Beacon Broadside

Straight Talk About Gay Marriage: 4 Points for Undecided Voters to Consider

Today's post is from Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work addresses the intersections of religion, sexuality, spirituality, and law. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

Recently I visited Minnesota to meet folks involved in the same-sex marriage debate. I was inspired by the amount of energy that people were devoting to the cause, and to emphasizing dialogue and conversation instead of shouting and slogans.

One thing we’ve learned is that a lot of Minnesotans (and Marylanders, Washingtonians and Mainers) are sincere in supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians and simultaneously sincere in their misgivings about same-sex marriage. Yes, there are absolutely-sure people on both sides, but there are also a lot of people sincerely in the middle. If you’re one of those people, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned as someone involved in this issue for several years now—and as someone who married my same-sex partner in New York a year ago.

First, I want to say that I get it. I know many people in the gay community who say that if you don’t support marriage equality, then you must be a bigot or a homophobe, but I know that that isn’t true. I know plenty of people who are sincerely concerned about the consequences of same-sex marriage for their communities and their values—and some of them are my friends. So this is not about bashing people who disagree. (Of course, it’s also true that there are some bigots and homophobes out there, too. But I’m not really speaking to them, because they’re not interested in what I have to say anyway!)

To those sincerely wrestling with this issue, I offer four points to consider.

1. Your church will never have to hold any kind of wedding it doesn’t want to.

Polls have told us that the number-one concern of “undecideds” is that their church, pastor, minister or rabbi would have to officiate a gay wedding if marriage equality passed. Let me be clear as a lawyer and a religious leader: This is absolutely 100-percent false. In every state with same-sex marriage, there are “ministerial exemptions” and other protections that ensure that this will never, ever happen.

There’s also the U.S. Constitution. The exact boundaries of the First Amendment have been debated since it was passed 223 years ago, but every justice on the Supreme Court, and every judge on every federal court, agrees that no church can be compelled to solemnize a wedding (or baptism, or funeral) that it finds religiously objectionable. It’s way, way beyond the pale of the law.

Unfortunately, anti-gay zealots have deliberately distorted this issue. They have taken a small handful of borderline cases and twisted them beyond their meaning, or warned of a “coming storm” that will happen in the future. This is misleading, and it’s led to confusion. But it is a fact that no church will ever have to perform a same-sex wedding if it doesn’t want to. Period.

2. You’re right to be stuck on the word “marriage.”

Another thing we’ve learned in Minnesota is that a lot of folks support civil unions for gay couples but not marriage. Why? Because the truth is that “marriage” is a religious term. The state has taken it over, but the word, the concept, is religious. It’s true that this debate is about civil marriage, not religious marriage, but it’s also true that the word “marriage” itself is derived from religious concepts.

The real problem here isn’t same-sex marriage; it’s the state deciding what marriage is in the first place. Many people, religious and secular, liberal and conservative, have argued that the state has no business deciding what “marriage” is. The state should just issue a civil union license to everyone and leave it to churches and other institutions to solemnize marriages.

In my opinion this is a good point. The trouble is that “marriage” is the word we use right now. It’s how the state, and our communities, recognizes families. It’s how we decide who gets to visit their lifelong partners in the hospital or leave their property to their loved ones. More importantly, this is the word we use to decide which families count and which don’t.

If we as a society want to change that, fine. But in the meantime, there’s a group of people—around 5 percent of people—who are excluded from being counted as families because of this definition. Unless we’re going to change the whole system, that isn’t fair.

So if you’re stuck on the word “marriage,” you’re right. It is a word that comes from religious traditions. But words take on new meanings all the time, and this is one of them. That’s what we’re voting on now: not the original, religious meaning but this new, secular one. It really is a different question.

3. Marriage has always evolved.

I know that two men getting married may seem like a huge, radical break from a tradition as old as the Bible, but it isn’t. In fact, the tradition has always changed.

For a start, let’s look at the Bible itself. Biblical marriage wasn’t monogamy; it was polygamy. Abraham had two wives; King Solomon had a whole harem. And that’s just the beginning. In biblical societies, when you conquered another group, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. Is this “traditional marriage”?

But let’s not stop there. Right up until the 20th century women were considered the property of their husbands—something the Bible explicitly states. Until the 19th century girls were married off at the age of 12. Is that “traditional marriage”?

Of course, let’s also remember that in some places, interracial marriage was seen as a “crime against nature” up until the 1960s. In the 19th century African Americans weren’t even considered fully human. As revolting as it is to even remember this fact today, some people at that time would have considered interracial marriage a marriage between a human and an animal. Is that the “tradition” we’re protecting here?

Thank God we have come a long way. Our society doesn’t treat women as property. All people are seen as fully human, equal in the eyes of God and the state alike. But getting from point A to point B was a radical change—no less, I submit, than including gay couples in the institution of marriage today.

Gays and lesbians aren’t trying to change marriage. We’re trying to join it. And marriage itself has grown and changed as long as the institution has been around. Yes, this can seem like a big step, but look where we’d be if we hadn’t taken such steps in the past.

4. It really is about “separate but equal.”

Finally (and I think this point will probably be the one that carries the day in Minnesota), this really is about “separate but equal.” Slice it, dice it, see it from every perspective, but at the end of the day this question is about whether your gay uncle or the lesbian in your church is a real person, to be treated fairly or not.

Let me speak from my own experience. When our families and friends gathered to celebrate our wedding a year ago, and when the state recognized it, they were affirming us as human beings. We are people, and our love is real. The joy in my mother’s face revealed the pride any mother would feel at her son’s wedding. And yes, it mattered that it was legal.

Civil unions fulfill the legal technicalities of marriage, but we all know that separate can never be equal. Anything less than marriage tells gay people that they’re second-class citizens.

I really do understand the complicated religious questions that same-sex marriage brings up, but make no mistake: A vote for so-called “traditional marriage” is a vote against the dignity of gay and lesbian people. It is deeply hurtful and deeply unfair. And unfortunately, there’s just no getting around that.

A person’s sexuality isn’t some kind of choice, a vice or a psychological defect. It’s a part of who they are, and the diversity of sexualities is part of the incredible diversity of nature. The question now is whether we can open our hearts to those who are different from us, and whether we can see them not only as God’s children but as God’s adults: fully human, deserving of respect and thankfully blessed with love.

Photo by Tony Webster on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons. 

July 4th and "The Immeasurable Distance Between Us"

Independence Day celebrations began this past weekend, with picnics, parades, and fireworks displays all around the country. In honor of the holiday, we asked several of our authors to share their feelings about Independence Day and what it means to them-- good and bad. Three authors who grapple with the complex history associated with the holiday quoted Frederick Douglass from his speech, "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" We've grouped their responses for today's post. 

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a long-time racial-justice, labor, and international activist, scholar, and author. He has served in leadership positions with many prominent union and labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. Fletcher is currently the director of field services for the American Federation of Government Employees. He is the author of the forthcoming book "They're Bankrupting Us!" And Twenty Other Myths about Unions.

The 4th of July is always a complicated holiday for me. That is largely because it has a complicated historical significance. When I think of July 4th I immediately think about how my African ancestors were largely ignored-- except with regard to labor power and some soldiering--in the course of the events that were transpiring at that moment, and particularly ignored in the context of great minds thinking about the future of the new nation that they wished to create. I also think about how the War of Independence was in part ignited by the indignation of the settlers over restrictions imposed on them by the British regarding going further West-- into the lands of my Shawnee ancestors and other Native American nations.

As a result, I cannot uncritically celebrate July 4th. I consider, of course, the ideal that is contained in the Declaration of Independence, and am aware of those among the colonial settlers who may have had a more egalitarian vision of the future. I am equally aware of the ideal that July 4th is supposed to represent. But I am saddened each year that there is little historical examination of the contradictory nature of the War of Independence, and that for entire populations the War of Independence came to represent yet another stage on the road to their annihilation.

