Personal Encounters, Proximity and Social Justice

On May 20, 2013, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a dramatic change of heart
on the issue of same-sex marriage. On his website, Rudd set out the reasons for his shift:
outdated religious proscriptions; emerging research on same-sex families; separation
between church and state.

Rudd’s ‘conversion’ was inspired not by this reasoned argument, however, but by a
conversation with a former staffer, who came out to him. Rudd conceded that the staffer
“threw me a bit. And so the re-think began”.

Rudd’s story mimics that of Senator Rob Portman in the United States. Earlier this year,
Portman became the first incumbent Republican to publicly support same-sex marriage.
Portman learned that his son, Will, was gay; this revelation led him “to think through [his]
position in a much deeper way”.

These conversions challenge our understanding of the way we engage with questions of
social justice. Rudd and Portman appear guilty of partiality. The only fact that changed after
Portman co-sponsored the Defence of Marriage Act is that the discrimination it
institutionalised began to affect his son. But we generally think that our responses to social
injustice should not depend on some personal connection with the subject matter. Justice in
any sphere – immigration, health and education, crime – should be determined by objective
reasons.

This is reflected in our public debate. We think there are right answers to these questions,
which we can determine through discussion of the types of reasons cited by Rudd. These
reasons, however, were just as valid before Rudd’s conversation with the staffer, as after.
To claim otherwise implies that injustice is immaterial until it affects me personally.

However, Rudd and Portman only seemed able to respond to the rational arguments for
same-sex marriage because of striking, first-person encounters with people suffering
injustice. How should we understand the role of these personal encounters in our responses
to injustice?
Most obviously, these encounters make vivid the experience of injustice. It might be difficult
to grasp, from the figure alone, the significance of the fact that over 100,000 people are
currently homeless across Australia. A conversation with someone sleeping rough, however,
provides a stark insight into the insecurity and isolation that are the reality of homelessness.

More importantly, these personal encounters extend our capacity to sensibly apply
particular concepts. For example, we associate marriage with certain concepts – loyalty,
intimacy, exclusivity, respect, love – that help explain why it is valuable. Portman and Rudd
define their own relationships through the application of these concepts. Their respective
encounters enabled them to see how these valuable concepts could be sensibly extended to
marriage between people like the son and the staffer.

These encounters allowed Rudd and Portman to see themselves as occupying the same
conceptual space as members of same-sex relationships. For want of a better term, it
brought them into conceptual proximity. As Raimond Gaita points out, this kind of proximity
“sets the stage for our sense of what it means to wrong someone”. It was only once Rudd
was able to see himself as occupying the same conceptual space as his former staffer that
his stated reasons became relevant. Rudd’s newfound proximity enabled him to see the true
meaning of this legal discrimination for the staffer: the designation of one’s relationship as
subordinate, not sufficiently sophisticated to warrant social recognition, and less than fully
human.

Community service provides a fantastic opportunity for encounters that bring people into
conceptual proximity. I’ve done some volunteering over the past few years at Sacred Heart
Mission, which provides meals for over 300 people, twice-a-day, 365 days-a-year. Recently,
the Mission was forced to temporarily move their kitchen facilities to make way for
renovations. The change caused significant discontent and distress among the clients. This
might have seemed an overreaction: the meals were still served, only a minute away from
the ordinary facilities.

Speaking to several clients, however, helped me pinpoint the real meaning of such a change
for them. Despite the (often long-term) fragility and instability of their lives, the clients were
still capable of making connections, valuing some measure of order on their lives, and
feeling hurt and threatened when that order was jeopardised. This was not a question of
civil rights on the scale of same-sex marriage. But reaching a genuine understanding of the
clients’ experience required me to enter a conceptual space in which we both could be
harmed alike by such disruption.

Our openness to certain perspectives on social justice depends upon more than objective
reasons. It requires conceptual proximity to those suffering injustice. This might be
catalysed by something as both simple and radical as a conversation with a friend or family
member, or work at a local charity. By testing the application of our concepts, these
encounters broaden our moral imaginations.