Roger Scruton on Lord Rennard, Cardinal O'Brien and Inappropriate Behaviour

By Roger Scruton.

Our society has not come to terms with the sexual revolution, and one proof of this is the extent to which people seem now free to accuse each other of sexual misdemeanours and ‘inappropriate’ advances, without knowing or caring whether these constitute a crime. This matter is of great concern to conservatives who, for all their reticence in the matter, are well aware that sexual life ought not to be a free for all, and that conventions, manners and a certain distance between the sexes are fundamental to both individual happiness and social peace. Like other modern people, however, they stumble through this dangerous territory without the light of religious principle to guide them, and leaning, when it is necessary to lean, on an entirely makeshift philosophy. Indeed, it seems to me that the absence of a robust view of sex is one reason for the ideological weakness of the Conservative Party. The hesitation over family values, the sudden and unexplained enthusiasm for gay marriage, the easy toleration of ‘non-discrimination’ laws that marginalise the old morality – all these are ways of papering over an enormous hole in the conservative vision, and one that simply did not exist when the founding fathers of conservatism wrote in the 18th century.

Of course, we are all chuffed when the Liberal Democrats are compelled to step down from their high horse and admit that they may be composed of the same material as the rest of us. But this should not distract us from the fact that the accusations against Lord Rennard are gossip, that he is not yet standing trial for a crime in law, and that the whole matter has become public because people no longer know what to make of the fact that men (most men) desire women, including those men who, being as hideous as Lord Rennard, don’t stand a chance. It is quite possible that he misbehaved; without repeating the accusations against him I leave open the possibility that he has transgressed all those conventions and moral strictures that have in better times governed human sexual conduct. He may even have committed a crime. But I am strongly reminded of Jesus’s witty and definitive response to those who had assembled to stone a woman to death for what was then the crime of adultery: ‘let he who is without fault cast the first stone’. I look back on my youth, and all those ‘inappropriate’ advances some of which were lucky enough to find their target, and recognise that we are dealing with a matter which is, and ought to be, governed by manners and not by law. OK, we don’t stone people to death in this country. But we do the next worst thing, which is to bludgeon to death their characters and their prospects, on the strength of gossip which accuses those who retail it as much as the person who is targeted.

Even worse, it seems to me, is the case of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who is accused of entirely unspecific acts that occurred during his younger days. None of his accusers suggests that anything the Cardinal did amounts to a crime in law. Perhaps they are such virtuous people that they have never got drunk and attempted to kiss the attractive person sitting next to them. Indeed, one hopes that, being priests, they have behaved in the exemplary way that Cardinal O’Brien may not have been able always to live up to. But what a fuss, and with what consequences, not only for the Cardinal himself, but for the Church to which the primary loyalty of his accusers is owed!

In most other areas of human life we are well aware of the distinction between crimes and misdemeanours. And, before the days of sexual liberation, we equipped our children with those habits of modesty, reticence and respect that prevented the worst abuses and gave them the means to protect themselves against them. Now, lacking any real understanding of what sex means, we have also lost all sense of proportion. Every offence is at once construed as a crime, with devastating consequences for those who are accused of it. And the worst of it is that conservatives, who should know better, are as confused as everybody else.

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