When Rights Collide

The recent spate of controversial decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten me thinking about rights and the role of law in our life. 

As I've gotten older, I've become more libertarian in my views. The libertarianism I speak of is not the political movement (spelled with an upper case "L") which concerns itself mainly with laissez-faire capitalism, but rather the more general meaning of the word, stemming from its root, that is to say, liberty. In other words, I believe a society such as ours which claims to be "free", should allow its citizens to be well, free, so long as their freedom doesn't impinge on the rights of others.

Pay close attention to that last part.

I believe people should be free to live their lives as they choose with governmental interference kept to a minimum. 

I believe people should be free to love and to marry whomever they please, and to identify themselves however they see fit.

I believe that people should be free to obtain the health care they and their physician (not their state legislator, or governor) feel is necessary to keep themselves well. 

 

I believe that people should be free to practice whatever religion they chose, or none at all. 

I believe that educators, with the input of parents, should be free from the government deciding what they should teach or what books their students should be allowed to read.

I believe that people should be free to speak their minds, even if what they have to say is unpopular.

That last part, freedom of speech, is so important in our society, that it is guaranteed in the first section of the "Bill of Rights" of our constitution, along with the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. As a side note, for those who believe that nowhere in the Constitution can the phrase: "separation of church and state" be found, they are correct. Instead, before any of those rights mentioned above, the very first clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution unequivocally declares that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", which means exactly the same thing. 

Anyway, two of those rights enumerated in the First Amendment, speech and religion, figure prominently in one of the Court's latest controversial rulings. The case is identified as 303 Creative LLC vs. Elenis and it could prove to be a landmark decision in the realm of public accommodation in the United States. 

The case involves a Colorado website designer who is looking to branch into creating sites revolving around weddings. The designer, Lori Smith, wanted to post a disclaimer on her own website saying that due to her Christian faith, she would not be accepting business from gay couples intending to get married. However, she learned that such a notice violated Colorado law stipulating that public businesses could not discriminate against people based upon their gender identity or sexual orientation, among many other things.

Smith decided to sue, claiming that the Colorado law violated her First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

When the Supreme Court ruled in Smith's favor a couple weeks ago, I have to say that I agreed with the decision to some extent. Let me explain:

First of all, the inevitable and reasonable question arises: do I believe it's OK to discriminate against people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation? To that I would answer no, I believe it is wrong. But I would add that it is imprudent to make laws against everything that we believe is wrong. It is wrong to be rude to people, but it is not against the law, nor should it be. It is wrong to lie, but unless a lie is told under oath, it is not against the law. It turns out many things are ethically wrong, but not illegal. 

Laws are created essentially to solve conflicts in society when people left to their own devises cannot solve them on their own. In a civilized world, (the jury is still out on that one concerning this world I'm afraid), people solve problems and conflicts all the time on their own without having to turn to the law, which I would argue is a good thing most of the time. However sometimes the solution is worse than the problem, which is where laws become necessary.

In Ms. Smith's case, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me to explain up front to potential clients that because of her beliefs, she wasn't comfortable promoting gay weddings, but would gladly provide the clients in good faith, a list of designers who would. I would argue this is indeed serving potential clients as finding someone to perform a service is more than half the battle.

Besides, if I were getting married, something I've already done twice and have no intention of doing again, the last thing I would want is to have someone working on the event who did not approve of my lifestyle or my marriage. 

That thought had been running through my head ever since another case went before the Supreme Court a few years ago. The case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, involved a baker who refused to provide a wedding cake to a gay couple. Again, I believed that while I didn't agree with the baker's motivations or actions, I felt this case and others like it could have been resolved without involving the courts, especially in our day and age of the internet, where the couple could go online and fight the case in the court of public opinion, often with more effective results than in a court of law. (Please bear in mind that until recently I wasn't aware of the specifics of this case, see below).

However...

Let it be known that's what I believed two weeks ago but having given it a considerable amount of thought since then, have changed my mind and have done a complete 180.

The post you're reading was originally intended to be a half-baked defense of the Court's decision based upon my half-baked libertarianism. Given my previous ambivalence on the matter, I'm not entirely sure what inspired me to write the following two sentences, but I stand by them today and will until my dying day:

There are two essential ingredients for a democracy to work, the first is that the minority must accept the decisions of the majority. The second, at least as important as the first if not more, is that the majority must accept the rights of the minority. 

The problem with libertarianism's objection to legislation in all but the most serious of cases, is that it assumes people will do the right thing because it generally works in their own self-interest. You know the drill, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "what goes around comes around", "instant karma's gonna get you" and all that. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much living in the real world to realize that it doesn't always work out that way. 

That's why we need laws to protect the rights of minorities, in fact, those laws are the bedrock of our democracy. 

Many of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, especially the first one, indirectly address the rights of the minority. Ironically, The Bill of Rights was written at a time when owning people was still legal. On December 15, 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified, eighteen percent of the U.S. population was enslaved, including a little over two percent in the Northern States alone. The Bill of Rights, the cornerstone of safeguarding our liberty as American citizens, did nothing to change that.

It would take a Civil War seventy years later, to eradicate what has come to be known as "America's original sin" once and for all.

One of the most consequential amendments to the constitution, the Fourteenth, was adopted on July 9th, 1868, three years after Lee's surrender at Appomattox to Grant.