In the 19th century the great Frederick Douglass posed a question in a now famous speech "What to a slave is the fourth of July?" I would expand that and pose the question that today needs to be asked and answered: For those of us who believe in democracy, justice and equality, how do we disentangle the web of myth that surrounds the Fourth of July?"

Sharon Morgan is co-author of Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade. Morgan is a marketing communications consultant and a nationally recognized pioneer in multicultural marketing. An avid genealogist, she is the webmaster for OurBlackAncestry.com and is a founder of the Black Public Relations Society.

We live in fearful times. War, racism, social, economic, employment, environmental, energy, health and food security issues are on the long list of things to be worried about. And I do. Worry.

On July 4, 1776, the day America declared its independence, one fifth of the population was in a state of bondage. Seventy-six years later, in 1852, abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass, articulated, “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

Although legal freedom came in 1865, when four million people were released from slavery, evidence of true emancipation did not come until 143 years later, when Barack Obama was elected the first African American President of the United States. In his inaugural July 4th address, he extolled, “That unyielding spirit [that] defines us as American... It is what has always led us, as a people, not to wilt or cower at a difficult moment, but to face down any trial and rise to any challenge, understanding that each of us has a hand in writing America’s destiny.”

This July 4th, I will be thinking about history and destiny... And celebrating my commitment to be an agent of change in the world independence has wrought.

Thomas Norman DeWolf is co-author of Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade and author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. He is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary film Traces of the Trade, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on the acclaimed PBS series POV. DeWolf speaks regularly about healing from the legacy of slavery and racism at conferences and colleges throughout the United States.

Celebration of Independence Day ain’t what it used to be for me. What I’ve learned along the road I’ve traveled the past decade-- much of which is horrible, shameful and has been deeply buried or glossed over in America’s collective psyche-- has led me to reevaluate how I view myself and my country. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass said, “Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.” The deep wound of racism-– the legacy of slavery-– about which Douglass spoke has never been fully acknowledged and healed. I no longer celebrate “independence” that resulted in the annihilation of millions of indigenous people and the enslavement of millions of Africans. I don’t celebrate drone strikes in the name of freedom. I celebrate truth-tellers and peacebuilders. I celebrate the progress we have made and continue to make in the face of strong resistance. Mostly, I celebrate hope – the hope that one day we will live up to the ideals upon which this great country was founded.

Interfaith Work is the Antidote to Atheist Islamophobia

Today's post is from Chris Stedman, author of the forthcoming book Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious. He is the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, the emeritus managing director of State of Formation at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, and the founder of the first blog dedicated to exploring atheist-interfaith engagement, NonProphet Status. Stedman writes for the Huffington Post, the Washington Post's On Faith blog, and Religion Dispatches.

Sam Harris--I know you're a busy man, but I'd like to ask you out. Will you go to mosque with me?

I'm not trying to convert you to Islam. Like you, I'm not a Muslim. Like you, I don't believe in any gods. I'm happily, openly atheist. A queer atheist, even. Like you, I have many significant concerns about Islamic beliefs and practices. But still, I want to visit a mosque with you.

We don't have to go alone--we could go with Mustafa Abdullah, a young community organizer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina who is currently campaigning against the state's proposed anti-gay Amendment One. We could attend with Najeeba Syeed-Miller, a teacher and activist who has dedicated her life to peacebuilding initiatives. Or we could go with Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, who is committed to promoting pluralism and opposing bigotry, and who regularly speaks up for atheists as a religious minority in the United States.

Why am I inviting you to visit a mosque with me and my friends? Since I'm asking you publicly (I couldn't find your phone number anywhere and I'm pretty sure this MySpace page isn't really you), I should probably give some context.

A few weeks ago I saw you speak at the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia. Before I go on, I need to confess: your remarks blew me away. In a weekend full of incredible intellects, your frank, contemplative, eloquent speech on death, grief, and mindfulness was easily my favorite. So I was not prepared for the crushing disappointment I felt when, just a few weeks later, you published a piece called "In Defense of Profiling" in which you unequivocally stated: "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it."

Never mind that your argument doesn't hold water--to quote my friend Hind Makki: "What does a Muslim look like? The 9/11 hijackers didn't have beards and 'dressed Western.' The shoe bomber wasn't Arab or South Asian. Sikhs wear turbans. The majority of American Muslim women don't wear hijab. The majority of Arab Americans are Christian--though they often share the same names as their Muslim counterparts. Perhaps Harris would support an initiative that required all Muslims to sew a crescent and star onto our clothes. It would make his airport security time a more pleasant experience. (Though, I suppose, it wouldn't have stopped McVeigh or Breivik.)" Though as a frequent traveler I share your frustrations with the TSA, profiling doesn't make sense as a solution to its problems.

Instead, while we're en route to mosque, I'd like to talk to you about something else. As I read your piece, which (along with the clarifying addendum you tacked on a few days later) failed to explain how you would determine who "looks... Muslim," I thought back to another moment at the Global Atheist Convention a few weeks ago. As you were speaking, rumors began to fly that a group of extremist Muslims would be protesting the convention. Sure enough, a group of less than a dozen appeared just a short while later, holding signs that said "Atheists go to hell" and shouting horrible things. But to my dismay, their hate was mirrored by hundreds of conference attendees, some of whom shouted things like "go back to the middle east, you pedophiles," tweeting "maybe the Muslim protesters [are] gay so [they] don't have wives? ... A lot are/were camel shaggers," and wearing shirts that said "Too stupid for science? Try religion." Watching the scene unfold, I was reminded of how much work there is to be done in combating prejudice between the religious and the nonreligious.

I'm not sure you share my concerns about this divide. In fact, last year you wrote this about the 2011 attacks orchestrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway that resulted in the deaths of over 70 people:

One can only hope that the horror and outrage provoked by Breivik's behavior will temper the growing enthusiasm for right-wing, racist nationalism in Europe. However, one now fears the swing of another pendulum: We are bound to hear a lot of deluded talk about the dangers of "Islamophobia" and about the need to address the threat of "terrorism" in purely generic terms.

In the wake of an atrocity of unimaginable proportions--one perpetrated by an anti-Muslim terrorist who was influenced by anti-Muslim writers--I could not believe that you decided to write a blog suggesting that the real problem is the fight against Islamophobia. 

Whether you think so or not, Sam, Islamophobia is quite real. The American Muslim community experiences disproportionately high rates of discrimination and violence, and Islamophobic rhetoric has a significant bearing on this. This from a detailed report on the network of Islamophobia in America: "According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman, just as religious extremism 'is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged,' the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are 'the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.'"

As a society, we need to acknowledge the reality of the consequences of Islamophobia. As one Norwegian Muslim recently said:

"I think it is good and healthy that this comes out," he told AFP in a telephone interview, arguing that Breivik built his ideology largely on the basis of Islam-critical writings in the media and online and rumors he has heard about violent Muslims. "This should help show people that this kind of rhetoric can be very, very dangerous. It is a wake-up call, and I think many people will moderate the way they talk about these things."

We desperately need to discuss these things. An argument I frequently hear from atheists is that if moderate Muslims really exist, they need to speak out more. The problem is that Muslims are speaking out against extremists who cite Islam as their inspiration. Need some examples? There. Are. So. Many. That.I. Can't. Link. To. Them. All. (But those eleven are a good start.)

The real problem is the Islamophobic misinformation machine, supported by our conflict-driven media. Stories of Muslims engaging in peaceful faith-inspired endeavors don't sell nearly as well as stories of attempted Times Square bombings. Yet even coverage of violent stories is skewed against Muslims: for example, the mainstream media largely ignores violence against Muslims, such as when a mosque in Florida was bombed. (Just imagine the media frenzy if that had been a Muslim bombing a church.) The press also ignores stories of Muslim heroism, such as the fact that the man who stopped the Times Square bomber was himself a Muslim. Perhaps we perceive Islam as inherently violent, and imagine that an "Islam versus the West" clash of civilizations is inevitable, because our perspective is shaped by the warped way the media reports on Islam.

