The bathroom controversy

President Obama makes one of the best statements I have seen about the need for understanding.

“The civil-rights movement happened because there was civil disobedience, because people were willing to go to jail, because there were events like Bloody Sunday,” Obama told George Stephanopoulos. “But it was also because the leadership of the movement consistently stayed open to the possibility of reconciliation, and sought to understand the views—even views that were appalling to them—of the other side.”

But it seems to me there is a strange inconsistency. In the recent conflict over transgender rights in North Carolina – the bathroom controversy –  Obama has brought down the full weight of the Federal government to force the state to change its recent law. Thus the issue has become, in the current lingo, “politicized” – or more exactly, polarized.

I think it is right that transgendered people be treated as full members of the community. Obama thinks it’s right. We have a kind of righteous impatience – a determination to force resisters to give in. It makes sense, of course, to use the power of government as a vehicle. But I am also worried that this fails to understand the views of the other side, and thus closes off the “possibility of reconciliation”.

Over the last few decades there has been a quite rapid extension of rights–  to ethnic and racial minorities, to women, to varied sexual preferences, and so on. We are seeing now that although some of those extensions have been accepted quite broadly, others have produced a resistance that may have gone underground for a time, but now is flaring forth in the intense rebellion of the Right. Forcing clearly has its limits.

How do we get a better result? Obama has the answer, I think, in the quote above: seek to understand the views – even views appalling to us – of the other side. I certainly don’t have such an understanding in this case. And it is dangerous to use the power of government without more understanding.