Defining Liberalism: "Passing"

Andrew Sullivan writes today, "Every gay person in the closet is an enabler of homophobia." Sullivan denies the right of the one who is different in some way to "pass" as part of the mainstream if he or she can.

This pains me, because for the last decade self-described conservative Sullivan's "Dish" blog has in many ways been a reliable guide to the liberal spirit in the public life of a democracy. But personal liberty in  a liberal democracy (see The Liberal Founding), while it encourages—and needs—public-spiritedness, means complete freedom to live a private life so long as doing so does not infringe the rights and liberties of others. (As Pericles' Funeral Oration notes, "And we live not only free in the administration of the state but also one with another void of jealousy touching each other’s daily course of life, not offended at any man for following his own humour, nor casting on any man censorious looks.")

It's a free country, and this means that Barry Goldwater gets to be an Episcopalian and Madeleine Albright gets to live as a gentile (when a media discussion arose concerning the fact that Albright is of Jewish descent, someone remarked, "She doesn't want to know from Jewish"). People of African-American descent who don't look black are free to just live as a person and need not deal every day with the identity issues which would arise if they did not pass as white. A gay actress (in this case Jodie Foster, the subject of Andrew Sullivan's article above) has no obligation to come out, and excellent reasons not to. The general roles Foster has played, and their conventional romantic scenes, probably wouldn't have been available to her if she had been out.

Privacy is a freedom of enormous value. Privacy means that one is free from being arbitrarily identified with some group, supposed to be in dire plight. It means that one is free from being saddled by others, or by what John Stuart Mill called "social tyranny," with an involuntary obligation to alleviate that plight. As Jim Sleeper observed in Liberal Racism, the assumption that each person of color is to be treated as a "racial delegate" is just wrong. Nor is Jodie Foster, or anyone else, to be involuntarily enlisted in the sexual orientation wars. It's a free country. We get to choose our battles, or no battles.

A signature difference between liberal and left is that liberal does not care about identity. As mentioned in these pages before, liberalism is public and civil. One's subculture, race, gender, religion or irreligion, esthetic taste, etc., may be freely enjoyed or ignored under the aegis of the liberal society, but are not otherwise of public concern. "We live . . . free," as Pericles said above.

In a liberal society the only identity that matters is that one is a citizen. A free citizen, not subservient to anyone or anything, unless in free and informed voluntary consent. As Immanuel Kant said in "What Is Enlightenment?" "Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another."