The feeling that we need to profile "Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim," as you wrote--that Muslim Americans are dangerous and should be viewed with suspicion--is an outgrowth of the Islamophobic misinformation that proliferates our culture. I'm proud to say that nontheist organizations like the Center for Inquiry, the American Humanist Association, and the Institute for Science and Human Values recognize this, which is why just last week they signed on to a letter (alongside many interfaith and religious organizations) decrying racial and religious profiling.

The idea that we should single out Muslims is a misguided and damaging one, and it has serious ramifications for the Muslim community. After the thwarted "Christmas tree" bombing by a young Muslim in Portland, OR, Eboo Patel wrote:

It would be perfectly understandable if, in this time of Muslim terrorism and Islamophobia, everyday Muslims tried to slink into the shadows, to hide in the mosque. But it would be a huge mistake. Now more than ever, we need Muslim community leaders to be loud and proud about Islam's glories, to inspire a new generation to follow in the footsteps of the Muslim heroes who bent the arc of the universe towards justice.

As Muslims become more and more marginalized, that will be increasingly difficult. When I posted a link to Patel's column on my Facebook page, a friend commented on the FBI's involvement in the Portland incident, and a subsequent arson attack on a Portland-area mosque: "I'm starting to wonder how any of this makes our country more secure or keeps our citizens safe. It certainly made things more dangerous for Muslims in Corvallis."

I look around and I see a country deeply divided over the place of Muslims in America's civic landscape--a nation roiling with fear and uncertainty, where hundreds of people will crowd outside of a benefit for a Muslim relief organization and scream things like "go home" and "terrorist" while waving American flags. That despicable display of anti-Muslim hate didn't really make the news either, by the way.

Profiling feeds this fear and paranoia, and it plays right into the notion held by the tiny percentage of Muslims who are extremists that all Muslims are under attack and need to be defended. It is truly dangerous territory, and not just for Muslims--the recent congressional "Muslim radicalization" hearings in the U.S. echo the anti-gay "lavender scare" and the explicitly anti-atheist undertones of the "red scare" in the 1950s. As a gay atheist, I recognize that it could just as easily be me who is targeted.

But I do have hope, Sam. I'm currently reading a wonderful book called The Young Atheist's Handbook by Alom Shaha--I could lend it to you after our mosque visit. In the book, Shaha writes about growing up Muslim and later becoming an atheist. In the fourth chapter of the book, he touches on the tragedy in Norway and delves into a lengthy, must-read exposition of the ugly reality of Islamophobia in the U.K., Australia, and the United States. In it, he points to the major role the media has played in guiding the narrative that says that Muslims are a monolithic, loathsome bloc--or as Shaha wrote, a perspective that "see[s] all Muslims as the same, and completely fail[s] to acknowledge the diversity and differences in values that are held by the millions of Muslims in the world." Shaha goes on to write:

You may wonder why, if I no longer identify as Muslim, I care so deeply about this... Although I am an atheist, I nevertheless find it distressing that people can be contemptuous of all Muslims based on their own prejudices about what it means to be Muslim. Some atheists are guilty of this ideological categorization, too, and it bothers me that some of those who really should know better feel that Muslims and non-Muslims cannot, by definition, get along. I suspect this is a point on which I differ from more-hardline atheists, but perhaps my own experience of being judged for my skin colour has made me acutely sensitive to such judgments being exercised upon others.

Shaha is definitely on to something. Over the last few years, I've watched with despair as an increasing, increasingly-less-subtle xenophobic anti-Muslim undercurrent has spread throughout the atheist movement, cloaked by intellectual arguments against Islam's metaphysical claims and practices and rallying cries in defense of free speech. Though it has been spreading throughout our broader culture, I'm especially disheartened to see it among my fellow atheists. At my first American Atheists conference, for example, I witnessed a crowd of people shout things like "show us some ankle" at three women wearing burkas for a satirical musical performance. It's one thing to critique Islam; but the glee I saw in some of their faces as people whistled and shouted "take it off" was something else. 

Writing about an incident where an American Atheists State Director posted an Islamophobic rant to their official Facebook page, atheist blogger Hemant Mehta said:

It's always a touchy subject when atheists go after Islam... because people have to be very careful that they don't stereotype all followers of Islam as if they're all extremists. Our society does a terrible job of this. Atheists, especially when they're 'leaders' among us, ought to know better than to fall into that trap.

You ought to know better, Sam. Your insistence that Islamophobia isn't a problem and your willingness to play into the irrational anxieties of those who fear Muslims is irresponsible and dangerous. With your great reach, you have the opportunity to build bridges of understanding--instead, you have chosen to make the dividing lines that keep our communities apart that much thicker.

My invitation to visit a mosque isn't an argument for "political correctness." Like you, I find efforts to wallpaper over our differences abhorrent; like you, I have considerable disagreements with many tenets of Islam. You may have visited a mosque before, but I invite you to join me for a different kind of conversation--to spend some time talking to Muslims about their experiences, and working alongside them in their efforts to promote pluralism and equality in their community and in ours.

In a 2010 New York Times article about the Park51 (or "Ground Zero Mosque") controversy, one man said of the growing protests at mosques around the United States: "they have fear because they don't know [Muslims]." As someone who grew up gay in a fundamentalist Christian community, and as an atheist in a largely religious culture, I know how it feels to be reviled by people who don't understand me and who see our differences as irreconcilable. This is why I promote interfaith work--because giving people the opportunity to get to know others who belong to different communities erodes distrust and suspicion and builds cooperation and respect.

Before I got to know some people who identify as Muslim, I was hugely suspicious of all Muslims. As a college student, I was an atheist and a religious studies major--I studied Islam in the classroom, but I knew very little about Muslims. It wasn't until I started to build relationships of trust and mutuality with members of the American Muslim community that I learned about their experiences and had a change of heart.

What should happen when a Muslim walks into an airport? Your answer is extremely troubling, Sam. So I return to my original question: What could happen if two atheists were to walk into a mosque? What could we learn from one another? In what ways could we work alongside Muslims to build a world that values pluralism and compassion, critical thinking and cooperation? Let me know if you want to find out.

From Hate to Love: Why "40 Days of Prayer" is Under Attack by the Christian Right

Below is a an interview with Reverend Rebecca Turner of Faith Aloud, conducted by Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars and professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco. Faith Aloud is a pro-choice religious organization which seeks to eliminate the stigma associated with abortion and sexuality, and to provide support to both women and providers. 

This post originally appeared on RH Reality Check.

“Today we pray for women for whom pregnancy is not good news, that they know they have choices.”

“Today we pray for the men in our lives, that they may offer their loving kindness and support for women’s difficult decisions.”

“Today we pray for Christians everywhere to embrace the loving model of Jesus in the way he refused to shame women.”

Above are some of the individual components of the 40 Days of Prayer, a series composed by the Rev. Rebecca Turner, a United Church of Christ minister, and the head of Faith Aloud, a pro-choice religious organization based in St. Louis, Missouri. Turner originally wrote these prayers to counter religious-based protests against women's rights to choose abortion. For some years, the “40 Days of Prayer” were used in various ways by clinics but ignored by the anti-choice movement. However, recently when a clinic in northern California reprinted the prayers in a brochure, the movement took notice, and Turner’s prayers—and by extension, the concept of a religiously-based prochoice group—drew much attention from the religious right, including interviews by Fox News and Focus on the Family, and follow up stories in various anti-choice publications.

Below is an interview I conducted with Rev. Turner about her organization, the 40 Days of Prayer, and the reactions of opponents of abortion when news of her activities went viral.