Here's the meat and potatoes of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section One:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As clear as legal writing can be, the Fourteenth Amendment declared who will be granted the full rights of citizenship in this country, that no person, citizen or not, shall be punished without due process of the law, and that everyone residing in the United Sates, legally or not, is granted equal protection of the law.

But there was still a lot of work to do. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, known as the "Reconstruction Amendments", were written during the period around the end of the Civil War. In a nutshell, the thirteenth amendment officially abolished slavery, and the fifteenth prohibited the government from denying the right to vote on the basis of race. (Women would have to wait another 50 years for the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted universal suffrage in the United States.) 

Anyone with a sense of U.S. history knows that the post-Reconstruction was a particularly dreadful time for black people in this country, especially in the South. It is the time that gave birth to the KKK, Jim Crow segregation laws, public (and private) lynchings, and illegal disenfranchisement. With virtually no one willing or able to enforce them down south, it was as if the reconstruction amendments did not exist. 

Despite the non-violent movements that confronted the treatment of blacks in the U.S., led by estimable figures such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois, it would remain that way, virtually unchanged for nearly three quarters of a century. 

I think it's fair to say that the modern American Civil Rights movement began in earnest at the end of the Second World War in 1945 when black members of the armed forces who served this country with distinction in Europe and the Pacific, returned home to their previous lives as second-class citizens. This grave injustice did not go unnoticed, even outside of the black community.

As I've written in this space before, one of the first great, symbolic victories in the modern American Civil Right Movement came on April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson entered the previously segregated baseball Major Leagues and played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Quoting myself:

Jackie Robinson (may have only been) a ballplayer and much of his legacy is wrapped around a game. But back in the day, baseball wasn't different from any other institution in the United States in regards to race, it was simply more public, and the integration of the game brought the issue of racial injustice in this country to the forefront. 

Soon to follow were the harrowing, trailblazing events and the people who inspired them that symbolize the American Civil Rights movement and would change this country forever. I won't go into detail here as I believe the mere mention of the following names and events should be sufficient to anyone with a modicum of understanding of American history:

• Emmett Till
• Thurgood Marshall
• Rosa Parks
• Medgar Evers
  
• The Lunch Counter Sit-Ins
• The Freedom Rides
• The Birmingham Campaign
• The March on Washington
• The Selma to Montgomery March
  
• Martin Luther King

to name just a few.

And yet, people were still unmoved by injustice, so it took laws to make real change. Again, I won't go into much detail here, for more information you can look up these groundbreaking SCOTUS decisions, executive orders, acts of Congress and amendments to the Constitution, all made possible by the Fourteenth Amendment:

• Executive Order 8802, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, creed, and national origin in the federal government and defense industries.
• Executive Order 9981 which officially integrated the armed forces.
  
• Brown vs. Board of Education which declared state sanctioned segregation of schools unconstitutional.
  
• Bailey vs. Patterson which prohibited racial segregation of transportation facilities.
• The Twenty-fourth Amendment, which eliminated the poll tax as a requirement for voting.
  
• Loving vs. Virginia which affirmed the right to inter-racial marriage.
• The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972

Most relevant to the topic of at hand is The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which among other things, prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and schools.

From that point on, from a legal standpoint at least, black people no longer would be required to sit at the back of the bus, figuratively and literally.

But it didn't stop there. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 insured that those guaranties of the right to not be discriminated against would be extended to other groups who had a long history of being marginalized in American society. In addition to race, the categories that were deemed protected classes under the anti-discrimination statutes as spelled out in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were age, national origin, religious beliefs, gender, disability, pregnancy and veteran status.

In addition to these categories, states were free to add their own protected classes of individuals, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Colorado did so on May 29, 2008, officially banning discrimination of the LBGTQ+ community in housing, public accommodation and advertising. In 2021 the state expanded these protections to employment.

 

As of this writing, about 20 states include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.

In the Masterpiece wedding cake case, the couple who were refused a cake for their wedding, filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission against the baker for what was a clear violation of the state's public accommodation anti-discrimination law. The Commission ruled in favor of the couple and required the baker not only to provide cakes for gay weddings but also to:

change its company policies, provide 'comprehensive staff training' regarding public accommodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers.

The baker responded by ceasing to bake wedding cakes entirely.* He also sued the CCRC on the grounds that the law violated his first amendment right to freely exercise his religion. That case made it to the Supreme Court. The case which seemingly pitted two fundamental rights against each other, stymied moderate members of the Court such as now retired Justice William Kennedy who while on the bench, was the court's staunchest defender of the First Amendment AND gay rights. 

So the Court punted. 

Their decision in that case was inconsequential, it rested on a technicality, namely that the CCRC erred in its ruling by using disparaging words about religion, which led Kennedy to write in his majority opinion: "religious hostility on the part of the State itself" violated the "State's obligation of religious neutrality." The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the baker, the dissenting votes coming from the Justices Sonia Sotomayor and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

With Ginsburg and Kennedy gone, both replaced by far more ideologically conservative judges, the table was set for a different outcome with the 303 case. The plaintiff argued what separated her case from the one preceding it, is that in the role she hoped to play in her new business, she would be writing copy to accompany pictures posted on the wedding websites. As she objected to gay marriage, she claimed she would be forced to write something she didn't believe in, thereby violating her First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Six justices made up exclusively by the ideologically conservative branch of the Court agreed with her. The remaining three dissented.

