“If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right” must have been a remarkably provocative piece of its time. It was written by Homer Banks, Carl Hampton and Raymond Jackson. Readers may be more familiar with the Glenn Washington version, but this piece was made popular by the great Luther Ingram in the early 1970s.
It tells the story of a married man who is madly in love (or at least professes to be) with another woman. From the outset, it feels like a disaster of tragic proportions waiting to happen. It is unclear whether the woman has known all along that he is married, whether his love was ever reciprocated, or even what has brought their relationship to this point. What is clear, however, is that the relationship appears threatened.
More significant is that the object of his affection appears to be standing at the crossroads. She must be. Why then would he seek so vociferously to convince her to stay in this entanglement?
He repeatedly asks if it is wrong for a woman to love a married man and if it is wrong for him to crave another woman’s touch, knowing that he has a wife and two little children at home who depend on him. One would think that the answers are staring him in the face. But he’s not looking for answers. He knows the answers. So, why keep asking, right? Inner turmoil is what he is confronted with.
Another possibility is that the questions are merely rhetorical and are really meant for his mistress. He knows she is conflicted and that her conscience is troubling her, so he repeatedly asks the questions as a way of reassuring her.
“And are you wrong to fall in love with a married man and am I wrong trying to hold on to the best thing I ever had?”
He seeks to convince her that the strength of their love should somehow make the moral question less important. He essentially romanticises the affair, making infidelity sound, or at least feel, noble. He is practically saying, “our love is so strong it is worth choose wrong over right”. Guyanese would call that a “swar.”
We are not so different from the persona Ingram and Washington adopted. We, too, negotiate with what we know to be right in pursuit of a particular and favourable outcome. Sometimes we end up “swarring” ourselves.
For the man in an extra-marital affair, it is desire and, yes, love. For us, it could be loyalty. It could be a sense of belonging or a debt we believe we have to repay. It could be simply what is expected of us because we look a certain way or came from a certain place. It could be because our ancestors decreed it or because our God or gods deem it so.
We can also choose to be wrong because we want to support our government or our opposition and to go against the grain will signal disloyalty. There is also fear. We can also simply, on a whim, choose wrong over right, like those who argue that pineapple belongs on pizza.
Fact is that we often know when we are wrong and when others are too. Except, the justifications for making ours and their positions legitimate are only seen through our lens.
Take, for example, when our side does something wrong, there is “context”. When the other side does the same thing, there is outrage and letters of condemnation. When a politician we support is accused, we demand evidence, but when the other side is faced with similar charges, the accusation itself becomes the evidence.
When the court rules in our favour, “ahh, we’ve been vindicated” and to speak out against that ruling is an “attack” on the independence of the judiciary. But when we suffer a loss or things do not go our way, “a minister of justice cannot seek refuge in silence when there is a miscarriage of justice taking place”.
When our political party changes its position, it has “evolved.” When the other does, it is “flip-flopping.”
When one side protests, they are “exercising their democratic right,” but when the other side does, they are being “manipulated,” “disruptive” or “anti-progress.”
Same behaviour. Different lens.
Right and wrong have not disappeared. We have simply negotiated differently.
But you can love and support who you want. Surrendering your conscience should require a little bit more thought. For some of us, there are others who depend on us to do the right thing, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. Some of us do not have the luxury of forgoing right just to keep the “best thing we ever had.”
Perhaps, then, the question is not whether loving you is wrong, but whether what we gain by choosing wrong is worth what we give up by not choosing right.
