Kamala Harris from the “Veil of Ignorance”: How this election is a battle for liberalism itself

Imagine, for a minute, you had no prior knowledge of your race, economic condition, sexuality, gender identity, or even birthplace. You are a sentient adult, but these crucial aspects of life have yet to be revealed.

Based on this lack of knowledge of your original condition, what kind of society would you create? What protections for persecuted minorities would you create? What kind of distribution of income and tax policy would you prefer if you didn’t know if you were rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle? How would you regulate markets to compensate high earners or low achievers?

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What is queer theory & why is it important?

Whether or not you’ve heard the term “queer theory,” it’s likely to have impacted some aspect of your life. Click through to learn what queer theory is, how it’s used, and who has been involved with the field of study.

This thought experiment is what the great American philosopher John Rawls dubbed the “Veil of Ignorance” in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice. Building on the work of thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and John Locke, Rawls drew on a deep respect for privacy and individualism along with a desire for economic equality of opportunity, a good half-century before the right wing had begun to dismantle these democratic ideals.

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Into this distinguished legacy steps Daniel Chandler, the out gay research director of the Program on Cohesive Capitalism at the London School of Economics, with his new book, Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society. The book doesn’t just contribute to the philosophy of classical liberalism. It takes Rawls’ insights a step further by seeking a more “transformative” progressive politics, which Chandler has been stunted in the U.S. and Europe by right-wing backlash and timidity on the left, a lens through which he also sees the divisive American presidential showdown.

Free and Equal could not have come at a more critical juncture, in the midst of elections where such long-honored concepts of justice, equality, and democracy hang in the balance under a barrage of attacks from MAGA and right-wing groups across Western Europe on LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities, people of color and immigrants.

In late September, for instance, Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson just days after the disgraced talk show host praised a Holocaust denialist. Days later, Vance spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania organized by a preacher who claims Vice President Kamala Harris practices “witchcraft” and that democracy should be abolished in favor of right-wing Christian dominion over all aspects of culture and politics under which queer rights would be banned.

LGBTQ Nation chatted with Chandler via Zoom from his home office about everything from the beauty of gay life in London to the threats to democracy posed by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. 

LGBTQ Nation: How did you come to write Free and Equal?

Daniel Chandler: I’ve had an unusual route. My first degree is in history. Then I studied political philosophy. I spent time working in government and public policy. Now I’m in the Economics Department, and my mission as an academic is to bridge some of these disciplines that have grown apart to think seriously about what a truly just society would look like.

Where did you work in public policy?

I worked at the Prime Minister Strategy Unit. That was my first job, and I spent a couple of years in the Cabinet Office, a bit like the White House in British terms. I worked at think tanks, then moved to the London School of Economics to get my PhD. 

How did that lead to the book?

The book is a political intervention, not an academic one. And the goal was to set out a progressive vision of the sort missing from mainstream political discourse. Progressives have a lack of intellectual reference points. The new right under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan could look to thinkers like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in the 80s for confidence.

It’s not apparent to progressives today where they should look for similar inspiration at this moment when the world is crying out for something big and constructive and new. And that’s where John Rawls comes in.

What is your queer social justice reference point? 

James Baldwin is a major inspiration. He fits very much within the tradition. He put forward a kind of progressive queer tradition that embraces universal values of freedom, justice, and equality while opposing the idea that society should be about the advancement of one group over another.

Before we delve into universalism, tell me about your particular life in London.

I live with my partner of nearly 13 years. I love cooking, so there’s a lot of hosting. But I also love London’s queer scene. There are some great bars we frequent. We live near a pond with a history as a very queer-friendly space. And I also recently discovered a fantastic queer nude sunbathing space. It has an easygoing, chill, relaxed atmosphere.

How would John Rawls feel about a queer nude sunbathing? He wrote his famous book in the 70s. How did he feel about queer life? Well, we wouldn’t have even called it queer at the time. It would have been gay and lesbian.

He wrote almost nothing about our issues. But he was a fundamentally liberal individual, and I think he would have taken it for granted that his philosophy would provide a vigorous defense of the freedoms that the queer community needs to live their lives according to their own beliefs and in their own way. And I think he would instinctively have celebrated all the different spaces the queer community created for himself. He would have been pleased.