What is Faith Aloud?

Faith Aloud is an interfaith nonprofit organization with a history of 30 years of pro-choice activism. Our mission is to eliminate the religious stigma of abortion and sexuality. We train clergy to talk to women about their pregnancy choices and we receive calls from women all over the country as well as internationally. We also provide spiritual resources for abortion clinics to use to help their religious patients.

Most women in the US identify as religious, and those seeking abortion are no different. Our resources, created by clergy of several faith groups, offer support to women during times of distress.

Why did you write the 40 Days of Prayer?   

I wrote some prayers and offered them to abortion providers to use whenever and however they wanted to. We've since made a full poster of the prayers that is on the walls in many clinics across the country. We were angered by the swarms of protesters that regularly took siege of abortion clinics and would hurl hateful remarks at the women arriving. As a Christian minister, I was especially angered that most of these protesters who were so hateful and judgmental actually call themselves Christian. I wanted women to know that many Christians are compassionate and supportive, and to help them find strength in their religious faith instead of condemnation.

I also wanted to give spiritual support to the other people [affected] by the daily barrage of hate -- the clinic staff and escorts. Few people know what they go through every day because of their dedication to women. And few people understand that many of them-doctors, counselors, administrators-are deeply religious people themselves who have often felt rejected by their faith communities. This is wrong. I feel that I am a pastor to many of the abortion providers who use our services. Religious faith should give us strength and confidence, not guilt and shame. I have never understood why anyone would support a religion that shames and judges and ridicules its own members. That is abusive behavior and should not be tolerated in any setting.

Tell more about your mindset as you wrote the prayers.

I wrote all of the prayers in one day. I thought about women's reproductive lives, the difficulties of being female, the choices we make, the relationships we have, the various people who work with pregnant women, and I prayed for them all. Many websites are claiming that we're praying for more abortions, which is silly. They can read the prayers and see that isn't the case. Most of the prayers are really all about women and their reproductive lives. We pray for gender discrimination to cease. We pray for women who are abused. We pray for women who are infertile. We pray for women to have confidence. How can they be upset by this? Really I think the only objection to these prayers comes from a deep misogyny that refuses to acknowledge women as autonomous beings with their own spiritual lives. 

How would you characterize the main reactions you have received since this flurry of publicity?  

The media to date has been from anti-choice groups, so most of the people calling and writing to us are their constituents. They are quite hostile, usually rambling, callers are often screaming. They accuse us of pretending to be ministers or Christians. They accuse us of baby-murdering. Emails quote a lot of scripture and tell us we're going to burn in hell.  We have had some new supporters find us through this, though. And we've begun a campaign called "Hate-into-Love" which allows our supporters to pledge donations for each hostile contact we receive. 

Why do you think the 40 Days of Prayer has hit such a nerve with the Right, once they became aware of it?  

They claim they think it's a mockery of the 40 days for Life campaign, but I don't think there is any mockery in it. The prayers are quite sincere. Apparently the religious right does not believe that anyone is allowed to pray except those who believe as they do. This is not a biblical idea; it is pure arrogance. The Christian scriptures say "Judge not, lest you be judged" and yet these people want to judge us as "fake" or "delusional" or even "possessed." One person who called us after the news broke asked "Are you planning to get groups of people to rally at abortion clinics to pray your prayers?" My answer was "The people inside the clinics are praying every day."  Prayer does not belong to one group of people. But this seems to be the source of the outrage, that we dare to pray. It is apparently a very scary proposition to them that women might hear a compassionate religious voice and feel strengthened instead of weakened.

What have reactions to this campaign been in the pro-choice community?

A few pro-choice [organizations] have helped to pass along the information about our "Hate-into-Love" campaign and have re-posted the stories. We're getting pledges from around the country. We've been gaining a lot of new Facebook friends [who] learned about us through the negative media.   

Do you think this community is more open now than in the past to a religious presence, such as that offered by Faith Aloud? 

The independent abortion provider community has always been very welcoming of spirituality, seeing it as an important part of a woman's life and her decisions. But there is an element of the pro-choice community that is less supportive, seeing religion as the problem rather than a part of the solution, and really I can't blame them for feeling that way. They've been threatened and attacked and shamed by religious zealots. But, as I mentioned, most of the women in the United States call themselves religious or spiritual, and so we need to help them use their faith for strength during difficulty. It shouldn't be about we need, but what women need making difficult decisions.

In the several days that news of the “40 Days of Prayer” has gone viral, you have received much hate mail. Have you received anything from any anti-choice individual or group that suggests some common ground? 

No. The hate mail tends to fall into these camps "You have no right to call yourself a Christian or pray" or "I'm praying for God's vengeance on you." We're getting some love mail, too, with people finding us for the first time and saying thank you for being a religious voice of compassion and reason.

The Heckler's Veto at School

David L. Hudson, Jr. is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law. He is the author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools.

Dissenting opinions obviously don’t have the force of law that majority opinions do. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t better reasoned. Recall that Justice John Marshall Harlan (the first one) was known as “the Great Dissenter” in part for his solitary dissent in the abhorrent Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Court sanctioned segregation and the noxious separate-but-equal doctrine.

Judge Rosemary Pooler’s March 22 dissent in the student-speech case Cuff v. Valley Central School District from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals may not rise even close to that level of prominence. Yet it brought some much-needed perspective to an area of law in desperate need of it.

The case involved a class assignment in 2007 for fifth-graders at Berea Elementary School in Montgomery, N.Y., to color in a picture of an astronaut and write anything on it they wanted. The teacher allegedly told the class: “When I mean anything you want, anything. You can write about missiles.”

Hearing this, 10-year-old B.C. — in juvenile cases often only initials are used — wrote on his picture that he wanted to “blow up the school with all the teachers in it.” He showed the picture to his classmates and they laughed.

It was no laughing matter to the teacher, and B.C. received a six-day suspension. His parents sued on his behalf, alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights. When the case reached the 2nd Circuit, the three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of school officials.

Judge Ralph Winter reasoned that school officials must have broad authority to handle student-speech issues in order to prevent violence or a substantial disruption of school under the U.S. Supreme Court’s famous decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969).

“Courts have allowed wide leeway to school administrators disciplining students for writings or other conduct threatening violence,” he wrote. “The threat of substantial disruption was aggravated by B.C.’s sharing of his ‘wish’ with fellow students, an act reasonably perceived as an attention-grabbing device.” The reasoning was that other students might engage in distracting copycat behavior that would interrupt education at the school.

Judge Pooler disagreed with this line of reasoning, noting that Tinker requires at least a forecast of a substantial disruption. To Pooler, B.C.’s act created only a “minor disruption.”

She also warned that the majority opinion allows a speaker’s First Amendment freedoms to be determined entirely by listeners. She didn’t use the term, but the majority opinion sanctioned the idea of a heckler’s veto on speech.

“The First Amendment’s protection of free speech cannot hinge entirely on the reaction of a listener to a person’s speech,” she wrote. “If that were the case, the First Amendment would be only as strong as the weakest, or at least the most thin-skinned, listener in a crowd.”

Pooler did not say that the student should win the case. Disputed factual issues, such as the meaning and relevance of B.C.’s past drawings, required the case to go to jury, she said.

The majority seemed to declare that any student expression with violent themes justifies school punishment. Pooler dug deeper and questioned such unrestrained deference to school officials by the majority.

Her opinion brings to mind Justice Abe Fortas’ warning in Tinker: “[I]n our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.”

First the Good News: At-Risk Kids (May) Get Some Justice

David Chura is the author of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. He has worked with at-risk teenagers for the past 40 years. For 26 of those years, he taught English and creative writing in community based alternative schools and in a county penitentiary. His writings have appeared in the New York Times as well as other scholarly and literary journals. He blogs at http://kidsinthesystem.wordpress.com/.

