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Marriage Equality, Suspicion, and Insular Thinking

July 9, 2015January 28, 2023 Adam Zolkover 2

A fair amount of uncivil discourse has passed through the American public sphere since the end of June when, in their decision on Obergefell vs Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.

Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, almost immediately released a non-binding legal opinion which, according to Robert Garrett of The Dallas Morning News, stated that clerks could refuse on First Amendment grounds to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because, as he says, of their religious objections. Paxton added in a press release that there are numerous lawyers who stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs, in many cases on a pro-bono basis, and that his office, too, stands in defense of their rights.

And Ken Paxton is not alone. In Tennessee, the beginning of July saw the entire staff of the county clerk’s office of Decatur County resign on religious grounds. In Nebraska, Sioux County clerk Michelle Zimmerman said that she will deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples because her religious beliefs prevent her from complying with the law. And in Kentucky, county clerk Casey Davis has called on the state legislature to pass a new law allowing couples to purchase marriage licenses online, so as not to have to violate his religious beliefs by issuing the licenses himself.

These cases in themselves are not inherently uncivil. Freedom of religion is a fundamental right in the United States, and it certainly seems worth having a frank conversation about how to implement this change in the interpretation of the law while respecting, to the greatest degree possible, everybody’s interests.

But in practice, these cases and the discourse that surrounds them are a perfect example of the kind of incivility that is born of a breakdown of communication. All parties are so busy talking to their ideological in-group, and so busy indulging their ideological in-group’s preconceived notions, that nobody can hear the other side speak.

And so when social conservatives over the past several weeks have stood up for religious freedom, too often pro-gay marriage factions have jumped to the least generous possible conclusions. And conservatives have jumped to that same ungenerous place when progressives have celebrated what seems very much like an affirmation of their identity, needs and beliefs.

To see the kind of vitriol this produces, one needs only look at the blanket accusations of bigotry bandied about on Twitter by folks who support the Obergefell ruling.

"Bigot homophobe Texas Attourney General @KenPaxtonTX looks like he might have some personal problems."

"Bigot Brownback Issues Order to Protect Religious Liberty After SCOTUS Ruling"

"Religious liberty does not include being a bigot! New battle for same sex marriage erupts in Texas."

"My hatred of people using religion as their reasoning for being against same-sex marriage is at an all-time high. YOU'RE A BIGOT."

And one needs only look at the kinds of suspicious discourses bandied about by Obergefell opponents. According to The Daily Caller, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called the Supreme Court completely out of control, and said that the Obergefell decision amounted to an affront to God, country, and political affiliation. Hillary Clinton and The Left will now mount an all-out assault on Religious Freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment, Jindal opined.

While in his dissent on the case, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito falls into the slippery slope fallacy, writing that the ruling will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy, and that those who cling to old beliefs will be relegated to whispering their thoughts in the recesses of their own homes for fear of public persecution.

The sad part about it is that each side seems to be proving the other right. Alito worries that opponents of gay marriage risk being labeled as bigots for their views, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen on Twitter. While progressives fear that resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling is born of narrow-mindedness, and we’ve seen plenty of that, too. When former Arkansas governor and current presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says that legalization of same-sex marriage would lead to the “criminalization of Christianity,” and that the country “must resist and reject judicial tyranny,” what else should supporters of marriage equality think?

A solution to this – if in fact we collectively want one – exists in reconsidering the purpose of speech. Is the goal of public discourse merely political in the lowest sense of the word? Is it meant to score points, secure donors, and collect votes with the hope of getting elected the next time around? If so – if we want only to talk to the people who already agree with us – then the status quo works fine.

But if Ken Paxton and county clerks around the country are sincere in their concerns, and if a significant portion of the citizenry of the United States feels that their religious freedom is being trampled on by the Obergefell ruling, then speech might have to mean something broader: it might have to mean being quiet and listening, too.

For those of us who work on civility, the Institute’s definition of the term – that is, claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process – is almost a mantra: words repeated by rote, filled as much with ritual meaning as with relevant content.