And that’s why he would be proud of us. As a student at Vassar College in New York in the mid-1980s, I struggled with coming out. It was a hard time: gay-bashing was an epidemic. HIV was a crisis, killing thousands while the Reagan administration turned a blind eye. In 1986, the conservative Supreme Court ruled that states could criminalize consensual same-sex sodomy. I thought, What kind of world am I coming out into? It was ugly.

Living across the hall from me was this kid with the same name, Chris, who was out. He was flamboyant and fabulous, and he understood my struggle. I kept getting confused on campus with him. People would say to me, Oh, you’re that out gay kid. But I wasn’t ready for the label.

Then, I read A Theory of Justice in my political philosophy class. Rawls helped teach me that allowing people space to be who they are helped everyone. Universal freedoms mattered, not my particular situation. Gradually, I wanted to be like the other Chris—instead of fearing him. I didn’t have that personality but could see courage and confidence. The concept of the veil of ignorance was easy to grasp. It helped me realize that ideas and philosophy made a difference; it wasn’t just academic. 

As a fellow gay man, I’m moved by that story. Philosophical concepts are compelling and more powerful than we imagine. They structure how we think about ourselves and our social position meaningfully and are the raw material of public discourse.

How so?

In moments like this, when people struggle to talk across divisions, it’s more important than ever to step back and try to find some kind of source of agreement, some framework within which we can have reasonable debate. Philosophy is fundamental to the spirit of rules. 

What was your own coming out experience?

I also feared the more overt aspects of queer culture. And I feel like that’s been my journey, coming to love and embrace being gay in every way.

Where Rawls has come into my queer life is in giving me a way of thinking about the politics of being gay and how we should go about defending freedoms while showing respect for people with views we disagree with. 

How do we draw on Rawls to defeat reactionary developments in America, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the framework for attacks on us in a second Trump administration? MAGA is pretty open about replacing democracy and the rule of law with autocracy or, more likely, kleptocracy.

The Trump agenda has moved from vague rhetoric to quite substantive anti-LGBTQ commitments in Project 2025. Having the right arguments to defend our freedoms is more important than ever. And by right, I mean morally correct and most likely to persuade.

How do you break through that with wavering Trump supporters because they, too, are going to suffer when democracy suffers? Trump or Hungary’s Viktor Orban benefit only themselves. They don’t care about the rest of us.

Majorities in the U.S. and most advanced Western democracies still support wide-ranging rights and freedoms. The extreme positions taken by MAGA are not representative. That’s also not a cause for complacency. For the first time in decades polls show support for various measures of equality going backward. We’re beginning to see anti-trans and anti-gay political rhetoric shape public opinion in a worrying way.

The idea that politics is a battle for one group to impose their religious or moral perspective on the rest of the population is gaining ground. In some academic literature this is called post-liberalism, and in this we are seeing a kind of an outright rejection of fundamental liberal principles, encouraging people to live according to their own beliefs. We are losing the idea that it’s not role of the state to impose any particular moral or religious order on its citizens, that we can all live according to our own morals and that helps everyone thrive. That idea was pretty settled for decades. It’s scary that it’s shifting. 

How should we respond?

Part of the answer is to is to double down on liberalism. In the case of marriage equality or LGBT rights, we are not asking people to give up their religious beliefs. We’re not asking everybody to come to gay pride. We might campaign for that in the wider culture, but we recognize that it’s not the role of the state to tell people what they should believe. Freedoms are not grounded in telling people what they must believe or how to behave, but in enforcing everyone’s freedom to live according to their own beliefs.

We need to persuade people who don’t necessarily identify with queer culture that they should nonetheless support these basic individual freedoms. And we do see that there are people who disapprove of gay relationships but still think that people should be free to enjoy them. We need to make sure that we include the broadest set of people in thinking that part of their responsibility is stand up and defend these freedoms. 

Christian nationalists want abortion and sodomy to be illegal. They want to ban books and porn. They want to funnel their sectarian religious beliefs through a Christian legal system, doing away with the separation of church and state. Yet the liberalism Rawls advocated and the Founders advocated applies to religious minorities too. Christian nationalists assume that their version of Christianity is going to be the majority, that they can impose it even on religious minorities. But they would quickly find is not the case, and they would be on the losing side of a different religious majority.

