Rogue Valley Roasting Co.
Iced Americano
Vegan Pumpkin Bread
There have been a number of "Do your job"-themed memes lately directed at county clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. And while some of them are genuinely amusing (I particularly liked the "Clerks" one), I get a little uneasy with the message. I do believe that she should be doing what her job requires here, but I feel the need to clarify and expand that conclusion a little bit.
The reason I get squirmy here is that "do your job" is too simplistic and, in other contexts, is the absolute wrong thing to do. When officers of the government, be they in military or in law enforcement, are told to do something that violates the constitution or international law, they are obligated to refuse to do so or they can, and should, be held accountable. They can't say, "I was just doing my job," when their job entails torture or unlawful detention or other violations. They are responsible for carrying out the order. Further, they are supposed to be protected when they speak out and refuse to carry out what they believe to be an unlawful command. Obviously, there are a great many people who did their job when they should have refused and were never held accountable (though I wouldn't necessarily go after them more than the ones issuing the orders). Likewise, there are some who did refuse to be complicit in the illegalities, some who should have been protected as whistle-blowers, and were punished anyway.
But what about when something has been deemed legal, by the legislature or even the judiciary, that someone believes should be illegal? What are their obligations then? This is not as clear-cut an answer.
We all want to believe that we would have been running the Underground Railroad if we were living back in the day, that we would have defied any law requiring us to comply with slavery. Clearly, some of us wouldn't have, had we been born and raised under that zeitgeist. Nonetheless, we generally agree, today, that the abolitionists were in the right, and posthumously support any instance of their defiance. We would surely not have said, "Do your job," to any government grunt involved in returning an escaped slave to their "owner."
But Kim Davis is no abolitionist, and she's certainly no persecuted Christian martyr.
Where we can clearly see that a once-legal institution that deprived people of life, liberty, and any chance in Hell of pursuing happiness, could not persist as being consistent with the founding principles of the Constitution, and should therefore be defied, we can't say that about everything we disagree with. Slavery killed people. Slavery stole their liberty. That's pretty clear and reasonable criteria for disobeying the laws that upheld it. But look at the defiance of laws that gave freedom to those once-enslaved. For some people, it was evident that enfranchisement of these "obviously inferior" people was damaging to society as a whole, so they used whatever means they saw fit to prevent these laws from being implemented. Some even quoted their deeply held religious beliefs to justify that defiance and obstruction. "God's law" was ever superior to man's law, and that gave them the right to break man's law.
Sound familiar?
It's easy to vilify segregationists after the fact, but we should never doubt their sincerity. So many monstrous things are done by people who fully believe they are doing what is morally right. Some people know they are evil bastards. Most seem to think they are destined for statues or sainthood. Frankly, Kim Davis might be as much as a footnote someday, no matter how much of a political prop she is at the moment.
And I want to take a moment to say that I don't repeat her name to vilify her or call her a bigot, no matter what her actions show her to be. My sense is that she is another one of those people who doesn't necessarily carry around a hateful heart, but whose actions are hateful and cause a great deal of harm to people who have been made to suffer too much already. I think she is what happens to those otherwise good people who try to make their worldview conform to someone else's interpretations of someone else's stories about someone else's supposed actions, all of which occurred in an entirely different time, place, and context. She is fortunate that those interpretations have changed already, otherwise she would not have been able to be divorced three times, nor to speak in public about religious matters, nor to be elected to public office. Among other things.
To get back to disobeying the law... It's hard to set a definitive criteria. We can generally agree that laws that go against the basics - life, liberty, etc - should be defied in some way or other. And we do have the right to peaceful protest, to petition the government for a redress of grievances, all that, without the risk of losing our own life or liberty or job (so long as we follow the established protocol, get our proper permits, and whatnot). Beyond that, if we deem the laws to be so egregious that they require greater acts of civil disobedience, there may well be consequence. That's Thoreau's Dilemma - do I pay my war taxes or go to jail? But that remains between you and the State to square. The problem comes when your act of conscience infringes on another citizen's rights.
When a Muslim airline attendant discovered that she was expressly forbidden by her religion, not just from imbibing alcohol, but from selling it, she approached her employer about reaching some kind of compromise. Since other attendants were available to serve alcohol, they agreed that she would not be required to do so as part of her job. However, a coworker decided to complain that this wasn't fair. The company decided to fire the Muslim woman and she is now suing. I believe the law is on her side, because her inability to serve alcohol, 1) could have been successfully accommodated without causing an
unreasonable increase or change in the duties of any other employee, 2) was an act she was expressly forbidden from performing, 3) was not directed at any customer through discriminatory bias, and 4) would not have impacted the rights of any customer to receive equal accommodations from the airline.
