More generally, it seems to me that much of the energy behind what is often caricatured as “wokeness” is at bottom a wish to see people - particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged people - treated with kindness and respect. And is best promoted and defended in those terms.
There is a tension between the request for people to be treated with kindness and respect and free speech, of course. But the right to free speech does not mean it is always morally right, or kind or respectful, to give people at any particular moment the benefit of your views.
X may oppose equal marriage and think gay sex is wrong. It’s a view he is entitled to hold and express. But for X to go up to a just married gay couple and tell them that he refuses to accept they are really married and that he thinks what they do in bed is disgusting is -
- to use an old-fashioned term - bad manners. I tend to think the same about those who make a point of refusing to acknowledge people’s decision to live as a different gender from that to which they were born.
Little of this is about the law (which needs to be very restrained when it comes to interference with free speech). It is about morality and responsibility.
Of course, there are excesses by those keen on changing attitudes. And the injunction to treat people with kindness and respect applies also to the treatment of those who are uncomfortable about some of the changes in attitudes that our society is experiencing.
But perhaps my approach to this is just irredeemably Anglican: to try to hold everyone together in respectful dialogue, including people of very different views, while asking everyone to try to be kind.