This ruling is consequential because in it, the Court is saying that it is indeed OK to discriminate in some cases. Defenders of the decision say the ruling is very narrow in that it only concerns cases where a business is required to provide language, a protected right, rather than say, just a cake. But wait a minute, can't a baker claim his or her cake is a work of art, therefore a form of personal expression which could also be considered protected by the First Amendment?. What about a wedding photographer or a musician?

We don't have to stop there, what about business owners who are morally opposed to mixed marriages? Or folks whose religion teaches them that blacks Jews and Catholics are devil worshipers? Believe me, those people are out there, not just a product of my imagination.

Which begs the question, what if the plaintiff in the 303 case had instead sued to refuse service to Catholic couples, how would the six conservative justices, five of whom are practicing Catholics, have voted?

I can't say for certain, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the outcome of this case would have been different, assuming the Court would have even bothered to hear the case at all.

Regardless, as a result of this ruling, messages like "Gays not served" and "Blacks, Jews and Catholics not welcome" are now AOK according to this court's ruling, at least in some cases. 

What's next?

We'll have to see as we can now expect a whole new slew of lawsuits coming before the court, claiming the plaintiff's First Amendment right to discriminate.

Yes I know, my argument here predicting all sorts of terrible things that might result from this decision, could fall into the category of a slippery slope logical fallacy. But here's the thing, if you want to change something big in the courts, you have to start small. I'm not questioning the motivations of the two plaintiffs in these cases. I have little doubt the baker and the web designer are sincere in looking after their own interests, protecting their faith and respective businesses. Challenging the law is their First Amendment right after all.

But sustaining a lawsuit all the way through to the Supreme Court takes tremendous resources which few individuals have. Typically, there is an interested third party, usually an organization with deep pockets and an agenda or axe to grind who takes up causes such as this to provide the funding and the legal expertise to make cases like these possible.

Sure enough, both plaintiffs were represented by a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian advocacy group who in their mission statement declares itself to be:

the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

From their website:

ADF is working to secure Generational Wins in the five key areas.

Those five key areas are:

• "Guaranteeing the right to life from conception to natural death."
• "Restoring religious freedom as a fundamental right."
• Securing free speech for all."
• "Guaranteeing the fundamental rights of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children."
• "Ensuring the law respects God’s created order for marriage, the family, and human sexuality."

From my experience, whenever a Christian organization claims it is working to "protect religious freedom", what they are really working for is the right to impose their religion on others.  

Rest assured that for the ADF, the First Amendment in these two cases is only a means to an end, they have much bigger fish to fry.

Here from their website is a detailed description of the group's efforts to help successfully overturn Roe v. Wade. Pay close attention to the small steps they took before the big leap.

Now that item number one of their "Generational Wins" to-do list is checked off, the two victories regarding denying public accommodations for LGBTQ+ people could be the first steps necessary for them to check off item number five, "respecting God’s created order for marriage".

In other words, getting the Supreme Court to overrule Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision, ruling that the right to marry is guaranteed to same sex couples by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who not surprisingly voted in the minority in Obergefell, has publicly invited like-minded parties to bring cases to the Court that challenge rulings he does not like involving not only the right to gay marriage, but sexual acts between consenting adults (Lawrence v. Texas) and contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut). In his concurring opinion to the case that overturned Roe, Thomas wrote:

In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.

This Court has a track record of taking away rights Americans have enjoyed by for decades by overruling precedent, and it is clear that Thomas intends to keep on doing it.

It would be interesting to hear Justice Thomas's views on yet another due process precedent, Loving v. Virginia, the overruling of which would invalidate his own marriage. 

There are more fundamental issues with this case than the dreadful consequences that may likely result from this decision. I understand how some people might resent the comparison of someone like Rosa Parks, who was arrested for not sitting in her proper place on a bus, to a couple who were denied a wedding cake. But grave injustices and not quite as grave injustices are both injustices. If we are going to have laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating against particular groups of people, something I believe the majority of Americans support, we can't cherry pick the offenses we feel are "worthy" from others we feel are not. If it is illegal to ban black people from being served at your place of business, it is illegal (in the states where they are a protected group), to ban LBGTQ people. Equal protection under the law means just that. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need laws, we'd all be able to figure out how to do the right thing on our own. As we saw above, the laws that protect against discrimination written over the last eighty years or so, have helped set us on the course of being a more free, equitable and just society, something we should all be on board with. We still have a lot of work to do to get to that place and it doesn't help that this Court is hellbent on setting us backward a half century or more. 

Funny, in the process of writing this post, I went from being OK with this decision to believing it is an unmitigated disaster.

Guess I should turn in my libertarian card. 

CODA

*Getting out of the wedding cake business entirely is a very reasonable solution to the problem for the baker who didn't want to bake cakes for gay weddings. Come to think of it, it's a good rebuttal to the argument that someone's First Amendment rights are violated when their work requires them to do or say something they do not agree with. They are free to pursue other work opportunities that do not conflict with their beliefs. 

A good example is a friend of mine who worked for a firm that considered doing business with a company that manufactured assault weapons. As he has a moral objection to these weapons, my friend was prepared to quit his job rather than contribute to something he felt was immoral. Sometimes there are difficult decisions to be made in life, especially if you have strong beliefs. Nowhere in the Constitution does it guarantee the right to a job that will never require you to do something you may not believe in. Personally, I see no First Amendment issue in these two cases at all. 

