Matthew Parris’s attack on Michael Nazir-Ali lacks his usual rigour and clarity

Matthew Parris is a former Conservative MP and one of Britain’s most loved political journalists who regularly writes for the Times.

He has an established reputation as an iconoclast and, as an openly gay atheist, has surprised people by writing in defence of Christian missionaries and in support of the idea that homosexuality is in part a conscious choice.

However, his latest offering, ‘Religion does not belong in the small print’ (£), lacks his usual rigour and clarity.

Parris is arguing that people who have faith-based convictions should declare this to be the case when they speak publicly on issues where their faith might have some bearing.

On the surface, this seems a not unreasonable request. Public figures should not attempt to conceal their personal or worldview convictions, especially if these have an influence on their views about an important issue of public policy.

But Parris seems to be saying more than this and his argument is, on this occasion, flawed.

What appears to have inspired the piece is a debate he had with the former Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali at a fringe meeting organised by ResPublica, a think-tank, at the Conservative Party conference.

Nazir-Ali put forward a case against ‘gay marriage’, which Parris said ‘could have been made by an unreligious professor of sociology’.

His argument was ‘apparently based on the social and cultural value of marriage as presently defined, the importance of a stable upbringing for children, and the resistance people feel to attempts “to change the meaning of the word ‘marriage’ ” ’.

Parris then asked the former bishop if he believed that ‘homosexuality was a sin’ and accused him in the article of beating about the bush with his answer.

He goes on to say that Nazir-Ali was ‘being disingenuous’ because he ’plainly believes that homosexuality is a very considerable evil in the eyes of God’.

In Parris’ view ‘the rest of us have a right to know the source of (peoples’) opinions, and if they are faith-based those who hold them have a duty in all honesty to declare it.’

He argues that ‘it is slippery for people to couch objections that are really undeclared religious objections in the language of a secular argument.’

‘The reason’, he says, ‘is obvious. ‘The audience may not share the speaker’s religious faith, and if they knew his advice was faith-based might wish to discount it.’

In fact Parris seems to suggest that his own ‘mild support’ for ‘gay marriage’ only arose when he saw ‘who was massing on the other side’ of the argument.

Parris then relates the case of an MP arguing in support of a reduction of the abortion limit to twelve weeks who used arguments about the humanity of the preborn baby as revealed on ultrasound but neglected say that he was a devout Catholic.

He implies that this is another example of ‘concealment’.

As a Christian who often speaks about issues of public policy on the media, I find Parris’s argument disturbing for four reasons.

First, it is an example of a growing trend in media debates on public policy whereby those advocating a particular position try to advance their case, not by countering their opponents’ arguments, but rather by undermining their personal credibility. This is essentially avoiding the argument by launching an ad hominem attack. To say that someone only takes a certain position because they are a Christian or a Jew or a Sikh or a 'bigot' is just an excuse for not engaging in serious debate about the issue in hand. It is disingenuous, cowardly and disrespectful.

Everyone knows that Nazir-Ali, as an evangelical Christian, is opposed to homosexual practice per se, not least Nazir-Ali himself. This is a given. But on this occasion he is speaking not to Christians in a church who share his faith convictions but rather to a mixed group at a political conference. Naturally he is going to employ arguments against gay marriage that he thinks will appeal to his audience. This is not being disingenuous. It is what all good debaters do. It is in fact what Parris himself does. Nazir-Ali is simply choosing not to use all his arguments, but only those he feels will be convincing in this particular context.

Second, Parris seems to be trying to imply that Nazir-Ali’s only real objections to ‘gay marriage’ are religious. This is simply not true. The Coalition for Marriage, which has amassed 600,000 signatures in this country against a change in the law, does not actually use faith-based arguments and some of the strongest opponents of the proposed policy are actually secularists or gay people (Brendan O’Neill and Andrew Pierce are two notable examples).

President Sarkozy, another secularist, opposed gay marriage in France on the basis that civil partnerships already offered gay people all the rights of marriage and that legalising it would lead to disunity and unrest. The government of largely secular Australia recently rejected gay marriage by a large majority in both houses egged on by its left-wing atheist prime minister. Why should Nazir-Ali not be entitled to use non-religious arguments if they embody some of his objections to legalisation?

