As for example found here, there, there, or there. Tom Chivers reluctantly tries to defend Lord Carey in today’s Telegraph:
Lord Carey, to his credit ”“ and I really, really hate giving Lord Carey credit, because most of the things he says make my skin crawl and/or my toes curl ”“ is rejecting the opportunity to paint his opponents as bigots; he is warning against hurling abusive terms around, including by his own side. In fact, taking the analogy he draws at face value, the “Jews” are advocates of gay marriage, and the “Nazis” are opponents who call them “the true bigots”. He is calling for polite debate. We should be encouraging this, not decrying him.
I don’t want to be too effusive. Flippant Godwin’s Law invocations aside, it’s still hugely insensitive to compare any sort of name-calling to the horrors of the Holocaust; and as a longstanding public figure, Lord Carey should know how incredibly careful he has to be to use any analogy involving the Nazis and the Jews. And, of course, he’s still wrong about so many other things, including his bizarre suggestion that gay marriage will encourage polygamy, or undermine heterosexual marriage.
But he’s not doing what he’s being accused of doing. In fact he’s trying, in the section quoted, to encourage civility. Now’s not the time to shout him down.
For myself, I think a corollary to Godwin’s law applies, you have already lost your point when you invoke this analogy, no matter for what you are trying to argue. It is simply too unusual and important a historical reference to use in debate, especially today (given how much time would be necessary to qualify any such remark and try to set it in proper context). Lord Carey had other ways of making his point–KSH.
Harmon’s corollary to Godwin’s law applies not because Lord Carey may be thought already to have lost his point in rhetorical terms, nor even because (in Gertrude Himmelfarb’s observation) “we have already lost the culture wars,” but because the very notion that the cause for which Lord Carey has witnessed — that matrimony is not a sociological construct but an eternally and immutably decreed reality — is, from the historicist perspective of his accusers, as incomprehensible, or else intolerable, as was the chosen-ness of the Jews to the Nazis and the messiahship of Jesus to Saul of Tarsus.
It was not an appropriate analogy, and it probably meant that the point he was trying to make was overshadowed by his poor choice of words. Certainly we should not use the Nazi analogy so crudely – to our Jewish friends it looks like we are cheapening the suffering of the victims. But … two points need to be made here (1) Today’s paper here in London reports that those attending the meeting were jeered by 60 or so demonstrators who shouted ‘bigots’ at them as they entered. Curious that there is no reference to this in the hyperlinks above. But it proves what Carey was saying about the terms of the debate. (2) We are not, definitely not, on our way to totalitarian dictatorship here in the UK. But there is such as thing as monocultural control. What I mean is that the prevailing current of opinion in society can silence contrary voices by labelling them as bigotted, ignorant, intolerant etc. And that is what worries me about the debate on gay marriage – the debate can hardly take place if defenders of traditional marriage are silenced by fear of ridicule or fear of being stereotyped as someone hideously reactionary and repressive.
The analogy was only unfortunate because people have homogenized history to automatically think of the ovens when the word Nazi is invoked. They had quite an elaborate mechanism for controlling the media beyond freight trains on their way to concentration camps. Whether or not Lord Carey meant to put a fine pencil point on it I don’t know, but it is an apt analogy for those of us whose knees don’t jerk so readily as do others’.
Godwin’s Law apart, a law which may be broken, Carey certainly got a reaction – horror and outrage. We don’t like to be called on what we are becoming, much as we reacted to what the Pope said about the growing persecution of Christians in the UK.
But the reality is that the ovens weren’t employed at the start in 1930’s Germany – initially it was low level harrassment – the labelling, the registration, the stamping of identity cards, the restriction on what could and could not be done in public, in occupations and in public spaces.
In Britain we are already seeing the attempt to prosecute and imprison Christians for expressing their faith and the morality that faith expects. At the least people are losing their jobs, regularly.
There is a view that what happened in Germany could not happen in Britain, or the US, but the Germany of the 1930’s was a humane, civilised and educated society, whose social structures collapsed under economic depression, and those which remained were systematically undermined. Good men learned to be silent in the face of abuse and intimidation.
It could happen in Germany, and it could happen anywhere else, but it starts like domestic abuse with small things, things you would not notice or can comfortably ignore, for a time.
I think in part what worries me is the way Christians are vacating the public space and being encouraged to shut up. We only have ourselves to blame if this happens, for not going into politics, for not going into journalism, for not engaging as we once did in all areas of community life and the removal of the Christian voice leaves everyone else at risk as that gentle leavening is removed from the debate.
That is the lesson of the Holocaust, how it built up and happened over time, and why indeed that lesson should be remembered. It is something to be talked about rather than placed off limits, and if you haven’t noticed the Chief Rabbi has also been supportive of the defence of traditional marriage. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
God bless those bishops and others prepared to speak out in defence of Christian values – what else are they there for?
I think one also has to remember how deeply unChristian the current ‘conservative’ coallition government is – whatever the rhetoric the reality is that it is currently arguing against those protesting their right to wear crosses etc visibly at work in the European Court. It is active opposition by the government lawyers.
Germany had a huge church in the 1930’s – it still does both Catholic and Protestant, indeed the largest Protestant German church is considerably larger than the Church of England. Socially and religiously Germany was very like the UK, and prior to WWI, those bonds were strong between our two countries, bound by monarchy, alliances and history where we had opposed the rise of Napoleon a century earlier.
In Germany it started with the intimidation of the churches and of the Christians. Clearing moral objectors out of the way is necessary before any alternative program can be established. I don’t see any reason we should go the whole hog as Germany did, but we are already seeing a government actively supporting the abortion of the substandard or diseased through genetic testing, the promotion of euthanasia on a voluntary basis through attempts to change the law, and subtle changes in hospital practice to enable people to be starved and dehydrated to death, and the suppression of all disent to its new moral order.
It is a horrible, and an incompetant government, and it is the latter incompetence which may save the day.
It’s good to see some Brits weighing in here. Thanks to Fr. Tee and especially Pageanmaster for contributing their thoughts on this touchy matter. All I’ll add, from my side of the Pond, is that the new Pew Forum report on religious disaffiliation just out yesterday shows how quickly the US is moving in the direction of greater secularization, as if we were trying to catch up with the UK and the Continent. I fully expect that the kind of public contempt and intolerance being shown to Christians in Europe will increasingly be seen in the US as well.
David Handy+
#6 Thanks for that and for your interesting point Rev David. It is also a pleasure to hear from you. In some ways things seem worse in the US than here; at least at least legally some protections remain – no one is trying to demolish crosses all over the place or remove religious writings in public places as is happening in the US, and even in our state schools there is an opening still for religious and specifically Christian education. But the rate of deterioration of things we now have would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, which is why I am not sure there is any reason for complacency at what is happening. Over here we are run by a bunch of feckless and ignorant public schoolboys, and what we are increasingly seeing is lawless Lord of the Flies government. Oh for the return of some grown ups.