"How Republics Die"

This is the title of a very distressing article I just read written by Thom Hartmann for  the online magazine Salon. 

Hartmann suggests that the beginning of the end of our own republic might very well have been the horrendous 2010 Supreme Court decision known as "Citizens United" which eliminated the cap on the amount of money individuals and corporations can contribute to political campaigns. It doesn't take a genius to realize this opens the door to undue influence into the workings of our government. In other words: any hope of calling our system of government a democratic republic is dashed; Citizens United has enabled it to become a plutocracy, a government for sale to the highest bidder.

The truly depressing part is that according to Hartmann, as effective as it has been for over two hundred years, the US Constitution is not equipped to deal with this threat to its very existence. Hartmann says:

Our Constitution, in many very real ways, is rather weak when faced with parties or persons who flaunt its norms, or won’t use the tools it provides to ensure accountability.

Quicker can you say Jack Robinson, we are now faced with a president who is more than happy to be a norm flaunter, that's in part what made him so attractive to the people who voted for him. The other is the fact that he wasn't Hillary Clinton.

Hartmann gives us a laundry list of just a few of the ways this president has flaunted the norms that have served this nation fairly well for over two centuries:

• Calling the press “the enemy of the people.”

• Refusing to interact with Congress as the Constitution dictates.

• Packing the courts with demonstrably unqualified ideologues.

• Lying to the people on a daily basis.

• Embracing autocrats while trashing traditional allies.

• Breaking the law and flaunting a Nixon-era “guideline” from the DOJ saying that the president can’t be prosecuted, while he runs out the clock on the statute of limitations.

• Bragging that he’s making money on the presidency and daring anybody to stop him.

• Putting lobbyists in charge of public lands, our banking system, and our environment.

• Embracing violent and hateful people and movements, both at home and abroad.

Hartmann calls these acts "symptoms of a republic in crisis."

Adding to the danger of it all, we have a political party who when given the choice between defending the principles of this nation as defined by our consitution, or kowtowing to their very wealthy benefactors, in every case chooses the latter. Even more dangerous are supporters of this administration who are bombarded with questionable (at best) information spoon fed to them by news sources which are funded by the same people who fund the politicians.

In my opinion, by far the most egregious threat to our nation is that this administration is doing its best to divide the country between his supporters and the rest, who has been deemed "the enemy." This weekend, undermining a statement from his own Director of National Security, the president tweeted that he wasn't the least bit concerend about North Korea conducting tests of ballistic missles, in clear violation of International Law. It seems the president is pleased with Kim Jun Un because Kim made some derrogatory remarks about Joe Biden, as we speak, Trump's most formidable oponent in the upcoming 2020 election. In other words, Trump is backing one of this country's fiercest adversaries, a ruthless, murderous dictator to boot, over a former vice president of the United States.

It's clear whom Kim supports in the upcoming election, And Donald Trump in one fell tweet has made it crystal clear where his loyalties lie, who his friends are, as well as his enemies.

Because of the above laundry list of dangerous and/or criminal actions this president has taken, not the least of which his unwavering support of Kim and North Korea, it should be clear to any reasonable person who values our democratic republic that this man needs to stop being president as soon as possible.

But here lies the rub. The strategy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many high ranking Democrats in Congress is that regardless of the many impeachable actions as spelled out by the Mueller Report and by his own words and deeds, actions directed toward the impeachment of this president might be self-defeating. As there is an intransegent Republican majority in the Senate, there is no chance of an impreachment resulting in his removal from office and in addition, Pelosi and others reason that impeachment and a subsequent acquittal by the Senate would only embolden and furthur empower Trump, helping to ensure his re-election in 2020.

On the other hand, by not taking forceful action to curb this president, Congress is weakening itself in its role as a crucial check to balance the power of any president now or in the future, not to mention one with tyrannical visions for himself who thumbs his nose at any challenge to his power every chance he gets.

The words "constitutional crisis" have been bandied about quite liberally these days to the point where they seem rather trite, like the proverbial words of the boy who cried wolf. On the other hand there are several "cracies" that can be applied to the current administration, plutocracy, kleptocracy, and idiocracy are just three that come immediately to mind. Unfortunately democracy is not on the list and neither for that matter is republic.

For those of us who value the "d" word and the "r" word, I think the time to act is now to enure that Trump (who won election in the 2016 election with a substantial minority of the popular vote), not only is not president for much longer, but that the damage that he and his ilk have inflicted upon the country will not be long lasting. How to do that is the qustion of the hour.

So how do you spell constitutional crisis?

Taboos and Double Standards

In our on-going culture wars, the gripe du-jour among white Trump supporters this week is that there is a double standard in the media regarding the treatment of performers who cross one line or other in regards to race and politics. It began, as so many issues these days, with a tweet.

Celebrity Roseanne Barr, who made a comeback with her eponymous sit-com about a working class family with conflicting political opinions, sort of a 2010's version of All in the Family, got into hot water this week when she tweeted that former Obama advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who hapens to be African American. looked like a cross between the "Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes." Now why she chose to pick on Ms. Jarrett who has been out of the spotlight for a while I have no idea, but that's just what she did. After being roundly criticized from a wide swath of the American public, Barr apolgized to Jarrett for the tweet, but the damage was done. Later in the day ABC, the network who broadcasts her highly rated show, cancelled it.