Here's why the same is not true of county clerks or bakers. The Muslim woman above was prohibited from performing a particular act - serving alcohol, which was only one task she was expected to perform as a flight attendant, and, thus, easy to work around. Had she been a bartender who had then converted, she wouldn't really have a case. Serving alcohol is the whole job, so not serving alcohol cannot be accommodated. Bakers are not prohibited from baking cakes, under any religious doctrine. They are prohibited from establishing a public business, then refusing to serve members of the public cake because they are feeling all judgey because those people wear make-up and don't cover their hair and the baker's sincerely held religious beliefs say that that is wrong. Too bad. If you serve the public, you serve the public. Conformity to your religious values is not a requisite for service. It doesn't matter if the customer plans to use the icing for eye-shadow, you don't get to single them out because you think your god doesn't like them. The law is there to protect them from that kind of discrimination, just as it would protect you from whatever their religious beliefs might be.
As for the county clerk, you don't get to pull the Religion card either. Issuing a marriage license is civil act, not a personal or religious endorsement. A clerk is acting on behalf of the government and carrying out the laws of that government. They are simply acknowledging that the petitioners have met the criteria set forth by the government to form a legal marriage. The clerk's beliefs are not involved in that act. Nor is the act of processing paperwork expressly forbidden in any Bible I can think of. It doesn't matter that what the government considers to be a valid marriage isn't what the individual clerk considers to be a valid marriage in the eyes of their religion, their god. That's between the couple and who- or whatever is there to meet them in the afterlife. The clerk simply has to acknowledge that we live in a country where everyone has a right to their own beliefs and, as she wants her country to protect her right to each of her marriages - to not question their religious consistency with the written texts, or their conformity to the beliefs of the clerk who happens to be issuing her documents - if she is acting in the capacity of representing the government, she must protect the rights of every citizen to their own marriage.
If she believed that same-sex marriages were inherently unconstitutional for some legal inconsistency, she would be protected in holding protest signs and writing letters and petitioning for change. If she refused to issue those marriage licenses, however, that's an act of obstruction and not simply protest, and, thus, not protected. And since the act of issuing a marriage license does not cause the clerk to deprive someone of their life, liberty, or ability to pursue happiness, there's no moral case to be made, either. Refusing to issue the license, however, does cause real harm, both mentally and financially, at least.
If Kim Davis can't get past the erroneous conclusion that allowing other people to have their own legal protections somehow makes her complicit in their perceived moral trespasses, then she has to leave her job. Her beliefs cannot be accommodated here, nor should they be. Her Oath of Office requires her to uphold the law - man's law - and uphold it equally, without discrimination. She is failing to uphold her Oath of Office, selectively, based on a religious prohibition which does not exist and couldn't legally be accommodated anyway. If she doesn't get that and continues to break the law, then there should be some kind of legal process to remove her from her office. She is breaking the law, and obstructing others from exercising a right that harms no one.
As an ordained Methodist minister, my late grandfather officiated many marriages. He managed to get most of the family, though he had to get my dad the second time around since my parents eloped as youngsters. He also performed my marriage five years ago, despite the fact that my husband and I are both agnostic. We discussed it all beforehand. My grandfather felt that his authority to perform the ceremony came from the church, but we felt it would be disingenuous to make our vows in the name of a deity we didn't believe in. So he found the language that we all felt satisfied our beliefs, consistent with the spirit of, well, the Spirit. He still blessed us with a prayer, and we took no offense to the benediction, but God was not invoked in the actual vows.
During his visit here, my grandfather, the reverend, also made a point of informing us that he totally supported legalizing gay marriage. And he couldn't understand why his church had to waste three days of their convention talking about how much they didn't support it - oy!
This whole thing is a pretty clear case of "render unto Caesar" because, even if you don't agree with gay marriage, it causes no one harm on this earthly plain, and allowing it to exist, unobstructed, alongside other marriages does not make you a party to it. And, remember, if God is going to damn someone to Hell for any particular offense, that's His prerogative. If I remember correctly, "Vengeance is Mine," says the Lord. And, chances are, God is not so prejudiced as the people claiming to act on His behalf.
Showing posts with label civil disobedience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil disobedience. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Monday, December 1, 2014
The Weapon of the Enemy
The living room
Sleepytime Sinus Soother Tea
Pumpkin pie (expired)
I'm starting this at home. Will probably finish elsewhere.