Anyone who thinks the state should impose a particular model of Christian values on American society is at odds with the deepest, most cherished principles that lie right at the heart of the American political tradition that they sit outside. This is not a left-right distinction. Liberalism exists for them too, and they too have benefited from it historically by being able to preach and practice their religion without government interference.

In fact, they benefited from this liberalism, these civil protections, well before the LGBT community did. That argument is a powerful way to try to build common ground between groups that might seem to have very little in common.

Delighted last night to present the 2024 Voltaire medal to @dan_chandler A very worthy recipient, his talk on "Free and Equal" was a stirring manifesto for political action to put into practice the theories of John Rawls. If you haven't yet read Daniel's book, I urge you to! pic.twitter.com/DHy7rTAQaG

— Andrew Copson (@andrewcopson) September 11, 2024

But they are using liberal freedoms to attack it.

Christian nationalists weaponize liberal arguments in a way in order to attack LGBT rights. They use the liberal commitment to religious freedom to undermine freedom and equality. The queer community sometimes sees that weaponization of liberal arguments and thinks the solution is to ditch liberalism. Because if liberalism can justify religious people refusing to serve their queer customers, then what’s the point in liberalism? That would be a mistake.

My book is trying to make sure that progressives hold onto the liberal tradition, because it’s in that tradition still that the strongest arguments lie for the things that they really care about and at the same time show Christians who might not feel comfortable with gay relationships that the basic principle on which LGBT rights depends is also at the heart of their own freedom.

In fact, even conservative justices like Anthony Kennedy have been open to our arguments. Sodomy laws eventually were overturned; marriage equality won the day. In Bostock, a Trump-appointed justice upheld trans rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We’ve been able to make progress within the electoral system as well. The right to speech, the right to protest and assemble, these constitutional guarantees have served us well even if progress has been too slow for too many of us. And think about what Stonewall produced, a massive worldwide Pride movement that thrives half a century later, liberating untold millions. But some people who marched in early Prides lost jobs, were rejected by family, were subjected to violence. Perhaps we have lost track of how hard won out victories have been, how much we have sacrificed to gain them.

Yes, and in the wake of book bans and “don’t say gay” laws, we are seeing what happens when free speech is no longer a consensus value. We need to double down on these arguments that have led to historic progress.

Do legal arguments about leaving us alone get a bit defensive though? Shouldn’t we be reminding Americans about all the great things we bring to the table? Our communities make the world better in so many ways. Before this MAGA backlash, there was a growing sense that you could learn from the queer community, from the trans community, about gender and about sexuality. Straight people felt liberated by our idea about relationships and family, the benefits of living authentically rather than how others want you to live.

The privacy argument doesn’t have to be a purely defensive one. We frame it in a positive way. It’s about everyone having the freedom to live according to beliefs. You can celebrate a society in which people are free to be different. We defend freedom of conscience. People can come to their own conclusions about the kinds of relationships they want to have, the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and that’s huge positive good for a society even when we disagree. 

We’re speaking at a time when American politics has been unsettled by the Harris-Walz ticket. She hails from San Francisco and lived in the midst of a big queer community. She is mixed race and speaks the language of intersectional inclusion, the language of queer equality. Walz sponsored his high school’s gay-straight alliance and, as governor, made Minnesota a trans sanctuary state. It’s the gayest ticket in American history, no doubt.

My instinct is that Harris is very much in the Rawls tradition. I watched her first campaign ad, released after Biden stepped aside. And I suppose I was struck by how the closing message of this ad was basically “Kamala Harris is the anti-Trump.” That represents continuity with the basic electoral strategy of the Democratic Party towards this election up to now, which is to try to build the broadest anti-Trump coalition. But this doesn’t set out a constructive, positive agenda of the America that voters want to see. The anti-Trump approach may well be enough to win this election, and I can see the logic behind it. But it will not enough to defeat Trumpism in a lasting way. That will require mainstream progressive parties and politicians to set out a compelling vision of what a genuinely fair and just society would look like.

My hope is that this book can help provide the raw material for making that kind of vision a reality.

Chris Bull, the author of Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement, is the editorial director of Q.Digital

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