The vilification of David Norris

Cards on the table. I have known for a long time that, if sufficient support was there within the Labour Party, Michael D. Higgins would run for President in 2011. The truth is that I can’t think of anyone more suited to the role. He has in abundance the intellectual qualities that have proven to be of such importance in the successive presidencies of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. He is a brilliant, subtle and frequently inspirational speaker. His interests are wide-ranging. He has a deep commitment to the importance of education. He has a genuine passion for Irish culture and for the arts in general. For many years, he has been directly involved in sport, through his association with the League of Ireland side, Galway United...

Having spent 34 years in political office, as a Senator first and then as a member of the Dáil – the latter absorbing a remarkable 26 years of his life – he has a powerful track record of committed public service. He is experienced and hugely respected on the international stage. A naturally warm individual, he is widely liked by people across the political spectrum for his charm, and the empathy he has consistently demonstrated with the marginalised.
He exhibited fine qualities of statesmanship during his time as Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in the 1990s. He has a sense of humour. And, far from being locked into any narrow view of what it is to be Irish, he has a broad and thoroughly inclusive attitude, which is exactly what’s needed to reflect the modern reality of the Republic.
You can imagine why then, when I first heard that David Norris was planning to run for the Áras, it struck me as more than somewhat ironic. In previous elections, there was only ever one contender worth supporting, if even that. Now, in 2011, we had two. If David Norris had run in 2001 or 2006, I’d have voted for him.
However, apart entirely from the fact that Michael D. Higgins wrote for Hot Press for many years, I know that he has what it takes to be a great President. That is why, if he wins the Labour nomination as he should, he will get my No. 1 preference.
But that doesn’t make the campaign of vilification which is currently being mounted against David Norris seem any less appalling.

David Norris began his push for the Park early and was widely considered to be the frontrunner over the past three months. But the rules of the game are restrictive. To compete at all, he has to get the support of a minimum of 20 representatives currently occupying seats in either the Dáil or the Seanad. Or alternatively he has to receive the endorsement of at least four county councils.
The indications were that Senator Norris was on course to receive the support necessary to run for the Áras. Until, that is, Helen Lucy Burke entered the picture. Burke interviewed David Norris for Magill magazine back in 2002. In the interview, the Senator expressed views about sexuality which would certainly not fit in cosily with the conservative consensus in Ireland.
For reasons that we can only speculate about, Helen Lucy Burke thought that it was worth making a special effort to bring these views to the attention of the electorate, going on RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline programme to claim that David Norris was not opposed to paedophilia or incest.
It would be hard to imagine a more inflammatory accusation at the beginning of an election campaign, in which the trustworthiness and likeability of a candidate are paramount.
This assertion about paedophilia was based on comments in the interview, in which he referred to the practice in ancient Greece of an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life. “I think there can be something to be said for it,” he was quoted as saying.
Read in isolation, this sentence could give the impression that David Norris was condoning the sexual exploitation of minors by older men, and that, indeed, this was something in which he might have a personal vested interest.
Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. During the course of the interview, David Norris had in fact stated that he had no interest whatsoever in young men. What he was doing – or trying to do – was to give an accurate and truthful account of what he felt, growing up as a young, homosexual man in a society that condemned homosexuality not just as abhorrent and sinful, but also as illegal.
In the interview, David Norris also suggested that, where sexual activities are concerned, consent is a far more important consideration than age. On related topics, he offered the view that it would be better to legalise prostitution (he is correct) and that it would also be preferable to legalise drugs, in order to minimise their damaging effects on society (again he is right).
Since the comments he made to Magill in 2002 – and others made in an interview with Jason O’Toole in the Daily Mail – were publicised, a campaign of vilification has been waged against Norris, suggesting that he is not fit to be the President of Ireland.
Apparently, even to discuss in an open and thoughtful light the issue of sexual initiation renders someone unfit for public life – when exactly the opposite should be the case.
In fact, this is a very real issue, which must be addressed in a far more nuanced way than we have to date in Ireland, as a case currently before the courts in which a young man is being tried for rape, for engaging in (mutually) underage consensual sex with his girlfriend confirms.
The modern approach, fuelled far too often by the media, is to insist that every issue can be reduced to black and white terms. It is a climate in which people are expected to deny their own experience simply to conform with ill-considered expectations. In relation to teenage sexuality, this has resulted in the introduction of appallingly defective and discriminatory legislation which criminalises a 14-year-old boy who has sex with a 16-year-old girl – but lets her off entirely without sanction.
Why was this legislation allowed to enter the statute books? Why was there no outcry from the media? Why were women’s groups silent on the obvious gender discrimination, treating teenage girls as if they were less rational and less capable of making choices than young men? Why did the Equality Authority not oppose it? Why did the President Mary McAleese, a lawyer, not refer it to the Supreme Court to check its constitutionality, as she could and clearly should have done?
It is absolutely right that children should be protected from the attentions of predatory adults and that the full rigour of appropriately tough laws should be applied to anyone that imposes himself or herself on children. And if you read what David Norris had to say, this is a view he supports. But the question of the rights of a young person to freely engage in sexual activity is a different matter entirely and a far more difficult one.
In recent issues of Hot Press, a number of well known people – including Tony Fenton in this issue – have given 15 or 16 as the age at which they lost their virginity. Under Irish law, they would now be engaging in an illegal activity that could see them being placed on the sex offenders list and slammed in jail for Christ knows how many years. That is plain madness.
Many teenagers are sexually active from the age of 14 or 15. Some are more advanced than others. The current official attitude is that you simply ban these citizens from having sex – and criminalise the boy involved in any heterosexual incident. Lesbian sex between a couple of 15-year-old girls, however, invokes no criminal sanction of any kind.
This is arrant prejudice turned into law.
David Norris did not say that, as a 50 or 60 year-old man, he was interested in much younger sexual partners: he said the opposite. But he did acknowledge, truthfully and honestly, that as a teenager he would have appreciated the company or friendship of an older man, potentially to teach him what he didn’t know then about sex.
Would there be a furore if a heterosexual candidate said that at the age of 15 or 16, he’d have loved an older girl or woman to come along and initiate him into sex? I doubt it. Either way, it has to be acknowledged that it is legitimate for people who are sexually capable to feel that outlawing them from sexual activity with whoever they choose as their sexual partners is at the very best a dubious legal exercise. In suggesting that consent was more important than age, David Norris was simply reflecting what is – or should be – a genuine dilemma for legislators.
These are extremely sensitive issues. The history of sexual abuse, that occurred in Ireland over such a protracted period, is a disgrace to this society and to the authorities who were in charge here and who failed to exercise their duty of care to children, who should at all times and in every way be protected from any form of sexual interest or impositions from adults.
There is also a real and ever-present danger of the exploitation of young people by older people and it is the duty of legislators and authorities to create an institutional and legal framework that minimises in every sustainable way the danger that children might have sex in any way imposed on them.
In relation to all of this, framing legislation that is sufficiently nuanced is not easy. But rather than enacting bad laws, the State’s duty of care can and must be exercised through all of the other available channels, most notably through sex and lifestyle education (in which parents also have a potentially crucial role to play).
Either way, a witch-hunt against anyone who believes that it is necessary to try to find the kind of balance that accommodates the lived experience of young people as they struggle to come to terms with their sexuality, and to express themselves through it, is entirely unjustified.
If he gets the support necessary to confirm his candidacy, David Norris will get my No. 2 preference.