This is why I never finish my housework. Well, this is partly why. Anyway.
If you think about it, there's only one true sin in the Bible. Everything else is only a sin under certain circumstances. Sex is not a sin, just premarital sex. Killing someone is not a sin, not at all. There are numerous passages delineating under what circumstances and by what method someone shall be put to death: female sorceresses, back-talking children, women who are raped who don't cry for help, but only if they live in the city because women who are raped in the country might not live close enough to someone who could have heard them so it's okay if they just didn't bother.
You can even steal someone else's land if you say God really wanted you to have it.
No, the only act that appears to be inherently sinful is disobedience. Everything else seems to have an asterisk. You can even put your beloved son on the alter if the big G tells you to. Obeying the command to kill your child is - in a biblical context - the righteous act. More righteous than obeying the standing order to not kill anybody (except where explicitly commanded to do so) because it was a direct order.
Even our military and police forces are expected to not obey a direct order if it conflicts with the laws established in the Constitution.
Oh, military and police forces... how you have so often failed to disobey... How often you have protected those among your ranks who have defiled their sacred obligations. Instead of casting these criminals out of your body, you have so very often closed in around them and formed a protective cyst, a tumor, and doomed your body to sickness.
Again and again and again...
Mix Bakeshop
Americano
Pumkin-something Macaroon
Biscotti
...And that's where I left it when the boys got home. Let's see if I can finish this before closing time.
Today, we went to the library. As the boys played with the Thomas the Train set in the kids section, we heard chanting and shouting outside. From the window we could see another Ferguson rally marching across the street, blocking the crosswalk for a time to address the stopped traffic, then continuing on to the heart of downtown.
"No justice! No peace!"
"Hands up! Don't shoot!"
As their voices receded Oliver began crying. He was upset because he had wanted to throw something into the recycling bin but Daddy had done it first. I thought how lucky we are that that's all he has to cry about. When I posted that later - the picture of the marchers and Oliver's incongruent despair - a friend of mine replied with "#FirstWorldProblems".
Amen, sister.
We live in another Gilded Age. As before the Great Crash, the news buzzes about the extraordinary wealth of our age, the billionaires being churned out by Wall Street. And the seeming normalcy of Middle America is only achieved through massive debt - student loans that may or may not be paid off before your children are ready for school, and the 30 year mortgage you had to refinance to get the loan to pay for the car repairs on that 2 door subcompact you were supposed to trade-up before you had the 2 car seats in the back, but now you can't afford to replace it so you have to string it along, and you can't put it on the credit card because you maxed it out on 4 crowns and 6 fillings - and that's with insurance! - and the Black Friday specials you sacrificed your Thanksgiving for because they told you it was your only chance to get it cheap enough and you could pay it off when you got your tax refund but then they cut the Earned Income Credit you were banking on so your interest rate just got jacked up to a rate you didn't know was legal. But you sure look comfortable. When everyone looks so comfortable, it's easy to think that it's your fault.
God forbid you get sick.
God forbid you're the victim of a hit and run while you're marching down to the Plaza for those among us who are dying in this Age of Gilded Freedom. That's your ER bill. Good luck.
This country is most definitely not well, but the worst part is that we cannot have the conversations we need to have to fix it because reality is obscured by the gilding of lies. Equal opportunity? Not a bit. Not economically, not legally... We don't even have an equal opportunity to stay alive just walking down the street.
Around the country, some of those who see the injustice, especially those who have been the victims of it, have taken to the streets to grieve, to demand change - they march. And some, they scream their grief, their frustration - their fear - they riot.
Song lyrics come to mind... "I need something to break!"
On the right, they have been stoking fear of the president, of immigrants, and those "thugs" who just happen to, ya know, bounce less light in the sun... Frankly, calling Obama a "tyrant" is an insult to the people of Syria and Libya and anyone else who has really lived under a tyrant. But the fearful shall defend themselves. They have been stockpiling their bunkers and talking openly of insurrection for years.
They want something to break, too.
What we do when we are afraid, when we are threatened... that is when we earn our humanity, or when we fail it.
When Henry David Thoreau saw the injustice of American aggression in his time, he simply stopped paying for his share of it. And he happily went to jail for it. He disobeyed, civilly. That was the righteous thing to do.
But what about today?
We do need change. A lot of it, on many fronts. You could use the term revolution. But I wouldn't go too far with that. I certainly would not say insurrection. So long as the basic structure remains in tact, we need to try to work within it.