There’s been some good news in the media lately for anyone who cares about kids and justice. Federal statistics show that the number of juvenile offenders in jail has dropped by at least 25%. Along those same lines, the New York Times recently reported that New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has called for moving most juvenile cases from criminal court to family court, where kids will get more help than punishment, thus adding his voice to the excellent work of the New York Center for Juvenile Justice. In the Boston Globe, criminologist James Alan Fox wrote that the Massachusetts law that requires all juveniles convicted of first-degree murder to be sentenced to life without parole “has not reduced juvenile murder”—and he has the numbers to prove it. And, supporting all these concerns, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration hits hard at the waste of both taxpayer money and human potential when states lock up young offenders.

Good news, right? So why with all this good news and media attention do I still get cranky about kids in adult jails? Because the 1962 New York State statue setting the age for criminal responsibility at 16 is still law. It is still law even though it was supposed to be a temporary measure until research was conducted (the research was, of course, never done). I'm still cranky because in Massachusetts 59 people are serving life sentences with no chance of ever getting out for crimes committed when they were too young to vote, some of them when they were too young to drive. Because a recent Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans think crime is worse than it was last year despite data showing the opposite. Because lawmakers respond more to the electorate’s fears than to commonsense and compassion.

But I’ll give you an even better reason why I’m cranky. I’ve seen firsthand what happens to young people caught up in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, studies are conducted (or not), reports are written, and statistics analyzed; pundits study the issues and experts testify before commissions.

For ten years I taught kids locked up in an adult county jail and watched how the penal system corrupted and eroded their humanity. That’s easy to do when you take away people’s identity. Give them a number instead of a name; call them “criminal,” “inmate,”  “thug,” and you take away their dignity—and their rights—the way we do when we label people “illegals.” Suddenly it’s okay to stop someone and demand their “papers,” to deny their families medical care, their children an education and the protections of the law.

The locked-up kids I taught were forced to eat food banned in public schools years earlier. To go without eyeglasses they needed to read, to navigate safely in a perilous environment, eyeglasses they had when they were booked and somehow never got back to them.  Worse yet, many of these young people went without the psychotropic medications they had been on for such conditions as depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit, and psychosis. When those untreated conditions made them hard to handle they were punished, thrown into solitary confinement, where, with no human interaction or mental health treatment, things only deteriorated.

I had students come to class with jaws swollen, and not from some brawl on the block the way you might expect would happen when you lock up together 40 or so teenage boys. The swelling was because of an abscessed tooth, and there was no dentist to take care of it because he only came every other week, or because the sick call form I helped them fill out somehow “got lost.”

Other medical treatment, when it was available, was often perfunctory and inadequate. One young man I worked with, Toro, a young Guatemalan who was always respectful to anyone in authority, received 30 day lockdown—23 hours alone in a cell with a half hour to clean up and a half hour to do PT—because he refused to take the unidentified pills the nurse was giving him. “All I wanted to know was what the pills were for,” he told me. “I didn’t know. I’d never taken them before and nobody would tell me.”

None of us, no matter what conditions we’re forced to live in, easily gives up our humanity, and the young men and women I saw at the county penitentiary were no different. But their resources—family, education, community, health, spirituality—the kind of resources that help all of us hold firm to who we are, were meager even before they were incarcerated. Maintaining even a kernel of humanity in the face of such daily deprivation was near to impossible.

If it all sounds bleak that’s because it is. But I say let the good news roll—the reports, the endorsements, the calls to action—but let’s do something about the harsh, demeaning, counterintuitive prison conditions we force young people to live in while insisting that they grow and change. Until then, whether it’s the 45,873 16- and 17-year olds arrested in New York last year or the 59 juvenile offenders serving life without parole in Massachusetts, or just one kid locked up somewhere in the country, I guarantee I’ll be cranky, very cranky. 

Image from ABN2 on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons. 

Student Speech and T-Shirts

Today's post is from David L. Hudson, Jr., author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools, which was released this week by Beacon Press. Hudson is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law and blogs at the First Amendment Center, where this post originally appeared.

A public school student should have the right to wear a T-shirt in support of a gay-straight alliance. But a controversy at a high school in Madisonville, Tenn., highlights the reality that censorship is alive and well when it comes to sexual orientation.

Chris Sigler, a student at Sequoyah High School, wore a T-shirt with the messages “SQHS” and “Gay Straight Alliance: We’ve Got Your Back.” Sigler alleges that his principal, Maurice Moser, verbally and physically assaulted him on Sept. 30 for wearing the T-shirt.

If true, such an attack is unacceptable and likely violates the student’s First Amendment free-speech rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee sent a stern letter Oct. 4 to the director of Monroe County (Tenn.) Schools regarding the incident. The letter states that the T-shirt did not constitute a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities.

“It is totally unacceptable that a young man who was peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights would have his speech shut down by the public school principal,” said Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee, in a news release.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s famous student-speech decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), school officials cannot censor student expression unless they can reasonably forecast that the speech would cause a substantial disruption or material interference with school activities, or invade the rights of others.

The principal may have acted out of a fear that some students would pick on or bully students who wore shirts supporting the attempts to form a gay-straight club at the school. But as the ACLU indicates in its letter, “when students engage in harassment or bullying, whether their purported reason is a T-shirt or something else, the school administration is obligated to stop the harassment and maintain order and safety.”

Even if the T-shirt supporting the formation of a gay-straight alliance provoked bullying, the school should stand up for Sigler. Otherwise, the school would allow bullies to impose a “heckler’s veto” upon protected speech.

The bottom line is that a principal should be protecting a student’s constitutional rights to wear a T-shirt either for or against a gay-straight alliance. He certainly shouldn’t be in the business of censoring and harassing a student for wearing one.

It’s time for LGBTQ Groups to “Come Out” Against the ICE “Secure Communities” Program

Andrea Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. She co-coordinates Streetwise and Safe (SAS) and is co-author, along with Joey L. Mogul and Kay Whitlock, of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.

As we celebrate National Coming Out Day – a day to stand up for who we are, honor our individual and collective power, and stand up for what we believe in – dozens of LGBT groups are “coming out” against a federal program that places thousands of LGBTQ people and communities at risk of violence and violations of our human rights.

The Secure Communities Program – dubbed “S-Comm” because there is nothing secure about it – dramatically widens the immigration enforcement dragnet by sweeping everyone fingerprinted by local police into the sights of immigration authorities. While there are already immigration agents stationed in many of the country’s jails to check the immigration status of anyone detained while awaiting trial or sentenced after conviction of a crime, by requiring that all fingerprints taken at the point of arrest be forwarded to immigration authorities, S-Comm dramatically increases the number of people subject to scrutiny of their immigration status. Under S-Comm, anyone arrested and fingerprinted by police - regardless of whether the charges against them are ultimately dropped, found to be baseless, or dispensed with through community service or a diversion program - could potentially be placed in deportation proceedings, regardless of whether they were profiled, arrested without any basis whatsoever, or picked up on a minor offense.

The program is coming under increasing attack from all quarters – not only by immigrant rights advocates, but also law enforcement agents and politicians. The governors of Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts all decided to pull out of the program, only to be told they couldn’t when the federal government took all pretense of consent out of the picture and made the program mandatory. After some minor adjustments, the administration set up a task force to assess and address concerns with the program. The task force’s listening tour was met with growing criticism, protests, and walk-outs. Ultimately, a number of task force members resigned prior to the release of the final report, including a former Sacramento Chief of Police. At the same time the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) released a report highlighting the devastating impacts the program has already had on immigrants across the country.

