Reasonable Christians Need Not Apply

Elected Christians should vote for the state to legalise things their own churches disapprove of: that is one response to Kate Forbes. Scotland’s Finance Minister said that had she been in the Parliament at the time, she would not have voted for a revision of marriage her church disapproves. It has derailed her campaign to be Scotland’s First Minister.

The line that her critics take is supposed to defend liberal democracy. Liberal democracy defends the rights of minorities against a potentially totalitarian majority, and this line of argument says that the state should be neutral between groups. No-one should capture the state, goes the theory. Forbes should not vote according to her beliefs. The anti-Forbes critics are fending off theocracy, perhaps.

Had Kate Forbes been in the Parliament, she would have had her own vote. This line of attack on Forbes adds up to saying that she should cast her own vote the way someone else, of different mind, would cast their vote.

Forbes was equally clear that she accepted the result of the vote on marriage: that the vote in question was over, and she would not be doing anything to reverse the outcome.

In other words, what is being advanced as liberal and democratic is, in reality, an attempt to exclude anyone with dissenting views from a Parliament — even when they accept the results of democracy.

It is an invitation for politicians to continue to lie to us about what they do or do not believe — and for politicians to have no beliefs, so that they can sway with the next majority wind.

Previously, the whole point of debate in Parliament had been that elected representatives, no matter where they get their views from, would be able to reason together on the merits of an issue. Now, what is the point?

This is an attempt to capture the state, although not for religion — except that Scotland does not have sovereignty in the union state. What looks like a defence of liberal democracy is totalitarian democracy working under the radar — without any dissenter like Kate Forbes to raise their voice, so that the fakery becomes obvious.

The really liberal democratic position is to say that the state should be neutral between groups, whenever that is what a majority vote among representatives has decided. It is the line Kate Forbes takes, in fact. This line of argument says, instead, that only those who agree in advance with a particular view, should be admitted to office. That is the end of discussion.

If Kate Forbes had not been a Christian, her critics would not have been able to dress up this cancellation as political theory and principle. Had Kate Forbes been a secularist opposed to this revision of the marriage law, courageous enough to stand by an unpopular view, no one would have been able to present this as the separation of Church and State. In fact it is an attempt to turn Scotland’s Parliament into no-platform.