I've known people who say we need to tear down the whole system and rebuild on whatever survives. I don't think highly of that kind of nihilism. I think of it as an immature human mind, the intellectual equivalent of a toddler's tantrum. So it's hard? So it's frustrating, and slow? So what? It's a lot harder to bury your sons and daughters sacrificed on the alter of revolution. And the societies built upon the ruins of revolutions most often do not survive, let alone thrive.
There are exceptions. But there is also a cost. Always a cost, not the least of which is our humanity.
I have no disrespect for someone who defends themselves or their families, but only when it is necessary. In the case in Ferguson, the only way Wilson might have needed to shoot Mike Brown dead from 150 feet away is if he mistook Mike Brown for Luke Skywalker and had a reasonable expectation that Mike Brown would imminently use The Force to steal his gun. Which is silly, of course, because Brown could have just choked him before Wilson could reach. Or tossed his police cruiser.
Which makes me think of burning witches. How stupid is that logic? If she's a witch, don't you think she could get out of it? In which case, the only people you'd end up burning would be innocent. Oh, the folly of the righteous... Committing obvious sins in the name of God. Murder, torture, destruction, violence... whatever... for the Greater Good.
Didn't we learn anything from the Lord of the Rings? You never use the weapon of the Enemy.
If killing someone, on purpose, is wrong, then it doesn't stop being wrong if you change the scenery or put the trigger in another person's hand. Injustice must be answered, and in a meaningful way, but you don't go outside the system you're trying to fix if there is any path at all left open. There is no social system that will ever be free of corruption. The strength of the institution comes from the ability to address and amend injustice within itself.
In Ferguson, there was clear abuse of power and corruption - and there are still paths left to address those trespasses of justice. And more broadly, there is wide-spread racial injustice and abuse of police authority - and that, too, can be addressed. There are white allies, and those in positions of power - yes, even white police officers, too - who see and will march alongside those seeking justice.
And even those of us who may only march our fingers across keyboards in suburban coffeehouses, we are doing our best to scrape the fool's gold off the bullshit that's being oversold, hand over bloodied fist, to keep us from seeing that one simply truth: There's no such thing as Other People. We're all in this together, and we can change things for the better and be our higher human selves.
I am such a damn hippy. Coffee shop is closing. Time to go.
I love you all.
Sleepytime Sinus Soother Tea
Pumpkin pie (expired)
I'm starting this at home. Will probably finish elsewhere.
This is why I never finish my housework. Well, this is partly why. Anyway.
If you think about it, there's only one true sin in the Bible. Everything else is only a sin under certain circumstances. Sex is not a sin, just premarital sex. Killing someone is not a sin, not at all. There are numerous passages delineating under what circumstances and by what method someone shall be put to death: female sorceresses, back-talking children, women who are raped who don't cry for help, but only if they live in the city because women who are raped in the country might not live close enough to someone who could have heard them so it's okay if they just didn't bother.
You can even steal someone else's land if you say God really wanted you to have it.
No, the only act that appears to be inherently sinful is disobedience. Everything else seems to have an asterisk. You can even put your beloved son on the alter if the big G tells you to. Obeying the command to kill your child is - in a biblical context - the righteous act. More righteous than obeying the standing order to not kill anybody (except where explicitly commanded to do so) because it was a direct order.
Even our military and police forces are expected to not obey a direct order if it conflicts with the laws established in the Constitution.
Oh, military and police forces... how you have so often failed to disobey... How often you have protected those among your ranks who have defiled their sacred obligations. Instead of casting these criminals out of your body, you have so very often closed in around them and formed a protective cyst, a tumor, and doomed your body to sickness.
Again and again and again...
Mix Bakeshop
Americano
Pumkin-something Macaroon
Biscotti
...And that's where I left it when the boys got home. Let's see if I can finish this before closing time.
Today, we went to the library. As the boys played with the Thomas the Train set in the kids section, we heard chanting and shouting outside. From the window we could see another Ferguson rally marching across the street, blocking the crosswalk for a time to address the stopped traffic, then continuing on to the heart of downtown.
"No justice! No peace!"
"Hands up! Don't shoot!"
As their voices receded Oliver began crying. He was upset because he had wanted to throw something into the recycling bin but Daddy had done it first. I thought how lucky we are that that's all he has to cry about. When I posted that later - the picture of the marchers and Oliver's incongruent despair - a friend of mine replied with "#FirstWorldProblems".
Amen, sister.