But the Institute’s definition is certainly relevant here.

It’s time for uncivil progressives to take a break from sneering at social conservatives who look at the Bible, or the weight of history, and decide that same sex marriage really has no precedent. And it’s time for uncivil social conservatives to stop dismissing claims from same sex couples that what they want is only what everybody else already has. If we read beyond the insularity and fear, what both sides are expressing is that they want to have their identity, needs, and beliefs respected and protected by law. And through civil discussion – the sort of discussion where every party comes to the table honest about its desires and motivations – a solution where all sides can get what they want is far from beyond the realm of what’s possible.

Institute Featured in Houston Chronicle Blog, The Peace Pastor

May 29, 2015 Adam Zolkover 1

Last Sunday, the Institute and its definition of civility were featured in The Houston Chronicle as part of its ongoing blog series, The Peace Pastor, written by Marty Troyer of the Houston Mennonite church.

Troyer, writing about what we might perceive to be difficult conversations, tells us that there are two keys to preparing for such an encounter. First, he says, is to consider civility – that the point of any hard interaction must be claiming and caring for our identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process. And second, that we must be self-differentiated – have the capacity to be yourself while remaining connected to your community.

This pair of important precepts, says Troyer, might better prepare us for the sorts of conversations that are necessary – even key – but that we might not feel ready to face. Like discussion of how faithful Christians should relate to our lesbian and gay friends and families.

We can, Troyer writes, humbly acknowledge our LGBT members and family have repeatedly stated that traditional non-affirming policies are dehumanizing and experienced as violence. We can accept that the LGBT community is statistically the most vulnerable to sexual abuse and overwhelmingly find non-affirming policies leave them with no other option but non-participation in the life of the church.

It needn’t change our opinions, he writes, but accepting that other people have values and needs that are important to them, even as ours are important to us, puts us in a position to open a dialog rather than end it.

What Troyer advocates here is a position close to Martin Marty and Richard Mouw’s notion of convicted civility. In an article for The Civility Blog last year, guest author John Backman wrote that convicted civility asks those of us with strong convictions to honor all others, seek their well-being, and hear their deepest convictions, particularly when we disagree.

And this is what Troyer is asking for here.

Troyer does not say that we must accept the needs, values, and opinions of others without reservation. He doesn’t say that we must bend to the will of others without regard for our own. What he says is that by first knowing our own minds, and then accepting that others know their minds too, we can do more to make sure that everybody’s needs are met.

We can maybe compromise a little bit on policy without compromising too much on integrity. And that’s a pretty good place to be.

The (In)Civility of Some Arizona Churches

May 22, 2015 Adam Zolkover

This is a curious story about civility – or the lack thereof – among the faithful. Apparently, in Fountain Hills, Arizona, eight area churches are collaborating this May on a campaign that they call “Progressive” Christianity: Fact or Fiction, which targets The Fountains United Methodist Church and its pastor, David Felton, who is the author of the bestselling book, Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity.

According to the Fox affiliate in Phoenix, The Fountains is the only progressive church in the area. And it is geared, as Pastor Felton says, toward letting people know that there’s a choice out there, they don’t have to deny science, they don’t have to hate their gay neighbor, they don’t have to read and take the bible in a way that causes them to abandon their rational mind.

The pastors of the eight collaborating churches – Rick Ponzo, Don Lawrence, Rod Warembourg, Tony Pierce, Todd Forrest, Bill Good, Steve Bergeson, and Tom Daly – wrote in an op-ed piece in the Fountain Hills Times on May 13 that they will present a series of sermons, the objective of which is to answer three primary questions:

What is the difference between “Progressive” Christianity and Biblical Christianity?

Does that difference really matter in a relativistic age?

How can a Christian decipher what he or she should believe?

In the op-ed, they couch the sermon series as an exercise in promoting ecumenical cooperation and civility:

Unity among churches is a wonderful thing when the truths at stake are greater than the differences between us. By teaming up to stand for the essential truths that we embrace, eight pastors and their churches are making a key statement: Truth matters to us.

