Gay debate needs ‘critical tolerance’

Sydney Diocese’s top ethicist is calling on evangelical Christians and homosexuals to engage in a more mature level of debate on the basis of ‘critical tolerance’.

The Rev Dr Andrew Cameron, lecturer in ethics at Moore Theological College, is speaking out after claims in a recent Sydney Morning Herald feature that evangelical opposition to gay marriage and leadership of the Church is driven by homophobia - ‘a visceral fear of homosexuals’. 

But what does ‘critical tolerance’ mean in practice?

Dr Cameron explained to Sydneyanglicans.net yesterday that in order for work colleagues, for example, to cooperate peacefully, Christians and homosexuals need to have a ‘special’ relationship where both acknowledge that their Christian beliefs and gay identity can not be changed on a whim.

In technical terms, ‘critical tolerance’ emphasises the importance of ‘classic’ liberal rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Dr Cameron hopes Australian Christians will reflect further on these liberal-democratic principles.

“There is a strong argument that Christian thought was the foundation of the Enlightenment defences of freedom of speech, assembly and conscience,” he told Sydneyanglicans.net. “These grew out of a milieu that was battling with how to run a society when people disagreed about what to believe.”

Dr Cameron has no doubts that some in our society ‘are true homosexual-haters… those who despise homosexuals enough to taunt, beat and kill them…’.

However he adds that there is another group who can’t rightly be called homophobic: “those who wish to accept homosexual people without agreeing with them on everything.”

“They see themselves as having no reason to fear or despise homosexual people,” he says. “They simply disagree with some of what they think and do; yet they want to find ways to accept and relate across that difference. Such a position has been called ‘critical tolerance’.”

Dr Cameron agrees that not all gay activists will accept his call for ‘détente’ with Bible-affirming Christians since they believe that ‘to question homosexuality is also to reject them’.

However he adds that running our society ‘is about compromise, and about what will satisfy most of the people most of the time’.

“I can well imagine that a majority of gay people might be able to live with the majority of Christians affirming most of what they ask for politically and socially,” he says. “Of course there will be all-or-nothing diehards on the fringes; but I want to see a society where we get along within a civil space where we can agree to differ on theories of human identity.”

Dr Cameron’s call comes after the Diocese’s Social Issues Executive, which he also chairs, released four guidelines or ‘channel markers’ to assist the Anglican Church leadership in responding to various political and legal issues arising out of the gay rights agenda.

The four points are:

1. “We support and encourage people to care for each other”;
2. “The needs of children take priority over the wants of adults”;
3. “Marriage is not reinventable”; and
4. “We seek a society that graciously allows cultural space for marriage”. 

However, in the briefing document that accompanied the public release of the official guidelines, Dr Cameron went further.

“We ask the homosexual community for cultural and political détente,” he wrote. “We are two communities who will never agree. We are stuck with each other in Australian society. Each community battles for hearts and minds; each has its articles of faith; and we both have the capacity to hurt each other terribly.”

“By all means let us continue to try persuading each other, but at the same time, let us also seek to live well alongside each other in a civil society that we can all share, in ‘critical tolerance’, where we accept one another even while disagreeing,” he wrote.

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