All human rights must be open to debate, always
By: Sam Gfree
Tags: Womens Rights, Feminism, Political Philosophy, Gender Critical

Colm O’Gorman thinks people should not be allowed to debate human rights. For a director of an organisation that campaigns for freedom and human rights, this is a strange view indeed, and seemingly at odds with Amnesty International’s mission.

Last week he tweeted, “Putting peoples rights and dignity up for ‘debate’ is never acceptable… Would you be ok with the human rights of gay people or of people of colour being put up for debate like this? Really?”

My answer is to this is an emphatic yes, I want all human rights to be open to debate always. That is how free society and democracy works.

O’Gorman’s not the first to say this. Slogans like “trans rights are not up for debate” and “no debate on trans rights” are commonplace. (It’s almost like one side has all the arguments and evidence.)

There are two big reasons why human rights must always be open to debate and scrutiny.

Consent of the governed

The creation and enforcement of laws gains moral legitimacy through the consent of the governed. Wikipedia traces the history of this phrase back through the US Declaration of Independence and John Locke to the fifteenth century.

For people to consent to a law, they must have the freedom to scrutinise it, criticise it, disagree with it and propose alternatives. If this is forbidden, there can be no meaningful consent for the law. Without any meaningful consent, that law becomes authoritarian rather than democratic and has no moral legitimacy. Freedom to debate human rights is a necessary part of free society and democracy

Slippery slope to tyranny

Second, suppose a nation prohibits women from speaking out in favour of single-sex spaces. It now no longer has the principle of free speech. Suppose then one group wants to ban opposition to environmental regulations? Another wants to ban opposition to abortion. Where’s the argument against these: if one political view can be banned, why shouldn’t others? The next thing anybody knows is there’ll be half a dozen political views that people are simply not allowed to have. That’s not a society I want to live in, and that’s why many like me are strongly in favour of free speech.

Counterarguments

There are two main counterarguments, and the first is “what about racism, etc, would you allow that?” To respond, please consider the following types of statements:

Category 1: Arguments about public policy, human rights, laws and the enforcement of laws. Category 2: Statements of the form <minority group> are <negative characteristic> Category 3: Discussion regarding empirical data about behaviours and characteristics across groups

The first category must always be free. In the context of the transgender debate, women must have the absolute freedom to campaign in favour of single-sex spaces.

The second category is already regulated, both by the law and social norms.

The third category can cause problems, particularly when the media oversimplifies research findings, which pressure groups then latch on to. Data like this does need to be handled with sensitivity, and it often isn’t. My own view on the trans debate is we must have accurate data to guide public policy. This includes research into detransitioners, research into all the effects of allowing trans women into women’s spaces, and crime statistics that record both sex and gender. The academic and medical worlds need total freedom to conduct research and collect data.

The second counterargument is to separate rights and laws. Here, someone like O’Gorman might say, “sure, have debates about laws, but rights are sacrosanct and not open to debate”.

There are two distinct views on the nature of rights: one is that rights are socially constructed, i.e. people create them; the other is that rights are innate, and exist irrespective of human societies.

In the first, the starting point is what kind of society people want to live in. People then draft a set of rights to reflect their vision of society. Rights then evolve as people’s views about what kind of society they want to live in changes. New rights are created, others modified. Here freedom of speech is obviously necessary for this process of scrutiny and amendment.

In the second, rights are seen as being derived or discovered, perhaps a bit like a mathematical proof or scientific finding. Here, codified rights might change as a society gains new insights or interpretations into what these innate set of rights really are. Freedom of speech is surely necessary in this case too, just as mathematicians and scientists are allowed to challenge proofs and research findings.

Conclusion

Open debate about human rights and laws is an essential foundation of a free society. Those who wish to deny it are authoritarian. They also seem to lack arguments and evidence.