But as Daniel Schultz of the USC Annenberg School’s Religion Dispatches blog writes, the whole thing is fundamentally divisive. It airs the enmity between liberal and conservative Christians. It is a further sign of the same increasing polarization along ideological lines that infects American political culture. And the net effect, writes Schultz, is roughly analogous to when campaign ads go negative: the base is kept strong and in line, but the majority of people say “to hell with the both of you, I’m staying home.”

For our purposes, though, what’s even more interesting here is that it’s not just the “Progressive” Christianity: Fact or Fiction campaign itself that betrays this breakdown in civility. Though a group of eight conservative churches teaming up to discredit a lone progressive church has an odor of bullying about it, progressive pastor David Felton’s own words are hardly innocuous. In his response to Fox’s Phoenix affiliate, his characterization of other Christians as irrational science deniers and homophobes is essentializing, and demeaning, and certainly does no justice to the nuance of opinion of the folks who sit across the aisle from him.

What’s going on here seems to be a kind of breakdown of empathy that’s caused by a failure of imagination on both sides.

In his Beyond Vietnam speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said that the meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence is that it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. It helps us to see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and to know that those whom we call the opposition are in fact brothers and sisters in another guise.

And that is what’s missing here. In their public statements, the churches promoting “Progressive” Christianity: Fact or Fiction – and also the church being targeted being targeted by the campaign – seem unable to see themselves from their adversaries’ point of view. Adherence to ideology, and adherence to an essentializing understanding of who the other side is, have left them blind to the weaknesses in their own positions. And so they are able to claim and care for their own needs, but they are unable to do so while respecting the needs of others.

From the outside, this seems like a classic case of extreme measures cutting off lines of communications between parties just when a set of civil conversations is needed the most.

Civility and the Recent Nigerian Election

May 7, 2015May 7, 2015 Adam Zolkover 1

As in all things, it is good to have some perspective when it comes to issues of civility. So often, here in the United States, we conflate civility with etiquette and good manners. There’s something to that. As when Christa Dowling, blogging at The Huffington Post, writes that we should be concerned that common courtesy is on the wane. Coarse language, she writes, has become part of the public discourse, technology like smartphones demand more and more attention, and the result is a breakdown of the kind of communicative discourse, which helps to build and grow strong personal and business relationships.

This is important. One could argue, as Dowling does, that civil society is predicated on having a common sense of etiquette and manners – that those things allow us to make our needs known without giving offense, and to listen to the needs of others without being offended ourselves. And one would not be wrong.

But when we narrow our view of civility just to the question of manners, or even when we narrow it to the question of public policy debates (as we often do on this blog), we miss a larger implication of the term. As The Nigerian Tribune pointed out in April, civility is about doing those things that are necessary for the good of the whole, even when they are personally unpleasant – even when they involve ceding power.

Writing about the recent Nigerian elections, the Tribune, on April 3, reported that the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) has described the acceptance of defeat by President Goodluck Jonathan in the last presidential election as a demonstration of political civility and statesmanship.

Consider that: acceptance of defeat in a political election – the willingness to step aside – as a face of civility.

The MOSOP, a group which represents the indigenous Ogoni people of southern Nigeria, also commended Nigerians for the peaceful national polls, which it said were imperfect but successful. And it called on the nation’s elections commission to entrench transparency in its organisation and management of elections.

All of these things are aspects of civility in a way that is surprisingly similar to what Christa Dowling says about manners. Like manners and etiquette, engagement in peaceful elections and the willingness to cede power comprise the basic machinery necessary to live in a community that allows everybody to get a little bit of what they want.

Like ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ voting is a way of communicating your needs in a manner that is peaceful and respectful to others. And abiding by the results of elections, similarly, is a way of communicating that you have heard and acknowledge what others have had to say.