While Barr's tweet was criticized by virtually everyone, her firing was slammed by many for being an overreaction to what was simply meant to be a joke, albeit a tasteless one with racial overtoves. Barr took back the remark and immediately apologized for it, that should have been enough, critics of ABC said. The argument went on that other celebrities make crude and vugar references about public figures all the time and get away with it scott free. Bill Maher for example compared President Trump to an orangutan, and Samantha Bee just this week referred to Ivanka Trump as a "feckless cunt." Bee also apologized for that remark. But unlike Barr, Maher and Bee got to keep their jobs despite doing essentially what Barr did.

Cries of unfiar, and accusations of double standards went up all over the ultra-right airwaves which claimed that Barr was fired and the others were spared for one and only one reason, because Barr is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. Not surprizingly, the president also got into the act with his own tweet. He openly whined about Disney, the parent company of ABC. If they saw fit to fire Barr for her comments about Jarrett, and then apologize to the American people for those remarks, why didn't they apologize to him for all the mean things celebrities under their employ said about him?

Putting aside the petty and pathetic nature of the President of the United States making the firing of a celebrity over an offensive comment, all about himself, does Donald Trump have a point? After all, Bill Maher compared him to an ape, just like Barr compared Jarrett, and Bee crossed a line when she used the "C" word to describe his daughter. Fair is fair isn't it?

If there were a creature from outer space who arrived to earth just in time for this story to break, he, she, they, it or whatever the correct pronoun for a creature from outer space is, would certainly see a double standard here, Barr was fired and Maher and Bee were not, for doing essentially the same thing. But in our society, you'd have to be a creature from outer space to not understand the difference, and no, it does not have anythigng to do with the poitics of the people involved.

The issue is race, pure and simple. A couple months ago. I dealt with the issue of reverse racism, trying to find eqinamity beween the way white and black people in the United States relate to each other. My conclusion was that it is simply not possible. In other words, reverse racism does not exist. You can read that post here.

Now you might read that and say wow, this guy is just swayed by the scourge of political correctness. Well several years ago I dealt with that subject as well. You can read that here.

The jist of the matter is this, every society has its own taboos. In Turkey for example, it is considered taboo to show the bottom of your feet in public,, with or without shoes. In Cambodia, it is wrong to take a photograph with three people. Every society, including our own, has its own cultural taboos that are bewildering to people of other cultures.

There were far more taboos when I was growing up in this country than there are now. For example, one would never ask a woman her age. Then of course there were George Carlin's famous "Seven words you can't say on TV." Well you still can't say those words on broadcast TV but they are used so frequently these days in common speech that they go all but unnoticed. As a result, they have all but lost their power to evoke or provoke as the case may be.

But never fear, there are two words that have supplanted them, words  so vile and taboo in our society, that even the slightest mention of them in polite company, with rare exception, marks the utterer of them, the basest of individuals. That's because the two words refer not to bodily functions but are the most derogatory descriptions of specific groups of people, one of them, African Americans, the other, women. And the two greatest taboos in our society today are number one, being a racist, and number two, being a sexist. For all its shortcomings, political correctness is a means to enforce these taboos that deserve to remain as such.

If you believe that reverse racism and for that matter, reverse sexism exists, consider this:, no matter how hard you try to find one, there is no white equivalent for the "N" word, and no male equivalent for the "C" word. Granted there are derogatory words, insulting words, obnoxious words to describe white males, but nothing that comes close to the vile intent conveyed by those two specific words. And for good reason, black people and women have experienced centurites of repression, suppression, and oppresion in our society, white men have not. All the while, white men have called the shots, and for that matter, by and large, still do.

There has been a double standard reagrding race and regarding gender in this country since the beginning. So now the pendulum has swung the other direction and yes indeed, today there is a double standard in regard to the words you can legitimately use to describe another race or gender. As a result there are lines that exist in regards to the words we can use to describe oppressed groups of people, including women, that don't exist in the other direction.

And with that the ultra right cries foul. "Not being able to use words? Why that violates our free speech as guaranteed in the First Amendment!"

Well not so fast. The First Amendment of the American Constitution guarantees that Congress shall not create a law "abridging freedom of speech" (among other things). So yes there is no law against spewing the most vile, racist, sexist or hateful words, as the constitution protects against it. In other words, the police cannot come and arrest you for speaking your mind. What the constitution does not protect you from, are the consequences that may arise from that speech, including losing your job. You are free to say whatever you like without fear of arrest, but your employer doesn't have to ruin its reputation by having to associate with you. And a private company such as Facebook or Twitter is not required to publish your vile words. They are perfectly free to delete what you say, if it does not fall within their well established guidelines, or outright ban you at their discression. So say whatever you like, but remember, you are on your own, at least according to the constitution.

Roseanne Barr a white woman, crossed a definite line when she likened Valerie Jarrett, a black woman, to an ape. She was not arrested, therefore her constitutional rights were not violated. ABC, a company with a reputation to withhold, decided it no longer wanted to be affiliated with her. That decision, right or wrong, is their right, and they acted upon it.

