Just When You Think It's Already Bad...

He pardoned a convicted felon who

• was still in the appeals process and
• hadn't been sentenced yet.

Then we are told

• it saves time and money in the appeals process (by stopping it through pardoning) and 
• he had been thinking about it for months, asking how it could be dropped.

Oh, and the conviction was for

• violating the constitutional rights of individuals.

Such is this president's respect for

• the rule of law,
• how the law can be bought with money,
• the importance of the judicial system, and
• his own place above the law through his belief in his power to do what he wants, even to undermining the power of the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.

I am trying to remain within the bounds of decency in my tone and writing. But

• This is not politically pretty. 
• It is not how America is supposed to work. 
• It is not democracy in action. 
• In my opinion, it is actually un-American.

 It is a seemingly never-ending shit storm. I am becoming more alarmed about who we are turning into as a nation and how difficult and traumatic it might be for us when things really begin to fall apart.

Discrimination- or Freedom?

Discrimination:

the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

Synonyms:

prejudice, bias, bigotry, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, unfairness, inequity, favoritism, one-sidedness, partisanship;

Now let's be clear, I have an opinion about this. It boils down very simply to:

Don't use your freedom to take away from mine.

We have been deluged recently by new laws giving a narrow freedom to a relatively small group of people. By so doing the law is giving permission to discriminate, give prejudicial treatment against others. These have been specifically aimed at allowing people to refuse service to Gay and Lesbian individuals in the name or religion.

Someone commented on Facebook that we have now defined a group of people who aren't allowed to sit at the soda fountain counter in Woolworth's. The reference is to the sit-ins in the 1950s and 60s when African Americans were not allowed to be served at those fountain counters. They were arrested because they were breaking the law.

Some will point out the obvious differences in the laws. I agree that there are some. But there are also similarities that are the root of the problem. The greatest similarity in my view is that these laws give individuals the right to decide who can utilize the services. Personally, I can think of people I would not want to serve if I were running a business. Maybe I would like to keep convicted violent offenders out of my store. Perhaps I would want to make sure that i didn't have to interact with some bigot who would not agree with me. It could even be that I wouldn't want to have any organized crime people buy in my store. After all, in all these situations, it may very well be that you are known by the company you keep.

Yes, I am stating this in an extreme. So let's change the circumstances a little. What if you are an observant Jew who follows the Kosher laws. Into your store walks a guy carrying a ham sandwich. What would that guy say if you refused to serve him because of the sandwich? Yet, you now have the right to do that.


Okay, I know very few LGBTQ people who would want to give any business to many of these places that might not want to serve them. But that proverbial slippery slope is always looming on the horizon. It is not out of the question- as we have already seen in Tennessee- that a professing Christian refuses to do their job because they have to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

In spite of legal decisions, it will not be companies like Hobby Lobby, etc. who will be doing the discrimination. It will be individuals exercising their religious freedom. When it comes to individuals expressing their freedoms, it often devolves into discrimination and prejudice.

We can argue this one all night- and many do. In general, no one should be forced to do things against their conscience. But most of what these laws are about is not that. It is a way of hitting back at the progressive and liberal ways they see as dangerous. Maybe they feel they can push back against the force of history. Maybe they want to recreate the 21st Century equivalent of the private schools that sprang up in the south after segregation was ruled illegal. Maybe it will work for them for a while. But it doesn't get rid of the issue- and doesn't do anything but set up more walls.

And hurt people when taken to their extremes.

When the Religion Ruled the Land

Sitting and pondering ideas the other day I came across one of those intriguing trivial items. On on HistoryOrb's This date page for February 28, I saw this:

1646 - Roger Scott was tried in Mass for sleeping in church

Needless to say that piqued my imagination so I went digging and found an article, Colonial Crimes and Punishment at History.org that looks at some of the colonial era laws. To think of this as early democracy is an interesting exercise in stretching ones imagination.

The English-American colonies were autocratic and theocratic, with a patriarchal system of justice: magistrates and religious leaders, sometimes one and the same, made the laws, and the burden of obeying them fell on the less exalted—the tradesmen, soldiers, farmers, servants, slaves, and the young. That burden could be weighty.

Sometimes, as we look at our American history through the rose-colored glasses of the ideals of the revolutionary era leaders, we forget that democracy is not as we think it was. The early settlers for the most part were not looking to set up freedom for all. They just wanted THEIR freedom and limiting other people who disagreed with them. Many of the laws were theologically based- and often discriminatory and harsh, especially on those of the lower classes.

In the Puritan north a religious message leaps out from almost every page of the early criminal codes. Sin, of course, existed in the eyes of the beholders, and the eyes were everywhere—as you might expect in small, inbred communities. Consider the scrutiny given to observance of the Sabbath. The law usually required churchgoing, and someone was always checking attendance. In early Virginia, every minister was entitled to appoint four men in his fort or settlement to inform on religious scofflaws.

I caught that little phrase above about "small, inbred communities." We forget that these early colonial towns and villages were closed. What we call the great American ideals were not even part of the picture. This was a primitive civilization living on the frontier. That's where the following can happen:

In the early seventeenth century, Boston's Roger Scott was picked up for "repeated sleeping on the Lord's Day" and sentenced to be severely whipped for "striking the person who waked him from his godless slumber."

Colonial strictures on deportment in the pews long applied, even to children, such as in 1758 when young Abiel Wood of Plymouth was hauled before the court for "irreverently behaving himself by chalking the back of one Hezekiah Purrington, Jr., with Chalk, playing and recreating himself in the time of publick worship."

In l668 in Salem, Massachusetts, John Smith and the wife of John Kitchin were fined "for frequent absenting themselves from the public worship of God on the Lord's days." In l682 in Maine it cost Andrew Searle five shillings merely for "wandering from place to place" instead of "frequenting the publique worship of god."

Oh, for the good old days.

Not.

The churches would be filled on Sunday, but I'm not sure we would be any more faithful to the ways of God. We would just learn how to put on the masks more completely.

I Get Angry - Very Angry

If this law is enacted in Michigan, it will be another step backwards in the fight against discrimination. It would allow doctors and EMTs to refuse care, repeat REFUSE CARE to people whose lifestyles they disagree with.

If it wasn't from a local CBS newsfeed in Detroit I would have thought it was a headline from The Onion.

It says something very unhealthy about American politics when a bill like this is even considered as a possibility. It goes against every ethical standard of every health care license issued. It contradicts every basic human value and every bit of Christian faith. It is a perfect opportunity to dig into a) The Parable of the Good Samaritan and b) The story of the woman caught in adultery - let those without sin cast the first stone.

What kind of nation are we becoming when we justify torture because someone else attacked us so we can respond with revenge and anger? What kind of human and humane value systems are we discarding in the name of an abusive understanding of religion? It is a good thing these politicians were not in charge in the civil rights era.

Oh, wait a minute, they were. And they were proven to be on the wrong side of history, faith, and ethics.

If we allow that kind of thing it is no different from the radical Islamist sects who want to impose sharia law. It lowers us to a least, and pretty damn low common denominator.