But unlike ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ the stakes are that much higher. The feeling of being offended or unacknowledged because of bad manners can lead to violence. But all told, those cases are isolated and rare. On the other hand, invalid elections and the refusal of incumbents to leave office is a recipe for violence. It communicates a disrespect for the cumulative will of community-members and a disdain for the machinery that allows for productive civil discourse at all.

We could think of this as the sort of thing that’s an issue in Nigeria, but not the United States. But if we did, we would be wrong. In his 1796 farewell address, as part of his condemnation of political parties, George Washington discusses just this sort of thing. He says:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Because of parties or whatever else, says Washington, we tend as a society toward an erosion of the underlying institutions – voting, terms of office, etc. – that make democratic rule work. And we must be ever vigilant to maintain them, to maintain this face of civility, in order to keep formal and permanent despotism at bay.

Manners are important, in other words, but they are just one face of the larger notion of civility of which we must be more aware.

Senator Susan Collins delivers the Margaret Chase Smith Public Affairs Lecture

May 1, 2015 Adam Zolkover 3

One month ago, Senator Susan Collins delivered the Margaret Chase Smith Public Affairs Lecture at the University of Maine. Her topic was hyper-partisanship and the loss of civility in Washington D.C. And her words are worth repeating here.

According to The Maine Campus, the student newspaper at the University of Maine, she told a room of students, faculty, and members of the community that the problem of hyper-partisanship has led to an unwillingness to compromise on both sides of the political aisle, and to a culture of political inaction, gridlock, and endless infighting. And she told her audience that for too many [politicians] today, achieving solutions is not the primary goal.

In a guest column in the Portsmouth Herald, Senator Collins repeated much of what she said in her lecture, writing that the sad fact of the matter is that often as not, attempts at reaching across the aisle are greeted with scorn by strident partisans who accuse the compromiser of being a “sell out”. And she said that the reason is in no small part the way that governance has been subsumed by a culture of constant campaigning. The problem is aided and abetted by cable and radio shows whose ratings often depend on reaching small but highly partisan members of the electorate.

But, said Collins, the system is not beyond repair: A return to civility and a spirit of compromise must be driven by concerned citizens. And we all must work in our communities for a renewed social climate characterized by civility and respect for differing viewpoints.

She said that civility does not require us to stifle our disagreements, and it does not require that we avoid unpleasant truths. But there is a right way and wrong way to have these disagreements. And a good start, Collins said, would be to emulate Senator Margaret Chase Smith herself and endeavor to avoid what, sixty-five years ago, she called the Four Horsemen of Calumny – Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.

Here are Senator Collins’s full remarks, as recorded by the University of Maine:

And here is a transcript of her talk via the Bangor Daily News.

Extreme Policy Positions: An Experiment

April 22, 2015 Adam Zolkover 14

Back in February, we looked at some experimental data from political scientists Michael J. LaCour and Donald P. Green that offered insight into the less rational side of our political beliefs, and into the value of face-to-face conversations with the objects of our prejudices in moderating our positions and changing our minds. Taking the issue of gay marriage as a test case, their study, published in Science, concluded that a rational argument in favor of marriage equality, when combined with direct interaction with a flesh-and-blood gay activist, was the most effective route to changing minds – and to having those changes stick. And they concluded that the rational argument alone was inadequate to the task.

Today, we look at a different face of our less-than-rational political selves: unjustified confidence in our understanding of the issues. In a 2013 study published in Psychological Science, authors Philip M. Fernbach, Todd Rogers, Craig R. Fox, and Steven A. Sloman examine the mentality of extreme political beliefs, and some strategies for how they might be moderated, better opening the door to the possibility of compromise.

Extreme Policy Positions: An Experiment

Fernbach and his colleagues look at what they see as a connection between extremity of position and depth of understanding. They contend that when people are required to confront their relative ignorance on a given political issue, they become more likely to abandon their extreme position, and to embrace more moderate positions instead. People tend to have unjustified confidence in their understanding of policies, they write, and when they are asked – specifically – to explain those policies, the illusion of understanding evaporates and they become more open to other sorts of views.