On the other hand, there is no line against making fun of the president or his family, in fact, there is a long, distinguished history of it in this country. Personally I find Bill Maher obnoxious and at times despicable. But he, a white man, did not cross any line by calling Trump, another white man, an orangutan. In fact if anything, I think his remark was more offensive to orangutans than to Trump but maybe that's just me. Samantha Bee calling the first daughter the "C" word, if not crossing a line, came pretty close. I suppose she gets cut some slack because she is a woman calling another woman that word. Frankly it wouldn't bother me if either Maher or Bee lost their job for of their vulgar comments, because that decision is the discretion of their their employer. I may not like it, but it's not my network.

The fact is, if we are dismayed when a TV network chooses to hire or fire somebody, or not hire or not fire somebody, there is something we can do about it. Change the channel. If enough of us do that, believe me, the network will get the message.

On the other hand if a black man cannot walk down the street without being suspected of being a criminal simply because of the color of his skin, he cannot change the color of his skin.

Or if a woman cannot go to work with the full expectation tha she will be treated fairly, justly and with respect at all times, simply because she is a woman, she cannot change her gender.

Nobody ever said life was fair.

Given that, if you're whining this week because you think it's unfair that a network cancelled your favorite TV show because of a racist remark made by its star, I have two words for you.

Tough shit.

For What It's Worth

If you've been paying attention lately and are old enough, something seems vaguely familiar. There was a song from the sixties* that to me perfectly defines that bygone era. Over fifty years after it was released, the song continues to be played frequently, and its lyrics ring true in our day; so much so it could easily be adopted by young people today as an anthem for their own generation:

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

The refrain of that song always brings me back to early June, 1968. Two months earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Menphis and as a result, much of the West Side of Chicago, a couple miles from from my home, was in flames. The National Guard, whose armory was in Humboldt Park a couple blocks away, mobilized along the parkway right in front of our apartment building on Humboldt Boulevard. To them, Mayor Richard J. Daley issued his infamous "shoot to kill" order, directed at would be arsonists.

That year the Vietnam War escalated after the Tet Offensive which took place in January. A regular feature of the evening news in those days was the death counts of soldiers on both sides of that war. "Radicals" as Middle America called them, for years had been protesting our inolvement in Vietnam. But on February 27, when the famed network TV anchor Walter Cronkite called for a negotiated peace after visiting the front lines, President Lyndon B. Johnson knew it was time to leave office. "If I lost Walter Cronkite..." he told his confidants, "...I've lost Middle America."

It was an election year. The void Johnson left as his party's nominee for president was filled by two Democratic anti-war candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. I distinctly remember watching with my parents, a June 1st televised debate between the two candidates, held in advance of the California Primary. It was a Saturday night. In case you're interested, here is an audio recording of that debate. Kennedy won that primary the following Tuesday, but he didn't have long to celebrate his victory.

The next day, I was awakend early in the morning by my sobbing mother phoning my grandmother who lived in an apartment downstairs telling her: "Bobby Kennedy's been shot."

Simply put, violence, war and death were very much a part of the world in which I grew up. What I just described was only the tip of the iceberg of the state of the world in 1968. My parents did little or nothing to shield me from all of that, and for that I thank them, because it made me conscious of the big world outside of my very little world at 1850 Humbolt Boulevard. I'd say it was a scary time to be a child but the truth is, it was all we knew as kids. But something hit me that morning of the 5th of June, 1968. The coincidences of Kennedy being shot (he died the next day) right after I had watched him on TV,  just two months after Dr. King, and five years after his brother the president, hit me profoundly. I remember lying in bed that morning, with the words of the refrain to For What it's Worth going through my head:

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Later that year, the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago and all hell broke loose. Anti-war protestors from all over the country descended upon Chicago. The Dada infulenced leftist group known as the Yippies, who took joy in being a thorn in the side of the establishment, threatened to spike the city's water supply with LSD. That, and other antics got the attention of Mayor Daley who was still reeling from the King riots and the unwanted national attention they brought to him and his city. Daley hunkered down with his police commanders in an effort to ensure that the convention would come off peacefully, without a hitch. His efforts backfired.

The convention was held at the old International Amphitheater on the south side. Police cordonned off the area like an armed camp. But they couldn't cordon off the whole city, so protestors gathered Downtown in Grant Park, across the street from the Conrad Hilton Hotel where many of the convention delegates were lodged. Nobody agrees exactly who's to blame for the Grant Park riot, but there is no question that the Chicago Police, reacting to the taunting of the crowd which included having bags of human feces thrown at them, went bat-shit crazy.

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

While there were well established people from all walks of life who were active in the anti-war movement of the sixties, that movement will always be remembered by the overwhelming number of young people in its ranks. These were the baby boomers, children of the generation who lived through the suffering of the Great Depression and World War II, folks who didn't want to see their children live through the hard times they experienced. So they tossed out much of the old world and created what they believed would be a new and better world, one of single family homes in new communities called suburbs, connected by superhighways which tore old communities (and the human connections they made) apart limb from limb. The parents who lived through the war, well most of them anyway, saw to it that their children would have what they didn't, and would want for nothing. For their part, the children of the fifties and early sixties became restless and dissatisfied with the complacency of their isolated communities, and the boredom of what they considered their meaningless existence.

Many of them found meaning in the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that the history of both those struggles would have been much different, were it not for the grass roots activities and protests involving a great number of young people.

As a result, my peers and I, only a few years behind, followed in our immediate elders' footsteps in being passionate about world events and participatting wherever we could in activities that we saw could help change the world for the better.