We live in another Gilded Age. As before the Great Crash, the news buzzes about the extraordinary wealth of our age, the billionaires being churned out by Wall Street. And the seeming normalcy of Middle America is only achieved through massive debt - student loans that may or may not be paid off before your children are ready for school, and the 30 year mortgage you had to refinance to get the loan to pay for the car repairs on that 2 door subcompact you were supposed to trade-up before you had the 2 car seats in the back, but now you can't afford to replace it so you have to string it along, and you can't put it on the credit card because you maxed it out on 4 crowns and 6 fillings - and that's with insurance! - and the Black Friday specials you sacrificed your Thanksgiving for because they told you it was your only chance to get it cheap enough and you could pay it off when you got your tax refund but then they cut the Earned Income Credit you were banking on so your interest rate just got jacked up to a rate you didn't know was legal. But you sure look comfortable. When everyone looks so comfortable, it's easy to think that it's your fault.
God forbid you get sick.
God forbid you're the victim of a hit and run while you're marching down to the Plaza for those among us who are dying in this Age of Gilded Freedom. That's your ER bill. Good luck.
This country is most definitely not well, but the worst part is that we cannot have the conversations we need to have to fix it because reality is obscured by the gilding of lies. Equal opportunity? Not a bit. Not economically, not legally... We don't even have an equal opportunity to stay alive just walking down the street.
Around the country, some of those who see the injustice, especially those who have been the victims of it, have taken to the streets to grieve, to demand change - they march. And some, they scream their grief, their frustration - their fear - they riot.
Song lyrics come to mind... "I need something to break!"
On the right, they have been stoking fear of the president, of immigrants, and those "thugs" who just happen to, ya know, bounce less light in the sun... Frankly, calling Obama a "tyrant" is an insult to the people of Syria and Libya and anyone else who has really lived under a tyrant. But the fearful shall defend themselves. They have been stockpiling their bunkers and talking openly of insurrection for years.
They want something to break, too.
What we do when we are afraid, when we are threatened... that is when we earn our humanity, or when we fail it.
When Henry David Thoreau saw the injustice of American aggression in his time, he simply stopped paying for his share of it. And he happily went to jail for it. He disobeyed, civilly. That was the righteous thing to do.
But what about today?
We do need change. A lot of it, on many fronts. You could use the term revolution. But I wouldn't go too far with that. I certainly would not say insurrection. So long as the basic structure remains in tact, we need to try to work within it.
I've known people who say we need to tear down the whole system and rebuild on whatever survives. I don't think highly of that kind of nihilism. I think of it as an immature human mind, the intellectual equivalent of a toddler's tantrum. So it's hard? So it's frustrating, and slow? So what? It's a lot harder to bury your sons and daughters sacrificed on the alter of revolution. And the societies built upon the ruins of revolutions most often do not survive, let alone thrive.
There are exceptions. But there is also a cost. Always a cost, not the least of which is our humanity.
I have no disrespect for someone who defends themselves or their families, but only when it is necessary. In the case in Ferguson, the only way Wilson might have needed to shoot Mike Brown dead from 150 feet away is if he mistook Mike Brown for Luke Skywalker and had a reasonable expectation that Mike Brown would imminently use The Force to steal his gun. Which is silly, of course, because Brown could have just choked him before Wilson could reach. Or tossed his police cruiser.
Which makes me think of burning witches. How stupid is that logic? If she's a witch, don't you think she could get out of it? In which case, the only people you'd end up burning would be innocent. Oh, the folly of the righteous... Committing obvious sins in the name of God. Murder, torture, destruction, violence... whatever... for the Greater Good.
Didn't we learn anything from the Lord of the Rings? You never use the weapon of the Enemy.
If killing someone, on purpose, is wrong, then it doesn't stop being wrong if you change the scenery or put the trigger in another person's hand. Injustice must be answered, and in a meaningful way, but you don't go outside the system you're trying to fix if there is any path at all left open. There is no social system that will ever be free of corruption. The strength of the institution comes from the ability to address and amend injustice within itself.
In Ferguson, there was clear abuse of power and corruption - and there are still paths left to address those trespasses of justice. And more broadly, there is wide-spread racial injustice and abuse of police authority - and that, too, can be addressed. There are white allies, and those in positions of power - yes, even white police officers, too - who see and will march alongside those seeking justice.
And even those of us who may only march our fingers across keyboards in suburban coffeehouses, we are doing our best to scrape the fool's gold off the bullshit that's being oversold, hand over bloodied fist, to keep us from seeing that one simply truth: There's no such thing as Other People. We're all in this together, and we can change things for the better and be our higher human selves.
I am such a damn hippy. Coffee shop is closing. Time to go.
I love you all.
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