To test this, the authors conducted three experiments. In the first, they asked participants to rate how well they thought they understood six hot-button political issues – issues like raising the retirement age for Social Security and imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran for their nuclear program. They asked the participants to provide explanations for the policies they claimed to support, and then, after that, re-rated both how well participants thought they understood the policies, and how extreme their positions were.

Across all six political issues, Fernbach and his colleagues found that asking people to explain how policies work decreased their reported understanding of those policies and led them to report more moderate attitudes toward those policies.

In their second experiment, the researchers sought to determine whether it was having to explain the policies specifically that moderated participants’ positions, or whether some other in-depth discussion – like enumerating reasons why they held the policy attitude they did – would be adequate. Here, they had half of their participants explain, and half enumerate their rationale. And what they found was that the latter was inadequate: enumerating reasons did not lead to any change in position extremity at all.

Finally, Ferbach and his colleagues’ third experiment tested whether increased moderation on political issues would lead to less material support for political figures and organizations that advocate for those extreme political positions. Participants were given the opportunity to donate money to organizations that supported their initial extreme position. And after asking participants to explain their position, what the researchers found was that, indeed, they were less likely to show that kind of material support.

From the perspective of civility, what is interesting about this study is less the increase in political moderation than the question of understanding. Civil discourse – the kind of discourse where I can claim my needs even as I recognize that you have valid needs, too – does not necessarily require that we hold middle-of-the-road views. But it does require understanding. It requires that we understand that there is more than one valid point of view on most political issues. And it requires that we understand – at least a little bit – the intricacies of the policy position we would like to see implemented.

In their conclusion, Fernbach and his fellow researchers write that:

Previous research has shown that intensively educating citizens can improve the quality of democratic decisions following collective deliberation and negotiation. One reason for the effectiveness of this strategy may be that educating citizens on how policies work moderates their attitudes, increasing their willingness to explore opposing views and to compromise.

And this is really the point. It matters less that we all moderate our attitudes than that we understand the policies on which we claim to hold such strong opinions. The more we understand, the more it becomes clear just how little we understand. And it is from that place – from a self-reflective acknowledgment of our own ignorance – that we can begin to see that our adversaries may have a point, and that their point of view may deserve serious consideration, too.

Lessons in Civility from Tom Schweich’s Suicide

March 16, 2015 Adam Zolkover 1

Lessons in Civility from Tom Schweich's Suicide We so often couch civility as an exercise in niceness or courtesy, as a strategy for lubricating the jammed gears and wheels of government, or as a matter of lofty ideals — of acknowledging our common humanity, regardless of differences in our most deeply held beliefs. And all of that is important. But as we contemplate the our practice of civility, we should also consider that sometimes the consequences of abandoning civil discourse are more fundamental than any of that: it’s a matter of life and death.

The February 26 suicide of Missouri state auditor Tom Schweich should be proof enough of that.

Schweich — successful Republican politician in Missouri, recently re-elected auditor, and upcoming gubernatorial candidate — fatally shot himself in what, according to Fox News, police described as an “apparent suicide,” minutes after inviting reporters to his suburban St. Louis home for an interview.

According to Fox, Schweich had had a phone conversation with The Associated Press about his plans to go public that afternoon with allegations that the head of the Missouri Republican Party had made anti-Semitic comments about him.

As Mother Jones reports, Schweich was in fact Episcopalian, not Jewish. But he perceived that the head of the Missouri Republican Party, John Hancock, was conducting a “whisper campaign” against him by telling people that he was Jewish.

After Schweich’s death, Hancock denied this, saying: It’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.

But as Mother Jones suggests, Missouri is a state where anti-Semitism is already a political force. It is the state, says St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Tony Messenger, that gave us Frazier Glenn Miller, the raging racist who killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City. And it is a state where the division over race and creed is real in Missouri Republican politics, particularly in some rural areas.

