Thoughts on the David Norris Tragedy

There are so many facets to the story of David Norris’s failed presidential bid, so many issues involved that need to be teased out, that there must be some take-away lessons from it all. How we view it says a lot about our attitudes to politics, to sex, to our ethics and sense of right and wrong. I want to try to make sense of it all, because it seems to me that Ireland has lost a good president.

Even many of those who believe it was right for Norris to leave the campaign concede he would have been good in the job. So why, then, have we forced out someone like that out of the race? The whole thing leaves everyone feeling a little worse off.

I don’t like conspiracy theories. I don’t buy that he was driven out because of his sexuality, though of course it played its part. Was there an orchestrated campaign against him? Of course! But that’s called politics. That’s what you do in an election – you orchestrate a campaign against someone you don’t want to get elected. That’s not sinister, it’s the game.

What do we want from a president?

David Norris was by far the most popular candidate for president – that much is clear from successive opinion polls, even those taken after the original controversy surrounding his Magill interview. It’s not that we’ve all suddenly fallen for his west Brit charms after all these years. It’s because he was a perfect fit for what most people want in a president.

It seems to me all we want from the president – which after all is a “largely ceremonial” role as people keep saying – are a few simple things.

They need to look presidential. (I’m sorry, but for me Gay Mitchell or Sean Gallagher just don’t fit the bill.)

They need to sound presidential – someone articulate that can make wishy-washy non-political statements sound profound and important, and who we feel won’t let us down when speaking in public.

They need to have made some contribution of significance to Irish life and society over the years – we need to feel that they deserve the reward of the Aras. (Again, sorry Gay and Sean!)

And most importantly, and this is why I believe Norris was such a front runner, we want their election to say something about us as a nation.

Mary Robinson’s election showed we were ready to have a first female president. Norris’s election would have shown that we were ready to have a gay president.

A gay president

I think that, far from his sexuality being a negative for him, it was actually the biggest positive for him. We wanted to be able to say to the world – look at us, we in Ireland are now a grown up liberal social democracy capable of electing the first gay president anywhere in the world. He was popular because he represented the image of the country that a large portion of the population wanted to portray.  

Norris himself campaigned that he “did not want to be a gay president, but a president who happened to be gay”. But the reality was, the only reason he was so far ahead in the polls is that Ireland didn’t just want a president who happened to be gay, we wanted a gay president. Because it said something about us. For all his human rights work, and all his scholarly Joycean work, for most people in Ireland the name David Norris means just one thing – gay rights. We weren’t just ready for a gay president, we wanted one.

The thorny issue of pederasty

Because David Norris equals gay in Irish shorthand, his opinions on sexuality became a focus point for the media. It happens to all candidates. If Mary Davis is being interviewed, she’ll be asked about the Special Olympics, not for her views on pederasty. If Gay Mitchell is being interviewed, it will probably be our role in Europe – he’s been an MEP for a long time, hasn’t he? Sean Gallagher, your thoughts on entrepreneurship please.

But luckily for the other candidates Europe, the Special Olympics and business are not as emotive and personal an issue as sexuality. The very idea that we would even ask Mary Robinson or Patrick Hillary for their nuanced opinions on teenagers having sex would be ludicrous. But it’s an issue that Norris had to deal with because his defining public role has been steering a catholic dominated country to a more gay-friendly equal society.  

So I’m sorry David, but we must ask you – how young is too young? Mary Davis, what is your favourite Special Olympic sport? Davd, do you like having sex with younger men? Michael D, a word on how important the Arts are in Irish society? David, will you be having sex with another man while in the Aras?

Ezra Nawi

Here comes the tricky part to discuss. The statutory rape of a 15 year old Palestinian boy by Norris’s former lover Ezra Nawi.

In a strange way, it was useful for Ireland to have had the discussion earlier in the year about Norris’s Magill interview, because it laid down an important distinction – that between paedophile and pederast.  A paedophile has sex with children, a pederast has sex with post-puberty teenage boys.  Neither is acceptable in my opinion for a man in his forties or fifties, but can we at least talk about this for a minute without descending into moral outrage.