As I was speaking at the recent Lavender Law conference about the issues raised by Queer (In)justice, someone said “there was  time when we would be arrested just for being who we are.” The sad truth is that all too many of us continue to be arrested just for being who we are – particularly if we are poor, of color, young or immigrants in addition to being LGBT or Q. Under S-Comm, arrests based on persistent, pervasive and deeply rooted perceptions of LGBTQ people as inherently disorderly, sexually deviant, and violent will be more likely to lead to immigration detention and deportation for LGBTQ immigrants.

As documented in Queer (In)Justice, LGBTQ people, and particularly LGBTQ people of color, immigrants and young people, continue to be profiled by police at alarming rates on a daily basis as more likely to be engaged in “lewd conduct,” “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” and other sexual offenses – often without any basis beyond gender nonconforming appearance or expression. LGBTQ people, communities and establishments continued to be targets of discriminatory enforcement efforts. Thousands of LGBTQ youth who live on the streets because they have been pushed out of or runaway from their homes or foster care programs are at risk of arrest every day for minor offenses such as turnstile jumping or sleeping on a train because there is nowhere else safe for them to sleep at night. These are the members of our communities for whom the criminalization of LGBTQ people and the injustices of the criminal legal system will only be compounded by programs such as S-Comm.

I need look no further than my own client files to put faces on the people in our communities who will be affected by S-Comm: a Latino gay man falsely arrested  for “lewd conduct” based on a police officer’s entirely false accusation that he inexplicably dropped his pants as he took a walk in a park near his home in Queens; a homeless gay man who may in fact have been looking for some anonymous companionship in a remote area of Central Park where no one but the officer who arrested him was present, while heterosexual couples make out freely on the Great Lawn; a Latina transgender woman profiled as being engaged in prostitution as she walked to the store; a homeless LGBTQ teen arrested for “loitering”; a lesbian immigrant who was arrested when the police were called to respond to violence against her, who now lives in fear that the next time they come she will be arrested again. All were released from police custody shortly after arrest and never went to jail. Under S-Comm, because fingerprints taken from them at the police precinct would be forwarded directly to ICE, those among them who also happen to be undocumented would immediately find themselves in the cross hairs of immigration enforcement, even as the original charges against them were dismissed.

Concerns about the consequences of S-Comm for LGBTQ people go far beyond what will happen once they are deported – homophobia, transphobia, violence, and denial of basic needs await them in U.S. immigration detention facilities. Christina Madrazo, a Mexican transgender woman, was raped by a guard at the Krome Immigration Detention Center in 2000. Antonio O., a gay man and legal permanent resident from El Salvador arrested on a minor drug offense in 2007 was repeatedly denied HIV medication at an ICE processing center. Victoria Arellano, a Latina transgender woman held at the same facility, ultimately died shackled to her bed after being denied appropriate HIV/AIDS medication and treatment over an extended period of time.

S-Comm is an LGBTQ issue.

The over 60 signatories to the call from LGBT organizations for an immediate end to the program feature groups large and small, national and local. They include the nation’s oldest anti-violence program, Community United Against Violence in San Francisco, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, along with Gay Straight Alliances, campus-based Outlaw groups, statewide LGBT equality coalitions, the Center for Constitutional Rights, legal advocacy programs, organizations working with homeless LGBTQ youth, and grassroots groups working on a range of issues from supporting LGBTQ people in prisons to building safer communities for LGBTQ people.

It’s time for more LGBTQ groups and advocates to follow their lead and join the chorus of voices speaking out against S-Comm, and the license to profile, detain and deport LGBTQ people it creates. Come out against S-Comm, sign onto the statement, and let’s put our energies, advocacy, and political capital behind our signatures. S-Comm is one of my top 6 LGBT Equality issues - I hope you’ll make it one of yours.

In Memoriam: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a courageous leader of the civil rights movement, died today at the age of 89. You can read his obituary at the New York Times or at the Washington Post. In Rev. Shuttlesworth's memory, we share the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

There was one threat to the reign of white supremacy in Birmingham. As an outgrowth of the Montgomery bus boycott, protest movements had sprung up in numerous cities across the South. In Birmingham, one of the nation's most courageous freedom fighters, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, had organized the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights---A.C.H.R.--in the spring of 1956. Shuttlesworth, a wiry, energetic, and indomitable man, had set out to change Birmingham and to end for all time the terrorist, racist rule of Bull Connor.

Why We Can't Wait (p 52)

Fred Shuttlesworth leads Birmingham marchers in prayer before their arrest. (Joe Chapman)

At an organizing meeting at Harry Belafonte's apartment in New York City, Shuttlesworth and King spoke to supporters of the situation in Birmingham, and of the risks faced by those willing to take action:

Shuttlesworth, wearing the scars of earlier battles, brought a sense of the danger as well as the earnestness of our crusade into that peaceful New York living room. Although many of those present had worked with S.C.L.C. in the past, there was a silence almost like the shock of a fresh discovery when Shuttlesworth said, "You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live."

Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr. (p 60)

Free Speech in Schools: Interview With David Hudson

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. Founded by the American Booksellers Association in 1990, ABFFE’s mission is to promote and protect the free exchange of ideas, particularly those contained in books, by opposing restrictions on the freedom of speech; issuing statements on significant free expression controversies; participating in legal cases involving First Amendment rights; collaborating with other groups with an interest in free speech; and providing education about the importance of free expression to booksellers, other members of the book industry, politicians, the press and the public.  

The ABFFE Book of the Month for September is Let the Students Speak! A History of the Fight for Free Expression in America's School by David L. Hudson. The ABFFE interviewed Hudson for their website. 

This week is Banned Books Week! The ABFFE is holding a benefit auction to help support the organization's efforts to protect the First Amendment Rights of young readers. Beacon Press is hosting a giveaway to raise awareness of Banned Books Week. Find out about other Banned Books Week activities here. 

ABFFE: How did you become interested in student free-speech rights? 
Hudson: Much of it comes from my daily work at the First Amendment Center. One of the best parts of my job is getting to travel to different middle and high schools and speak to students and teachers about First Amendment issues in the schools. My interest began even before my employment at the Center, as I had a personal experience with censorship in high school (being punished for "inappropriate" speech). 

ABFFE: What was something that surprised you in your research about the history of student expression? 
Hudson: I was surprised at the sheer number of early student speech cases. They are not often talked about, mentioned or even cited in most modern student-speech cases or secondary-source literature (with a few notable exceptions). The stories of Earl Wooster, Pearl Pugsley, Camilia Booth and other early student litigants are interesting to students - and hopefully will be interesting to readers of the book. 

Read the rest of the interview here. To read about other Book of the Month selections, click here.

 

Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence

The first biographical exploration of one of the most important African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century--Howard Thurman--and of the pivotal trip he took to India that ultimately shaped the course of the civil rights movement.

In 1935, Howard Thurman took a trip to India that would forever change him. He became the first African American to meet with Mahatma Gandhi and found himself called to create a version of American Christianity that was intolerant of self-imposed racial and religious boundaries. Deeply influenced by Gandhi's philosophy and practice of satyagraha, his translation of the idea into a Black Christian context became one of the key tenets of the civil rights movement, influencing an entire generation of black ministers--most notably Martin Luther King, Jr. Visions of a Better World explores this pivotal trip and its effect on the very shape of the civil rights tradition. Drawing from previously untapped archival material and obscurely published works, Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt outline, for the first time, Thurman's development into the towering theologian who would so profoundly influence the epochal shift in U.S. race relations in the mid-twentieth century.

Order from Beacon Press | Independent Bookstore | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Powell's 

If you can't read the excerpt below, click here to read on Scribd. 

Introduction, Visions of a Better World

MLK: The Trumpet of Conscience, "Nonviolence and Social Change"

The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., officially opened to the public this week. Although the official ceremony scheduled for Sunday has been postponed due to Hurricane Irene, we will continue to honor this historic event, we'll be posting excerpts from books in The King Legacy series on Beacon Broadside every day this week.