Third, Parris seems to imply that Nazir-Ali’s arguments on gay marriage should be rejected on the grounds that he also opposes civil partnerships and all same-sex sexual relations per se. But why should the fact that Nazir-Ali holds an absolute position on homosexuality (which he does) mean that he cannot argue against a specific legal change on gay marriage? Is he seriously suggesting that people who hold views at one end of a spectrum on a specific issue of public policy are not as entitled as everyone else to express those views in the public square? Parris expects his own arguments to be judged on their own merit. Why not extend the same courtesy to Nazir-Ali?

Finally, why does Nazir-Ali, as a Christian, have a duty to declare his faith position when in fact everyone who expresses an opinion in this debate is doing so from one world view perspective or another? There is an element of hypocrisy in Parris demanding that the former bishop declare his faith, whilst he himself is seemingly not under an equal obligation to confess that he is a practising homosexual or an atheist, when both almost certainly are informing his own views on the issue. Personally I don't think that either of them should be required to reveal their personal convictions. But if it is to be demanded then let's have a level playing field.

Parris is a good journalist but this latest piece falls short of his usual clarity and incisiveness. And as one who generally enjoys his writing, I am disappointed that he seems to have based his current ‘mild support’ for gay marriage more on the fact that those who have different world view convictions from him oppose it, rather than on a careful evaluation of the arguments.

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Matthew Parris, iconoclast once more. But will the gay rights lobby like it?

Mathew Parris has featured on this blog before for his comments about the Christian faith, but last week he once again challenged the dogma of the gay rights lobby that sexual orientation is fixed and unchangeable.

In an iconoclastic piece in the Times, titled ‘Who’s totally gay? There’s no straight answer’(£) the former Tory MP turned columnist provocatively lamented that ‘Same-sex male attraction used to be something you do, not something you are’.

Citing the story of Chris Birch, from Wales, who has testified to turning from being heterosexual to being gay after suffering a stroke, and Anglican Mainstream's controversial bus advert campaign claiming that sexual orientation can change, he takes the cherished belief that sexual orientation is always fixed and unchangeable apart.

‘On one thing, though, these opinions all agree — people can change… I do believe that male sexual orientation is less fixed than we suppose. It may alter. We gays fought that idiotic “section 28” on dishonest grounds. Homosexuality can, as the statute implied, be “promoted”. So can heterosexuality.'

He qualifies this by stressing that for some any change will be very limited if not impossible:

‘At once must come the qualifications. I don’t think that everyone is alterable. I don’t think change is possible without shelving part of one’s nature. I think that it’s generally unwise to fight a strong orientation unless it would lead to hurt. And I absolutely don’t think that homosexuality can be “cured” in the sense of expelling some kind of disease from the system.’

He then presents a popular vision of the Kinsey scale – the observation that some people are neither exclusively homosexual nor heterosexual but somewhere in between:

‘Try an experiment. Imagine that a majority of men are more straight than gay, a minority more gay than straight. Imagine this in terms of a scatter-graph from left (straight) to right (gay), with some very close to one end, some very close to the other and plenty spread between them. Imagine that those at either pole can feel little if any attraction to the other; but that those between the poles can, depending on where they are, feel weakly or strongly the attraction of both poles. Add to this picture a strong and unremitting social pressure to be considered (and consider yourself) as being at the left-hand (straight) end.

What would be the result? Everyone who, without making themselves too frustrated and miserable, could live a straight life would move towards the left in their behaviour and self-description; a minority who felt they just couldn’t would cluster (partly for self-defence) into a sort of ghetto at the right-hand end. And all the pressure would be to “make your mind up”, ie, shift towards the nearest pole.’

He emphasises the need for evidence to support his ‘hypothesis’, but from his own experience as a gay man says:

‘I’ve slept with as many men who considered themselves basically straight, lived basically straight lives and in some cases (I think) really were basically straight, as with men who were self-identifying gays.This is not my experience alone. Most gay men manage the considerable intellectual contortion of believing that there’s nothing they could do to alter their own sexuality while at the same time believing (not without evidence) that there’s quite a lot they might do to alter a straight man’s sexuality (“five pints of lager” is the usual prescription)… Even I, who feel myself to be exclusively gay, know from dreams and from occasional involuntary physical reactions that shelved somewhere in my unconscious must be a strand of heterosexuality. Millions of gay men will have the same experiences.’