In his eulogy for Tom Schweich, former Republican senator John C. Danforth got to the core of the auditor’s last days. And that core, Danforth tells us, is all about civility:

We often hear that words can’t hurt you. But that’s simply not true. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said just the opposite. Words for Jesus could be the moral equivalent of murder. He said if we insult a brother or sister we will be liable. He said if we call someone a fool we will be liable to hell. Well how about anti-Semitic whispers? And how about a radio ad that calls someone a “little bug,” and that is run anonymously over and over again?

Words do hurt. Words can kill. That has been proven right here in our home state.

We at the Institute couldn’t agree more. Words matter. The words with which we claim our needs are the difference between opening up a productive discussion and inciting anger and resentment. They are the difference between couching our disagreements as partnership or enmity. And in this case, they are the difference between a political disagreement and a devastating personal attack.

In this late stage of things, as Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post reminds us, it is disturbing that anybody thinks that voters can be won over with anti-Semitic bias. It is even more disturbing that, regardless of fringe anti-semitism, someone might be so upset at the accusation of being Jewish that they would take their own life.

But regardless: that seems to be the core of what happened. And the fact of it should illustrate with devastating acuteness the moral boundaries of adversarial politics and the degree to which we must be cognizant of the needs of others in the way we choose our words. As Parker writes:

Politics have always been a blood sport, a fact that some find worthy of boasting. But as we consider that America has lost a good man who was aspirational in his politics and inspirational in his private life, we face a question with an implicitly foreboding answer: Why would any decent person want to run for public office?

Her question is troubling. And it is vital. But it is almost beside the point. The better questions in this case might be: how did we get to a politics so rife with ad hominem attacks that even the most seasoned of up and coming politicians could not withstand its searing vitriol? And what can we do to fix it?

Institute Featured in Estes Park Trail-Gazette

March 4, 2015 Adam Zolkover 2

The Institute, its founders, and its definition of civility were all featured last week in the Estes Park Trail-Gazette, a weekly newspaper out of Estes Park, Colorado. In an opinion piece titled “Civility Matters. Civility Works,” town administrator Frank Lancaster frames the question of civility in terms of sport. Why, he asks, do we tolerate unsportsmanlike conduct in public discourse when we would never tolerate it on the field? Can you imagine if we had the ability to throw a flag for “unsportsmanlike conduct” in a public meeting or anonymous social media posts?

Lancaster, who became the Estes Park town administrator in May of 2012, writes that in his experience in local government, expressing your ideas and opinions in a civil manner is much more effective than ranting, raving and bullying. And by civil manner, he says, he explicitly means the formulation of civility put forth by Institute co-founders Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath: claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process.

He goes on to talk extensively about what, in practical terms, this means for how one should conduct one’s self in civic matters. He tells us, for example, to avoid ad hominem attacks: personal attacks can degrade the discussion to an “us versus them” scenario where we can lose sight of the objective. Don’t swear, he says. It is incendiary — not thought provoking. And avoid relying on stereotypes because not only is it insulting, it is counterproductive. Because no group of people all hold identical ideas and beliefs about anything, stereotyping can create a filter that interferes with our judgment in a negative way.

In all, Frank Lancaster offers nine suggestions for creating a more civil public discourse.

His purpose, he says, is to offer a gentle reminder in a time of strife. The town of Estes Park has had some fairly contentious issues to discuss as a community lately. They have, thus far, discussed these issues with civility and respect. But we can always be more effective in our public discussions, Lancaster says. And in that spirit, it behooves us to remember that courtesy and productivity are not mutually exclusive virtues.

If you want to know more about Frank Lancaster and civility in Estes Park, Colorado, click here.

Identity, and the Mechanics of Persuasive Conversations

February 11, 2015 Adam Zolkover

Civility is obviously very important, but do you ever feel like it’s increasingly tough to find common ground? Do you ever look at those big, divisive issues that have plagued American politics — abortion, the death penalty, immigration, etc. — and think to yourself: if we cannot even agree to disagree, how can we ever get to the point where we can fruitfully make policy?

The idea of a civil politics is premised on negotiation: the notion that if I tell you what I need, and if you tell me what you need, assuming that we’re both acting in good faith, we can — we hope — each get some of what we want without trampling the core values of the person sitting across the table. The idea of a civil politics, in other words, assumes that both parties are rational in their decision-making process, and that they want to move forward.