In celebration of the MLK Memorial Dedication, we are also giving away books by Dr. King. Enter for your chance to win hardcover editions of recent titles released by Beacon Press: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Why We Can't Wait, The Trumpet of Conscience, "All Labor Has Dignity," and MLK: In Word and Image. One grand prize winner will receive ALL SIX BOOKS. Five winners will receive one book of their choice. Enter by Sunday, August 28th! For more information and to enter, see the Beacon Press website.

In November and December 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered five lectures for the renowned Massey Lecture Series of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The collection was immediately released as a book under the title Conscience for Change, but after King's assassination in 1968, it was republished as The Trumpet of Conscience. The collection sums up his lasting creed and is his final testament on racism, poverty, and war.

Each oration in this volume encompasses a distinct theme and speaks prophetically to today's perils, addressing issues of equality, conscience and war, the mobilization of young people, and nonviolence. Collectively, they reveal some of King's most introspective reflections and final impressions of the movement while illustrating how he never lost sight of our shared goals for justice. The book concludes with "A Christmas Sermon on Peace"—a powerful lecture that was broadcast live from Ebenezer Baptist Church on Christmas Eve in 1967. In it King articulates his long-term vision of nonviolence as a path to world peace.

If you cannot read the excerpt below, click on this link to read it at Scribd.

The Trumpet of Conscience by Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK: All Labor Has Dignity

The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., officially opened to the public this week. In honor of this historic event, we'll be posting excerpts from books in The King Legacy series on Beacon Broadside every day this week.

In celebration of the MLK Memorial Dedication, we are also giving away books by Dr. King. Enter for your chance to win hardcover editions of recent titles released by Beacon Press: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Why We Can't Wait, The Trumpet of Conscience, "All Labor Has Dignity," and MLK: In Word and Image. One grand prize winner will receive ALL SIX BOOKS. Five winners will receive one book of their choice. For more information and to enter, see the Beacon Press website.

Today's excerpt is from All Labor Has Dignity. People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought throughout his life to connect the labor and civil rights movements, envisioning them as twin pillars for social reform. As we struggle with massive unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap, and the near collapse of a financial system that puts profits before people, King's prophetic writings and speeches underscore his relevance for today. They help us imagine King anew: as a human rights leader whose commitment to unions and an end to poverty was a crucial part of his civil rights agenda.

If you can't read the excerpt below, click this link to read it on Scribd.com.

 

All Labor Has Dignity by Martin Luther King, Jr., Excerpt

A Global History Lesson in Hope

David Chura is the author of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. He has worked with at-risk teenagers for the past 40 years. For 26 of those years, he taught English and creative writing in community based alternative schools and in a county penitentiary. His writings have appeared in the New York Times as well as other scholarly and literary journals. He blogs at http://kidsinthesystem.wordpress.com/.

In a six by eight foot jail cell there’s barely room for a bunk, a seatless toilet, and a postage-sized sink. The only other space you have in jail is in your head, and even that gets crowded with all the people you carry around in there who you resent for the things they did to you.

The world is pretty small when you’re locked up, especially if you’re a kid doing time with a healthy body that needs to move, energy sizzling through you like high tension wires, your emotions threatening to blow the power grid any second as you struggle with those nagging teenage questions, “Who am I?” “Why me?” It doesn’t help that the only answers you get come from walls and bars, gates and guards, and maybe that crowd of unreliable experts in your head.

Many of my jailhouse students lived that loneliness and isolation hour after hour, day after day, and for some, year after year until it was hard for them not to see the world as anything but confining, and brutally uncaring. It’s a vision that, as hard as they might work against it, too many of them carry throughout life.

Even though I taught high school in a county penitentiary for over 10 years and experienced in a minor way some of that same isolation and indifference I still know otherwise about the world: That there are people out there who care about real justice, not just for the “done to” but for the “doer” as well; who worry not only about “the system”—child welfare, juvenile and criminal justice—but about the kids, each individual kid, consigned to those systems.

But it’s hard a sell to young people whose world has taught them otherwise. Sometimes, listening to them talk about their lives, I feel as though they are living an alternative reality. Then again, maybe that is the reality of today’s America.  

This summer I got to talk with various groups about these issues and met some people who could back me up on my view of the world. I just wish my students could’ve met them as well.

I’d like them to meet the 15 or so law students whom I met who were interning at the New York Center for Juvenile Justice (NYCJJ) in New York City, an organization working to ensure that kids in trouble are treated compassionately and fairly in the justice system. Even the toughest guys that I taught, and I’ve taught quite a few “thugs”—scarred, tattooed, hearts tough as stone (or so they’d like you to think)—would’ve had a hard time not being affected by the interns’ sensitivity to, genuine concern for, and insights into their lives and “the system” that had them (in so ways.) But my students were used to words—judge words, cop words, social worker words, even teacher words, so they would have been impressed by the students plans to establish juvenile justice chapters in their law schools and gotten a kick out of the fast-cut videos they made about laws that treat kids as adults when it comes to crime but not when it comes to voting or drinking or going to the movies.

And I wonder what they would’ve thought of the group of German juvenile justice professionals visiting the center. In halting English or through the slow process of translation, these professionals shared the same concerns about their criminal justice system that people in this country have about ours: a system that refuses to treat children as children; that refuses to look at the real reasons—poverty, discrimination, failing families, lack of money and resources for youth programs—that young people get drawn into crime.

At times the conversation in two languages was stumbling and drawn out. However, what translated fluently was the universality of the concern and compassion that is out there for the world’s young throwaways. It was moving to realize that there is a worldwide network of people just like me, just like the student interns and the staff at NYCJJ, just like the many other folks I know—teachers, lawyers, judges, social workers, clergy, parents, and yes, correctional staff—involved in this work. We may not be many but we’re out there, and, if you’re like me, it helps just knowing that.

Because the work never stops. As concerned as many of us from various nations are about the already bleak treatment young offenders receive, there are in some countries loud demands to make that treatment even harsher and more punishing. Canada for example “is planning to shift toward a jail-intensive approach” when dealing with its juveniles according to Toronto’s The Globe and Mail. And in the wake of Britain’s’ recent riots there are renewed calls for a retaliatory approach to young offenders rather than a rehabilitative one.   

The global picture can be bleak. Nevertheless, that network of concerned and committed people is still out there. Despite everything, they keep doing what they can for the world’s locked up kids because no matter how much as those kids might bad mouth their country, society, “The Man,” their lives, they don’t give up hope. So, I ask you, how could any of us do otherwise?

Prison photo by Tim Pearce on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons.

MLK: Why We Can't Wait

"I thought of twenty million black people who dreamed that some day they might be able to cross the Red Sea of injustice and find their way to the promised land of integration and freedom. There was no more room for doubt." Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait

The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., officially opened to the public this week. In honor of this historic event, we'll be posting excerpts from books in The King Legacy series on Beacon Broadside every day this week.

In celebration of the MLK Memorial Dedication, we are also giving away books by Dr. King. Enter for your chance to win hardcover editions of recent titles released by Beacon Press: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Why We Can't Wait, The Trumpet of Conscience, "All Labor Has Dignity," and MLK: In Word and Image. One grand prize winner will receive ALL SIX BOOKS. Five winners will receive one book of their choice. For more information and to enter, see the Beacon Press website.

Today's excerpt is from Why We Can't Wait. Often applauded as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait is Dr. King's account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963. He campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, King, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. King examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality. The book also includes the extraordinary “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which King wrote in April of 1963.

The excerpt (if you can't read it below, click this link to read on Scribd) describes the events leading up to King's arrest by Bull Connor in Birmingham on Good Friday. 

Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr., Excerpt

MLK: Where Do We Go from Here?

The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C.,officially opened to the public this week. In honor of this historic event, we'll be posting excerpts from books in The King Legacy series on Beacon Broadside every day this week.

