A particularly clueless inquirer to “The Ethicist” advice column in the New York Times asked Prof. Appiah, a real ethicist or so we are assured, “Was it wrong to exclude one person from our family reunion?” The woman explains that her large extended family has frequent reunions, but “when plans began for our latest event, an agreement was reached to delete a particular woman from all invitations.”
Oh, the decision “was reached,” was it? Just sort of happened…
The inquirer goes on to explain that the Shunned has become estranged from many people in her life, including her daughter, and the family chose the daughter over the mother. Now the mother is distraught and threatening suicide. “Is it wrong to exclude one (or more) members who would bring pain and anguish rather than joy?,” the shunner asks “The Ethicist.”
The Ethicist manages to answer the question without accessing the Golden Rule, but that’s where the answer resides. The writer didn’t ask if it’s ethical to call up a potentially disruptive and divisive family member and warn her to be on good behavior when she attends a reunion, pointing out that other members of the family aren’t eager to deal with her. Apparently this family just left a family member off the invitation list and the woman found out about it.
How would you feel if your family did that to you? Of course this is wrong: cruel, mean, hurtful, unfair and vindictive. If the estranged daughter chooses not to come to the reunion, it’s her choice.
If all members of the family aren’t welcome, then don’t call it a family reunion. Feeling excised from one’s own family is a fate I wouldn’t want to inflict on anyone. I just helped plan a huge reunion, one involving the theater organization I co-founded. There are several alumni of the group who are generally unpopular, and one in particular whom I find as enjoyable as fingernails scraping a blackboard. But I made sure he was invited; in fact, I invited him more than once when he indicated he would boycott the event because he preferred not to be around me. Eventually, he made it.
The Golden Rule is ancient and to some a cliche, but it still needs to be in all of our metaphorical ethics toolboxes….especially “The Ethicist’s.”
Ethics Alarms 
“The writer didn’t ask if it’s ethical to call up a potentially disruptive and divisive family member and warn her to be on good behavior when she attends a reunion, pointing out that other members of the family aren’t eager to deal with her.”
While the focus appears to be on a single member who is “a potentially disruptive and divisive family member” (PD&DFM), I’d bet there are a few other family members who would need a reminder that, should PD&DFM attend, the reunion is no place to relive old grievances and everyone should be playing along to get along.
I’m on a roll: Hard disagree.
I feel like “The Golden Rule” is too often used as a cop out to excuse bad behavior. No one wants to be excluded from a family reunion, right? So no one should be, right?
Except it’s not obviously not a concrete principle, it’s aspirational, and we as rational thinking units have to use our heads sometimes. The Golden Rule obviously breaks down on the margins: If Uncle Bob is a convicted incestuous child rapist, I think exclusion is the default regardless of how well behaved he promises to be. If someone wants to fight me on that, go right ahead.
And once you admit that there are exceptionally low hanging fruit on the do-not-invite list, then it doesn’t really matter whether you wouldn’t want to be uninvited, there is a spectrum of behaviors or situations which could, should and sometimes will leave you uninvited. And while we should err on the side on inclusion, particularly with family, we have to determine what that spectrum is.
The problem with this specific question is that we don’t know enough to make that determination. There was a little more in the article than in your post, the writer called the woman “brilliant but troubled” and said that “No one was up for trying to “fix” her”. I have questions, and I can see how the answer to some of them would effect the way I think about this.
I think Appiah did OK here:
“People are invited to these gatherings because they’re family, not because they’re charming. But though boundaries are elastic, they’re not infinitely so, and conduct can override kinship. Inclusion is a value to be given serious weight here; it doesn’t trump everything else. What you’ve learned, though, is that there’s no keeping this person out of the loop. It’s a big extended family; people have social media accounts. And your family members shouldn’t have to be preoccupied with secrecy anyway. The news will get out, and learning that she wasn’t only excluded but kept in the dark about it will just compound the pain. As it evidently has.
What would make more sense is for someone in the family — you? — to tell her directly why she hasn’t been invited, while being very clear that it isn’t a negotiation. The message might be that she isn’t invited because she behaved badly in the past, or because her daughter needs space from her, or whatever the relevant circumstances are. I understand the temptation to avoid a conversation like that. But being up front leaves open the possibility of repair in the future and avoids the scenario you’re dealing with right now.”