But most of us know, if we’re really honest with ourselves, that that isn’t the way that a civil negotiation works. We all have beliefs of one sort or another that are not strictly rational. And as David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, recently told NPR about vaccinations, fear, or the perception of risk, is subjective. It’s a matter of how we feel about the facts we have, not just what the facts say.

So if our beliefs — and especially our most deeply held beliefs — are in some measure subjective, it does not seem unreasonable that it might take a deeply subjective, possibly irrational form of argument to change our minds.

This premise seems to be confirmed by some new research from political scientists Michael J. LaCour and Donald P. Green of UCLA. In this study that they published in Science in December, 2014, they tell us that contact with people is often as important as contact with ideas if we seek to change minds and hearts — that civil negotiation must be one part polite argument, and one part social interaction.

The idea itself is not exactly new. It is called the contact hypothesis, and it goes back to the 1950s. Social psychologists starting with Gordon W. Allport have asserted that direct personal contact is among the best ways to break down ingrained prejudices — to change people’s minds when their position is not fundamentally rational.

What is new about LeCour and Green’s study is some fine-grained experimental data that tells us that direct engagement with the objects of our prejudices can have a profound impact not just for us in the moment, but for our opinions weeks and months later, and for our friends and families, too.

In the course of their research, LeCour and Green sent canvassers to the homes of 972 voters. Some of those canvassers were gay and some were straight, and each group spoke with the voters about why they should support gay marriage. The result was that five days after the experiment, the gay and straight canvassers each had about the same impact in changing voters’ minds. But that increasingly as time went on, voters who had had a direct interaction with a gay canvasser were considerably more likely to retain a more permissive attitude toward gay marriage. And folks who had secondhand contact with the gay canvasser — friends and family of the voter contacted — were more likely to come around to that point of view as well.

The classical formulation of the contact hypothesis predicts this. It tells us — simply — that the contact has broken down the prejudice. But what’s innovative about Green and LeCour is that their data suggests that contact is most effective when it comes with a rational argument in tow. A group of voters who received a visit from a gay canvasser with a script about why one should recycle (the experiment’s control group) did not, by and large, change their opinion about gay marriage. Or at least not at the same rate.

Green and LeCour’s results, in short, were this: that active contact is capable of producing a cascade of enduring opinion change. That rational discussion of a given issue is important. And that contact with people who have different values is important. But that we are most able to listen beyond our preconceived notions when both of those factors come together.

Returning to civility, we can learn an important lesson from this. That is: when we sit down to speak with people with whom we disagree, we must address them not just as a collection of ideas, but as a complex human being. We must understand that neither our own beliefs nor theirs are completely rational, and that the social interaction itself, not just the the content of the conversation, are invaluable in attaining mutual understanding.

This is clear in the Institute’s expanded definition of civility. It’s about respect as a starting point for dialogue about differences. But this is also a strategic point. If your goal is to change people’s mind about whatever kind of big, divisive political issue, civility is not just window dressing. It is essential to the process.

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot and Other Discourses of Civility

February 3, 2015 Adam Zolkover 1

Do civil disobedience and public protest have a part to play in a civil political culture?

The question seems like a strange one following more than six months of highly visible, sometimes violent protests that began in August 2014 with the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and that were fueled by the subsequent decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who pulled the trigger.

The media certainly characterized the events following those incidents in incendiary, uncivil terms. Pennlive.com, the online branch of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News, ran a story in the days following Brown’s death comparing the outcry in Ferguson to the violent racial strife of the 1960s. The unrest, wrote reporter Christine Vendel, brings back memories for some longtime Harrisburg residents who remember the 1969 race riots in Allison Hill that claimed the life of an 18-year-old man.

The Washington Post did the same, quoting civil rights attorney Barbara Arnwine, who compared the protests in Ferguson to the 1965 Watts Riots, saying: We’re in a time warp. Watts was bad, but this is the worst thing I’ve seen.