His conclusion is iconoclastic to the extreme, and no one but a gay man could have got away with saying it:

‘“I can’t help it”. The very words carry a kind of whimper. I hate this plea. It isn’t accepted as an argument for paedophilia and shouldn’t be. I’d want to be gay whether I could help it or not. The day that the battle for homosexual equality is won and over will be the day a man, straight or gay, can boast that he chose.’

There is of course nothing new in what Matthew Parris is saying and he has said it before as has leading gay rights activist Peter Tatchell.

They are not alone in thinking this way.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated, ‘some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime’. The APA also says that ‘for some the focus of sexual interest will shift at various points through the life span...’

A report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health similarly states, ‘For some people, sexual orientation is continuous and fixed throughout their lives. For others, sexual orientation may be fluid and change over time’

But whether the general population will come to believe it is another matter entirely.

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Matthew Parris – defender of the faith

Which former Conservative MP won an RSPCA medal for saving a dog which had fallen in to the Thames, served as an aide to Margaret Thatcher, holds the record for the fastest marathon by an MP (2:32:57!), drove a Morris Oxford across Africa whilst a teenager, controversially suggested (in jest) stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists, is in a civil partnership with David Cameron’s chief speech writer Julian Glover and is now one of Britain’s most famous political journalists.

The answer, of course, is Matthew Parris.

Parris reacted last week to the recent debate about redefining marriage by suggesting that the word ‘marriage’ should be completely removed from legal language, but it was his comments this week in the Spectator about Christianity that have attracted more attention.

‘As an unbeliever’, he said, ‘I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way. As an unbeliever my sympathies are with fundamentalists. They seem to me to represent the source, the roots, the essential energy of their faiths. They go back to basics.’

He laments the decline of true religion: ‘Anglicanism has become bland. Moderate Islam is in theological retreat. And surely it is at the liberal end of Judaism’s spectrum that faith dilutes.’

In words that might even have come from the pen of CS Lewis, he asks of the comfortable faith promulgated by the Church of England:

‘Does it capture what Jesus Christ asks — requires, commands — of His followers?One of the reasons we can be pretty sure Jesus actually existed is that if He had not, the Church would never have invented Him. He stands so passionately, resolutely and inconveniently against everything an established church stands for. Continuity? Tradition? Christ had nothing to do with stability. He came to break up families, to smash routines, to cast aside the human superstructures, to teach abandonment of earthly concerns and a throwing of ourselves upon God’s mercy. Jesus came to challenge precisely what today’s unbelieving believers in belief so prize in what they presume to be faith.’

He then cuts right to the key issue that is ignored by so many contemporary commentators about Christianity.

‘To those who truly believe, the implicit message beneath “never mind if it’s true, religion is good for people” is insulting. To those who really believe, it is because and only because what they believe is true, that it is good. I find David Cameron’s remark that his faith, “like Magic FM in the Chilterns, tends to fade in and out”, baffling. If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out.

As I get older the sharpness of my faculties begins to dull. But what I will not do is sink into a mellow blur of acceptance of the things I railed against in my youth. “Familiar” be damned. “Comforting” be damned. “Useful” be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question.’

Just last December, in another piece titled ‘Stand up for your faith: tolerance isn’t enough’(£), he agreed with David Cameron that ‘lively faith in a deity can bring many social and cultural benefits’ but noted that ‘he took care to avoid straying into the question that matters most’.

And what is that? In John Betjeman’s words:

‘And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, A Baby in an ox’s stall? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me? And is it true? For if it is ...’

In a 2008 Times article titled, ‘As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God’ he wrote after a return to the Africa of his boyhood that ‘Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset’.

‘Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing…. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall….

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.’

It makes one wonder why Parris, having these insights, is not yet a Christian. He doesn’t say. I can almost imagine Jesus saying to him, as he did to that wise man who questioned him about the core of morality, ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God’. But I also sense a bit of the rich young ruler, who was attracted to Christ but went away sad when he was asked to lay aside the most precious thing in his life, leave everything and follow him.

It is of course essential to come to the point where you see that Christianity is true, that Christ really is who he claimed to be, and that finding and following him is what life is all about.

But it is not enough. At that point one must take one’s cross and follow him, with all that that involves.

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