Fear breeds intolerance
I got a bit depressed this morning when I read The Herald article COPAC in gay storm. For all the bombast of the headline, and the frenzy around keeping gay rights out of Zimbabwe’s new Constitution, there really isn’t much of a story – which just makes the intolerance of the article all the more apparent.
The article references the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, where a non-discrimination clause provides that “Everyone has the right not to be treated in an unfairly discriminatory manner on such grounds as their nationality, race, colour, tribe, place or circumstances of birth, ethnic or social origin, language, class, religious belief, political or other opinion, custom, culture, sex, gender, marital status, age, disability or economic, social or other status.” It latches particularly onto the phrase “circumstances of birth,” and then proceeds to report feedback from a number of lawyers and analysts who acknowledge that yes, hypothetically, this could be used to make an argument to the courts against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Of course, depending on where you fall on the nature versus nurture debate, I suppose one could also make the same argument using the protection of opinion, custom, culture, or other status. But does this mean we must remove the broad notion of tolerance from our Constitution – because some group we might not like might use it to their own benefit? Racism, sexism and xenophobia remain prejudices in some people’s minds – which is why the Constitution explicitly protects people regardless of race, sex and nationality.
Regardless of whether it is used to make an argument in favour of tolerance for homosexuality, including protection against discrimination regardless of circumstances of birth demonstrates the sort of broad tolerance a Constitution should provide. This means it doesn’t matter whether your parents were married when they had you, if you were born in prison, on an inauspicious day, as the child of rape or incest, malnourished, premature and in need of extraordinary medical support, exposed to narcotics in utero, as conjoined twins, as an intersex baby, or any of the other myriad ways in which you might be different from others. You still have the same rights everyone else does.
All human beings are equal. That why they’re called Human Rights. We all get them, regardless. But all human beings discriminate. That’s why fundamental rights and freedoms are including in Constitutions, and why we need protection against intolerance – our own and other people’s. Finding yourself trying to take out a part of a clause designed to promote tolerance? Is all the more reason to work for its inclusion.