In many ways, things did get better; the war eventually ended, and the enormous racial divide grew smaller, or at least, so we thought. Although the world was far from perfect, gains were made in other battles fought by activists in areas such as equality for women, protecting the environment, LBGT rights and many others. Eventually we got older, and complacency set in amongst ourselves; our direction shifted from egalitarianism to self-interest, while cynicism began to replace youthful idealism. But most of us continued at the very least, to vote, so ingrained in us that it was the very least we could do to improve our communities, our nation, and the world.

In retrospect, with the excpetion of atrocities that took place in specific corners of the world, things trended up in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Prosperity grew for most people, hostilities between East and West lessened as the Cold War warmed up, and with notable exceptions, the years between 1975 and 2000 were relatively peaceful. Children who grew up in the eighties and nineties, at least in the develpoed world, did not live with intractable wars, or were subjected to the great social upheavals that rocked the sixties and early seventies. For all intents and purposes, the period that led up to the turn of the millennium was a pretty good time to be alive and consequently, there was no great urge to change the world, or for that matter, at least for young people, to vote.

Then came 9/11.

My son is the same age as the students seen in these pictures, as they gathered around Senn High School on the north side of Chicago last week. They stood together with locked arms and formed a complete circle around the school's enormous front lawn, in solidarity with the students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where exactly one month before, a gunman opened fire and killed seventeen students and faculty members. Unlike the generation before them, today's high school students, born around the time of 9/11, have never known a world without war, without terrorist attrocities graphically depicted on the internet, and without mass shootings at schools. The latter is particularly relevant, as none of today's children have experienced going to a school and not being subjected to a terrifying lockdown drill, in preparation for an unlikely, yet still very possible horror that could befall them.

The Stoneman Douglas shooting was similar to the roughly 50 school mass shootings (in addition to mass shootings that have occured at other venues), that have taken place in this country since 1999, when two students walked into Columbine High School in suburban Denver, and killed 13 of their classmates and teachers, as well as themselves.  Unlike Columbine and the vast majority of school mass shootings, the students at Stoneman Douglas banded together to do something about it.

Their public actions in starting a nationwide student movement to push for responsible, common sense gun control as a means to address the calamity of mass shootings in this country, has been an inspiration to adults and students alike, all over the world. Their actions have also been roundly criticized by some, as an alterior motive, taking advantage of a tragedy in order to persue a political agenda, one that of course, the critics don't agree with. Some have gone so far as to say that the young people who passionately articulated their message at rallies and on radio and TV interviews, were not actually students from Parkland, but "crisis actors", hired guns paid by left wing activist groups to stir up public support of gun control. The ultimate goal of these groups, so the argument goes, is nothing short of a complete repeal of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees the right of Americans to bear arms.

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

The accusations that the kids weren't who they said they were are verifyable rubbish. It stands as proof that there are people in our country who will stop at nothing in order to promote their own political agenda, not even attacking children who witnessed their friends and teachers die before their very eyes.

Wednesday, March 14 was dubbed, National Walkout Day. Students all over the country were encouraged to walk out of school at precisely 10:00 AM local time, in commemoration of the Parkland Tragedy. The demonstations were to last about one half hour and would include seventeen minutes of silence, one for each life lost in the Parkland shooting. School officials and faculty, at least here in Chicago, are explicitly prohibited from promoting a political agenda, so the principals who were sympathetic to the cause, supported it by looking the other way, not penalizing the students who chose to leave their classes at the appointed time. The walkout was entirely voluntary, those who chose not to walk, stayed in their classrooms. Those principals who did not support the effort, either banned their students from leaving the school building altogether, or imposed punishments such as detentions for the students who walked out. 

The walkouts took on many forms. From the coverage I read about and saw dipicted in photographs, many included singing songs and carrying signs of protest against groups such as the NRA who steadfastly opposes any form of gun control, politicians who take money from that organization and sheepishly bend to its will, and the current administration which has so far been wishy washy at best on gun control. 

But by and large, the protests stuck to the message of making it possible to go to school without having to worry about getting shot. That included, but was not limited to stricter background checks on potential gun buyers and restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms such as the AR-15 rifle, which has been the weapon of choice among many mass shooters, because of its ability to kill a large a number of people in a short period of time.  

Huffing, puffing, ranting and raving, members of the far right cried foul at the thought of schools allowing kids to leave class to particpate in what they felt amounted to a political assault against ideas and values they hold dear, namely that the Second Amendment to our constitution has no limits and no responsibilities attached to it.

Cleo Shine and Rory Hayes, the leaders of Nicholas Senn High School's contribution to National Walkout Day 

As you can see from the photographs I posted, no one carried signs at the walkout at Senn High School. What you can't see, you'll just have to take my word for it, is that there also was no chanting, no breast beating, no berating of politicians or even the NRA. Most importantly, what you don't see are adults. Including myself, I'd say that out of about 1,000 people on the Senn lawn that morning, I could count on my fingers the number of adults present and still have a few fingers to spare. Yes the principal and one of her assistant principals were present as well as a few security people to insure the safely of the students. And yes the two young women who were the organizers of the event held bullhorns; they used them to direct the throng of students in a circle around the campus, no easy task. Then they used them to announce it was time for the seventeen moments of silence, which they pulled off. Imagine one thousand teenagers without any adult supervision standing silent for seventeen minutes. At the end of that, one of them used her bullhorn to read off the names of the Parkland victims. Fianlly the two women used their bullhorns to remind everyone to return peacefully to their classes.