It is no wonder why the media framed the events in these terms, with looting and vandalism cropping up alongside the peaceful protests, and images like this one of tear-gas saturated conflicts with riot police appearing at the fore.

Hands Up, Don't Shoot and Other Discourses of Civility — Ferguson, Day 6. By Loavesofbread, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And it is no wonder, with so many authoritative voices striking the same tone, that even a well-informed public might have come to see the Ferguson protests — and public protest in general — as an inherently uncivil facet of American political culture.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I asked Institute co-founder Cassandra Dahnke about the subject, and this is what she had to say:

I have been thinking for a long time about public demonstrations / civil disobedience and how all of that relates to civility. Some people think they are mutually exclusive. I do not. It is important for citizens to be able to exercise their right to assemble, and it is key to a healthy democracy that they do so. It is also a practice that is only enhanced when framed by civility.

There is no rule that says that public demonstrations — even demonstrations whose mantra is hands up, don’t shoot — must take on a tenor of violence and civil unrest. And there is every reason to think that they should (and can, and do) look more like this:

And this:

On January 19, as part of an observance of Martin Luther King day, I attended a rally and march in Center City, Philadelphia that organizers dubbed the MLK Day of Action, Resistance and Empowerment. Resistance may sound uncivil, but that was far from the tone of the event. Protesters called for improved public education, increased wages, and an end to police violence. And participants, at odds in other aspects of their politics and identities, stood arm in arm — sometimes literally — to make their voices heard.

Religious groups with divergent beliefs on fundamental theological points came together to call for more justice and more peace. They marched in solidarity with protesters bearing the no justice, no peace slogan on their banners, who marched next to groups calling for school reform, a fifteen dollar minimum wage, and simple declarations that I am human.

White folks marched side by side with people of color. There were signs in Chinese declaring that black lives matter. Folks representing labor unions carried signs saying that racism kills. And even the Granny Peace Brigade made an appearance at the march.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, police officials estimated the crowd at 3,000, while organizers said it was closer to 6,000. And according to that same report, the police, who maintained a heavy presence all day, reported no arrests.

Rounding the southwest corner of City Hall, about halfway through the march which would end outside the Liberty Bell, I witnessed one woman, perhaps in her fifties, take what looked like a bad fall. The protesters near her all came to her aid, and so too did the police who were shadowing us. It was the closest police officer who arrived most swiftly. And he, seemingly without suspicion or malice, helped her to her feet and made sure she was okay before continuing on his way.

A public protest, of course, is never a civil chat, held quietly indoors. It isn’t a negotiation between two parties who are looking for a middle ground. But those need not be the only models for what civil discourse looks like. And if, as the founders of the Institute assert, civility is claiming and caring for one’s identity, needs and beliefs without degrading someone else’s in the process, then civility was all over Philadelphia’s MLK Day of Action, Resistance and Empowerment.

Civility was present in the appearance of Mayor Michael Nutter at the rally before the event, the fact of which served as an acknowledgment that the protesters’ grievances were real, and deserved a reasonable response. It was present in the dozens of interest groups, who each appeared to raise awareness for their own cause, but who stood in solidarity with the causes of others. It was in the attitude of the crowd toward the police, who were clearly there for the protesters’ protection. And it was there in the attitude of the police toward the crowd, who clearly acknowledged their right to assemble.

And civility was there, especially, in the logic behind the protest. In a society that is all too ready to ignore the voices of the poor, and at a time in our history when — especially on Martin Luther King Day — we are all too ready to declare the Civil Rights Movement an article of our past, what is a public protest declaring that black lives matter and that poor lives matter but an attempt to claim and care for one’s identity? And under those same circumstances, what is the fact that it was done peacefully — often arm in arm and without a single arrest — but an attempt to do so without degrading someone else’s needs in the process?

To the eyes of many, public protests may not have the exterior appearance of civil discourse. But whatever the issue, if planned carefully and with adequate forethought, it is a venue in which civility can thrive.