The story of the rejection last autumn of my appointment to be a member of the European Commission is notorious. Nominated to the Commission by the Italian Government, I was compelled to withdraw because of some allegedly homophobic remarks I was said to have made before the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs. Now that the dust from that dispute has settled, and with a new Commission in place, it is time to ask what lessons can be drawn from this affair.
The first lesson concerns the indispensability in politics of accurate information and reporting. Democracy works only if there is a fair reporting of the issues being debated. Of course, everyone is free to comment on and evaluate events as he or she pleases. But a high standard of fidelity to the truth is needed in the media; otherwise, debates become too distorted for citizens to evaluate correctly their meaning. Reporters are not entitled to so twist the facts as to reinvent them.
In my case, the main charge against me was invented: I made no homophobic statement. Nor did I introduce the issue of homosexuality into the debate over my appointment. My opponents did. I did not introduce the emotionally charged word “sin” and tie it to homosexuality in the debate. Once again, my foes did this.
What I said, instead, was this: I might, as a practicing Roman Catholic who adheres to his Church’s teachings, think that homosexuality is a sin. This belief could not be construed to have any influence on my decisions, unless I also said and believed that homosexuality is also a crime. But I said nothing of the sort.
A liberal society is a society in which people holding different moral opinions are bound together through a common rule of law. In the fields of both law and politics, I have consistently and clearly supported the principle of non-discrimination. The distinction that I was drawing in my testimony, between law and morals, was not accepted. Worse, it was turned into a caricature, and then declared false.
Indeed, the committee entered in the sphere of moral conscience by stating that anyone who does not adhere to a positive moral evaluation of homosexuality is unfit to serve as a European commissioner. This means that anyone holding to the moral doctrines of most Christian churches should nowadays be considered a second-class citizen in the European Union. According to this principle, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, and Alcide de Gasperi – three of the EU’s founding fathers – would not measure up.
What is wrong with the fact that a parliamentary committee passes a political judgment against a Commissioner for purely political reasons? The rejection of my nomination was, according to many, just another political battle: you win some, you lose some, but you cannot say that you have been unfairly discriminated against simply because you lost.
But the European Commission is not accountable to the European Parliament in the same way that a national government is accountable to its parliament. The EU’s member governments name the members of the European Commission, and the Parliament lacks an explicit right to veto them. A hearing over a nomination to be a Commissioner before an EU parliamentary committee should simply examine whether the person is competent in the area he or she is to oversee on the Commission, and whether there are elements of moral indignity – i.e., such obvious moral failings as to be disqualifying.
Now it seems that, according to the committee that rejected my nomination, adhering to the principles of most Christian churches is a cause for such a “moral” disqualification. The implication of this position is profound and shocking. If it were generally accepted, it would imply that the EU now holds official moral doctrines, and that allegiance to these doctrines is required in order to exercise the full right of citizens to serve in a public capacity.
That implication is intolerable, and it will progressively weaken and divide the EU through a type of semi-official hostility to religious faith. Moreover, the demand for such an allegiance is a renunciation of one of the most important steps in Europe’s development.
It has been roughly 300 years since religious people came to understand that being of a different faith, or being agnostic, did not disqualify one from public office. If the moral test that I endured stands, it means that Europe has come full circle: agnostics are no longer willing to accept that being religious – and having different moral views – should not bar someone from holding an official post.
I hope that the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs will reconsider its behavior, and that the “Buttiglione affair” will remain only an ordinary political injustice against a single individual rather than the harbinger of second-class citizenship for religious believers.
If, on the other hand, the European Parliament’s members follow through on the logic of my case – if my shunning becomes the basis for a consistent policy – the EU will be on its way to creating a kind of morality police and launching a modern-day inquisition, one that crassly violates both freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
Rocco BUTTIGLIONE, formerly Italy’s European Affairs minister, is now Professor of Law at the University of Rome.