Now some might have seen it as a lost opportunity, after all what kind of a demonstration doesn't have picket signs and chanting? But in my mind, the silence, dignity and respect that diverse group of Senn students showed at an event that was first and formost a commemoration of lives tragically lost, spoke louder than ten thousand words.

Indeed, not all of the school walkouts played out as Senn's did. I saw many inages of events staged around the country, including my son's high school a few miles away, where the adults seemed to be leading the charge.

Does the extreme right have a valid point when they say that adults are having children do their own bidding by encouraging them to go out and protest? Well, perhaps in some cases, yes. We'd like to think, some of us anyway, that our children have the initiative and intelligence to think for themselves. A little while ago I asked my eleven year old daughter if her feelings about the current president were entirely her own or if they were shaped by her parents' views. I was foolishly surprised and a little taken aback when she told me a little of both.

So yes, children are influenced by their parents, that should go without saying. What naturally follows then is the question, are parents setting a bad example for thier children by encouraging them to walk out of school, or even break the law, to demonstrate for a cause they believe is right?

Obviously that's a personal decision that every parent must make for him or herself. My personal feeling is that the core of our democratic republic and the spirit of our nation lie at the feet of people who willfully broke the law for what they believed was right. We owe our very existence as an independent nation to law breakers who started a revolution in order to rid ourselves of colonial rule. In the ninteenth century the injustice of slavery was met head on by abolitionists who defied what they believed to be immoral laws, as labor activists did who fought for the rights that today we take for granted at the workplace. Suffragettes defied laws in the early twentieth century so that women could have the right to vote, as did civil rights activists in the middle of that century who fought the battle to once and for all fulfill for all Americans, the promises made in the Declaration of Indepenence and the U.S. Constitution. And so it goes in our day as people continue to fight, sacrifice and when necessary break the law, to promote justice and decency.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

Implementing change takes will, courage and sacrifice. The men and women who shaped this country, from George Washington to Harriet Tubman, Albert Parsons to Susan  B. Anthony, Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King to Caesar Chavez, were no shrinking violets. Our nation was forged out of the actions of brave, heroic people who would not simply accept things as they are.

Critics of the school walkout claim that students would be better off by staying in their classrooms and learning, rather than being off marching outside. My question to those critics is this: what could possibly be a better civics lesson than having students follow in the footsteps of these great Americans, participating in an action that promotes a worthwhile cause?

Clearly we're not going to all agree on which causes are worthwhile and which are not; it's all in the eye of the beholder. Folks on the right lately seem to have a problem with the idea of activism and protest marches. But as this article by arch-conservative writer Pat Buchannan makes clear, nobody seems to have a problem with social activism, even acts of civil disobedience, when they promote ideals in which they believe.

Therin lies the rub. Would those of us who as I did, support National Walkout Day, feel the same if high school students walked out of school for a cause we did not believe in? That is the dilemma of life in a democracy, which is becoming more and more apparent  every day. We all love the First Amendment when it protects our own voice, but not so much when it protects the voice of others,

On the other hand, who on earth could possibly say the cause of keeping our children safe is not worthwhile?

Today a nationwide protest is scheduled called "March for our Lives." The focal point of the demonstration will take place on the streets of Washintgon D.C. where there will be a march led by several of the Stoneman Douglas student activists. The permit granted by D.C. authorities to the marchers was for 500,000 people, but many more are likely to show up in front of the U.S. Capitol Building at noon local time. In addition there will be satellite marches in cities all over the country including New York, L.A,, Portland and Chicago.

From yesterday, the following is an NPR interview with Cameron Kasky, the defacto spokesperson for the students:



Kasky's face and voice have been all over the media, social and otherwise for the past month. His strident demeanor may turn some off, but one cannot deny his eloquence in tackling head on, the tough questions thrown his way. It is clear he and his peers have an agenda, and they are not going to let anyone, not critics of their movement, nor adult supporters bent on giving them unsolicited advice, get in their way.

Clearly, we adults in America have dropped the ball when it comes to protecting our children in thier schools, so who is to say that children have no right to fight for their own lives?

Having just said that, I hope this adult who has seen a lot in his life, is not out of line by providing some unsolicited advice of his own:

Banding together to organize great public events in support of a cause is a worthwhile and wonderful thing, but it is only the first step. The next step may not be as glamorous, it may not provide for good photo-ops or get you nearly as much attention, but it will be a far more effective way to achieve your goal.

Organize a nation-wide voter registration drive for kids turning 18 before the national election this coming November. The balance of power in Congress is at a tipping point right now and with a crop of millions of passionate, driven new voters, the balance of power in our government may shift. At the very least, you will get the atention of politicians who for years could not care less about issues that affect young people for the simple reason that young people don't vote.

If there is any silver lining to our current political situation, it is that few of us will ever again take for granted the power of the vote, and perhaps more profoundly, the peril of not voting. That is a message that we adults must pass along to future generations, and a message that young people today simply can't let pass by.

You have the momentum and our attention now; grab it, and run with it. You are our hope for the future, and from what I've seen in the past month, I'd say our future is in very good hands.



* For What It's Worth, written by Steven Stills, performed by Buffalo Springfield, released January 1967