiction that we are interested in diversity at all.