Moral wisdom from on high.

When I flew recently with an airline known for the levity of its crews, a jocular flight attendant got me thinking about the inconsistencies of political correctness. She also got me wondering whether she might have missed her calling and should have been a standup comic.

As we approached the airport, she reminded us that, except for a designated area, there was no smoking in the terminal building. Smoking, she said, in a wry tone that caused a chuckle to ripple through the plane, is a dirty, disgusting, filthy, expensive habit. Then came the punch line. "If you don't know where the designated area is, just follow me."

I loved it. So, I gather, did the other passengers. None, I suspect, not even the smokers, took offence. They understood clearly that her disparaging patter was directed at the act and habit of smoking, not at the person of smokers. They had no difficulty seeing that the smoking habit, inclination or orientation is one thing. The person in its thrall is quite something else. They recognized that it is possible to hate smoking and like or even love smokers. That, no doubt, is why they chuckled.

I do not smoke, although I used to. I quit long before smoking was generally considered a serious threat to health. I gave it up when I bought my family's first home and realized that on the salary of a junior journalist I couldn't afford to both smoke and drink. So I chose rum over tobacco and have never regretted it. Even in those benighted times, many thought smoking was a dirty habit. But they did not think smokers, males mainly, were dirty old men. Like the passengers on my entertaining flight, they understood the difference between what we are and what we are attracted to.

Today, it is considered politically incorrect to smoke. It is also considered politically incorrect to use hurtful language against members of identifiable groups, and to stigmatize, exclude and alienate them. But the politically correct have no qualms about stigmatizing the act and habit of smoking. Like everyone else, they seem able to distinguish acts and inclinations from actors.

Except when it comes to acts and inclinations with which the politically correct sympathize. You can rest assured that none of them would have reported my amusing flight attendant to a human rights commission. It would not have occurred to them that to ridicule smoking might hurt, offend and exclude smokers. But if someone were to joke that sodomy is a dirty, disgusting, filthy, and expensive habit, watch out. You can rest, equally assured, that human rights complaints would be in the offing.

This, of course, is the heart of the inconsistency, which is very close to hypocrisy. The politically correct take it for granted that you can reject smoking while accepting smokers, but refuse to allow that you can reject sodomy while accepting sodomites. The perennial wisdom that enjoins us to love sinners but hate sins is anathema to them, unless the sins are politically incorrect. Then, and only then, is it possible to hate the sins without also hating the sinners.

In other words, it is improper, not to mention intolerant, to judge certain acts and inclinations associated with groups, causes, or movements that the politically correct support; but it is quite proper, and not in the least intolerant, to judge certain acts and inclinations associated with groups, causes, and movements that the politically correct dislike or are indifferent to.

This is not only inconsistent. It is perverse. It encourages the politically correct to denigrate things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and environmental degradation, but discourages others from denigrating things like sodomy, fornication, illegitimacy, and economic dependency.

This peculiar approach to acts and actors has found its way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Shortly before she retired, Madam Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube dismissed the argument that you can love homosexuals while hating homosexual behaviour. She impugned the legitimacy of this love-hate distinction while the high court was considering whether the British Columbia College of Teachers must accredit the teacher education program of Trinity Western University. The College did not want to certify teachers graduating directly from Trinity Western, because the University opposes and forbids homosexual activity.

Perhaps if then Judge L'Heureux-Dube were to reflect on what good parents do every day she would gain insight into the crucial moral distinction between sinners and sins. Good parents love their children, even when they misbehave, but they hate the misbehaviour and actively discourage it.