The teenager, in any of the following European countries, would be over the age of consent:

Albania (14), Austria (14), Bosnia (14), Bulgaria (14), Croatia (14), Czech Republic (15), Denmark (15), Faroe Islands (15), Estonia (14), France (15), Germany (14), Greece (15), Iceland (15), Italy (14), Liechtenstein (14), Macedonia (14), Monetnegro (14), Poland (15), Portugal (14), Romania (15), Serbia  (14), San Marino (14), Slovakia (15), Slovenia (15), Spain (13), Sweden (15)

That means, if as the Israeli court accepted the relationship between the teenager and Nawi was consensual, no court case would have arisen in any of these countries and Norris’s letter would never have been written.

Now of course, the law of each country needs to be respected – but I think it’s a point worth making. And its important to make it because tabloid headlines describing Nawi as a paedophile, or commentary comparing his actions to those of paedophile priests are just dishonest.

It’s not unheard of in the straight world for teenagers to have sex with older men or women (when it’s a woman we call her a cougar!).

Now, personally, I don’t think it’s right for an older man to be with a teenager, but I’d have a bigger problem with Norris defending Cathal O’Searcaigh, who was an obvious sex tourist.

The letter

Was Norris right to pen the infamous letter seeking clemency for Nawi? No, he wasn’t.

But I think it’s perfectly understandable that he did.  If the love of your life was heading for prison, and you thought you could make a difference by writing a letter, who wouldn’t? The words used, and the fact that Norris was making himself sound as important as possible, don’t matter. He was making the letter sound as strong as possible.

I don’t think any politician should be writing these kinds of letters to judges in any jurisdiction. Norris was wrong to do it. And it cost him his presidential bid.

But should it have? Was the crime big enough to match the punishment? And has our moralizing cost us one of the best presidents we could have had?

Have we ever asked any other candidate in any other election to reveal what letters they had written to seek clemency for criminals? This is a new standard we are setting now.

Gay Mitchell, it appears, wrote to a Florida judge, seeking clemency for a man who shot dead two people at an abortion clinic, and was facing the death penalty.

Did I miss something here?

Since when is a Double Murder a less heinous crime than pederasty?

If Norris is forced out of the race for his letter, on behalf of the love of his life, why is Gay Mitchell still in the race, given his letter on behalf of complete stranger who is a killer?

Media bias

Finally, there is now an attempt by some conservative/right commentators like John Waters, David Quinn or Kevin Meyers to say that the media went easy on Norris. That because of a “liberal” bias, the media looked the other way to Norris’s comments. They argue this would not have been the case if it was a priest that had said it.

I’ve already pointed out how the comparison to clergy is wrong. I think it’s also wrong to claim the media somehow went easy on Norris. There was a very tough series of interviews with Norris when the Magill controversy blew up – including the memorable one with Aine Lawlor on Morning Ireland. And once the letter emerged, the media were all over the story like a rash.  The very media that these commentators claim is going soft on Norris, were the ones that kept the controversy so heated that Norris’s supporters found the going too hot and pulled out.

It’s a favourite new argument of right wing commentators that somehow they are victims of a liberal conspiracy. The fact is that it is often liberals who are weak at standing up for their viewpoints. Because a liberal viewpoint by its very nature is open to other ideas, and a conservative viewpoint is usually married to some dogma. Liberals want to hear all sides of the argument including the conservative ones. Conservatives never accept they are wrong. You see it in the States all the time, where Fox or Tea Party supporters claim the media has a left-wing liberal bias, where in fact it’s their viewpoint that is one-sided. I hope the liberal forces in Ireland will keep their strength.

Aftermath

After the dust settles on the whole controversy, I think we’ll all feel a little worse about the situation.

There was no big homophobic conspiracy. There was no grand Israeli plan to knock him out of the election.  There was simply a storm that brewed from a society that still finds it difficult to discuss teenage sexuality, and a political habit of trying to wield influence over things that maybe they shouldn’t.

 If we step back from it, do we really think that Norris is not acceptable as president because of that letter? It’s a hard one. I didn’t realize how much I wanted him to be president until he was no longer in the race. How boring it all looks now. I’m hoping some new candidate will come along that can inspire us, who would represent us well, who has contributed to Irish life and society, and whose election says something about us as a country.

Of course, they will still need to get the support of county councils or 20 TDs… don’t get me started on that whole side of things…