In the context of Canada’s ongoing fracas over safe supervised injection facilities for IV drug users, some have argued that social conservatives are being ‘misunderstood’ in this context.

What is there to misunderstand? According to Globe and Mail columnist Steven Chase, social conservatives tend to place a premium on concepts like purity, tradition and hierarchy, whereas social liberals prefer to emphasise rational independence and evidence-based reduction of harm and risk through decriminalisation and the establishment of regulations and procedures.

Now, in pluralist democratic societies like Canada and New Zealand, social conservatives are entitled to formulate arguments based on the aforementioned principles. However, we are equally entitled to examine the historical origins of their central concepts, and point out problems that might ensue from ignoring risk and harm to others.

Australia and Canada represent useful examples. On the positive side of the ledger, Pope Benedict XVI is to be congratulated for his unequivocal condemnation of past instances of clergy paedophilia and sexual violence, and one hopes that will translate into more robust policies and procedures to provide meaningful resolution to the victims of clergy sexual predaton within that church.  Unfortunately, the Queensland ALP State Government and Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification promply blotted this happy state of affairs through declining to legislate for same-sex couple adoption and banning the late Italian gay director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s masterpiece Salo or 120 Days of Sodom respectively.

As for Canada, the federal Tories seem to be digging themselves into several fairly large holes. One is the aforesaid Insite safe and supervised IV drug injection facility, where the darker side of tradition, purity and hierarchy looked set to close down a much-needed public health facility that provided onsite detox and overdose prevention facilities to users who needed them, and which resulted in a sharp drop in drug-related criminal behaviour in Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside. Absolute drug prohibition is a ‘traditional’ drug prevention strategy based on the proposition that there is a dividing line between “social purity” and abstinence from drugs, and converse “filthy’ deviance. If one makes ‘wrong’ moral choices, then one is expelled from the boundaries of “moral” and social community.

(And may I say that as a non-prohibitionist alcohol and drug abstainer, I resent being thought of as “pure” or “virtuous” in this context!)

Now, liberals don’t totally reject the social conservative model of society. However, we tend to favour a robust, evidence-based and informed premise for public policy, and if maintenance of spurious notions of purity, hierarchy and tradition lead to destructive outcomes that harm others or place them at risk, then liberals regard that as sufficient reason to abandon social conservative policies- such as the ongoing public health sector support for safe, supervised IV drug injecting room facilities and opposition to draconian federal government censorship/public funding powers in Canada’s Bill C-10.

Social hierarchy does not mean social purity, or vica versa. As I’ve noted while commenting on Capillgate and Catholic clergy paedophilia and sexual violence, it certainly did not mean that ordination as conservative ministers of religion led to any diminished susceptibility to predatory paraphilia in either context. Social conservatives tend to find the possible disconnection threatening, which is why so few subject Graham Capill or Bruce Logan’s behaviour to any critical evaluation, ethical reflecton or condemnation in our own context.

Unfortunately for Canada, as long as the federal Tories remain in power, this situation may not improve. According to Canada’s national Xtra LGBT newspaper chain, former Canadian Focus on the Family head Darrel Reid is now Director of Policy and Research for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Reid has a history of previous administrative roles with the earlier rightwing Reform Party of Canada, Focus on the Family Canada, and at the School of Policy Studies at Queens University, before he moved to Ottawa to become involved as Deputy Policy and Research Director for Harper in April 2007, followed by his current elevation. This is not good.

Recommended:

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: “Prominent Christian Conservative Takes Over as Head of Tory Policy” Xtra.Ca: 18.07.08: http://www.xtra.ca

Steven Chase: “Liberals Can’t Force-Feed Insite to Tories- How About a Change of Tactics?” Globe and Mail: 18.07.08: http://www.theglobeandmail.com