In celebration of the MLK Memorial Dedication, we are also giving away books by Dr. King. Enter for your chance to win hardcover editions of recent titles released by Beacon Press: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Why We Can't Wait, The Trumpet of Conscience, "All Labor Has Dignity," and MLK: In Word and Image. One grand prize winner will receive ALL SIX BOOKS. Five winners will receive one book of their choice. For more information and to enter, see the Beacon Press website.

Today's excerpt is from Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, the last book written by Dr, King.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

Civil rights activist, theologian, and historian Vincent Harding wrote the introduction to the Beacon Press edition of Where Do We Go from Here. You can read it below or on Scribd. (Follow the link if the excerpt does not display properly in your browser or email.)

Where Do We Go from Here by Martin Luther King, Jr, Excerpt

MLK: Stride Toward Freedom, "The Decisive Arrest"

The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., officially opens to the public today. In honor of this historic event, we'll be posting excerpts from books in The King Legacy series on Beacon Broadside every day this week.

Today's excerpt is from Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. According to Dr. King, this memoir is “the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.’’ 

In Stride Toward Freedom, King delineates racial conditions in Montgomery before, during, and after the bus boycott which lasted from December 15, 1955 until December 21, 1956. He discusses the origin and significance of the boycott, the roles that residents, civic and church leaders, and community organizations played in organizing and sustaining the movement, and the reactions of Montgomery’s white community. An unparalleled historical account, Dr. King also shares the intellectual influences of thinkers like Hegel, Marx, Thoreau, and especially Gandhi. 

This account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolent resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory and intimate. It traces the phenomenal journey of a community, and shows how the twenty-eight year old Dr. King, with his conviction of equality and nonviolence, helped transformed the nation—and the world.

The excerpt posted here today recounts the events surrounding the arrest of Rosa Parks.  

Read an excerpt from Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King, Jr., here or on Scribd

Recommended Reading for Those Thinking about "The Help": Like One of the Family

Over the past couple of weeks, the reaction to the novel and film The Help has made for some illuminating reading regarding race, history, and literature. Among the most thoughtful pieces we've read this week was from the Association of Black Women Historians, who said:

[T]his statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism. 

They outline their substantitive objections to the film in the statement, and conclude by saying, "In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment."

The statement includes a recommended reading list, which we reproduce below.

Fiction:

Like One of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress (Beacon Press)

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James (Riverhead)

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley (Penguin)

The Street by Ann Petry (Mariner Books)

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight (Anchor)  

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph (Cambridge University Press)

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter (Harvard University Press)

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books)

Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis (Smithsonian)

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody (Dell)

The first book on the list, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life by Alice Childress, is excerpted below. The novel is comprised of a series of conversations between Mildred, a black domestic, and her friend Marge. The book was originally published in the 1950s by a small publisher in Brooklyn (Independence Press), but Beacon Press brought out a new edition of it in 1986 with an introduction by the literary and cultural critic Trudier Harris.

The conversations in the book were first published in Freedom, the newspaper edited by Paul Robeson, and later in the Baltimore Afro-American. Childress is probably best-known for her book A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, and was also an accomplished playwright as well as a Tony-nominated actress. Before her success as a writer, she lived a life without economic advantages. In the introduction to the Beacon Press edition of Like One of the Family, Harris writes:

Chidress's upbringing and struggles in New York effectively influenced the kind of writer she would become. She says of herself: "I attempt to write about charactes without condescension, without making them into an image which some may deem more useful, inspirational, profitable, or suitable." She has also commented that she concentrates "on portraying have-nots in a have society, those seldom singled out by mass media, except as source material for derogatory humor and/or condescending clinical, social analysis."

Before these ideals could be realized, however, Childress had to serve a long apprenticeship. ... She pursued a variety of jobs, including assistant machinist, photo retoucher, saleslady, and insurance agent as she worked relentlessly to gain audiences for her work as a playwright, actress, and novelist. She also did domestic work for a few months; the day she quit she surprised her employer by throwing her keys at her head. The woman later asked her to return to work. This "only work" that Childress could find turned out to be valuable, for it provided her with firsthand experienece of the job situation she would later depict in Like One of the Family.

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If You Want to Get Along With Me

from Like One of the Family by Alice Childress (Beacon Press, 1986)

Marge, ain't it strange how the two of us get along so well? . . . Now you see there! Why do you have to get so sensitive? . . . No, I was not reflecting on your personality or making any kind of digs! . . . Well, if you'll give me a chance I'll try to explain what I mean . . . I've known you for years and although you've got your ways . . .Yes, yes, I know I've got mine . . . but the important thing is that we go right on being friends . . . for example, remember the time you borrowed my best white gloves and lost them? . . . I know that I spilled punch on your blue satin blouse! . . . Now, wait a minute, girl! Are we goin' to have a big argument over how friendly we are!

I said all of that to say this. Today I worked for Mrs. M . . . and she is an awful nice lady when she wants to be, but she can get on my nerves something terrible. . . . No, I do not mean that you get on my nerves too, and if you keep pickin' up on every litte thing I say, I'm gonna get up and go on home. . . . Well, gettin' back to Mrs. M . . ., she can make me downright uncomfortable! . . . Yes, you know what I mean, she turns my workaday into a real socializin' session, and her idea of socializin' is to ask me a million questions. . . . "What do you do after work, Mildred?" and "Do you have a lot of friends?" and "Are you married?" and "Do you have a boyfriend" and "Do you save your money?" and "Do you like to read?" and "Do you people like this or that?" . . . By you people she means colored people... and I can tell you she can wear my nerve-cells pretty near the breaking point. . . . I know you know!

Well, at first I tried to get used to it because she is so nice in other ways . . . I mean like not followin' me around and dippin' into every thing I'm doing . . . yes, I appreciate that. . . . She lets me do my work, and then if anything isn't quite pleasin' to her she will tell me afterwards but it usually turns out that she's satisfied. Also I like the fact that she is not afraid of a little work herself, and many a day we've worked side by side on jobs that was too much for me to handle all alone. Also she makes the children call me Miss Jonhson. . . . Sure, whenever anybody has so many good ways, you hate to be pointin' out the bad ones. . . . But question, question, question... and it wasn't only the questions. . . . Honey, she could come out with the most gratin' remarks! . . . Honestly, she made such a point of tellin' me about how much she liked and admired Negroes, and how sorry she felt for their plight, and what a fine, honest, smart, and attractive woman was workin' for her mother and so forth and so on and so forth until it was all I could do to keep from screamin', "All right, back up there and take it easy!"

Well, the upshot of it all was that I began to pick her up a little here and there in order to put her on the right track. For example, I'd say to her, "What's so strange about that woman being honest and attractive?" Well, Marge, she'd look so stricken and hurt and confused that I'd find myself feelin' sorry for her. . . . No, I didn't stop altogether but I'd let things go along a bit and then I'd have to pick her up on something again, and over a period of five or six weeks I had to jack her up several times. . . . Girl! all of a sudden she turned coldly polite and quiet and I can tell you that it was awful uncomfortable and strained in the house.

I guess I could have stood the strain but it began to tear me up when she'd say things like "May I suggest" and "Do you mind if I say" and "If it's all right with you." . . . When I had my fill of that I came right out and asked her, "Mrs. M . . ., what is the matter, you look so grieved and talk so strange 'til I don't know what to think?" She looked at me accusingly and said, "I'm afraid to say anything to you, Mildred. It seems that every time I open my mouth something wrong comes out and you have to correct me. It makes me very nervous because the last thing I want to do is hurt your feelings. I mean well, but I guess that isn't enough. I try to do the right thing and since it keeps coming out wrong I figured I'd just keep quiet. I . . . I . . . want to get along but I don't know how."

Marge, in that minute I understood her better and it came to my mind that she was doing her best to make me comfortable and havin' a doggone hard go of it. After all, everything she's ever been taught adds up to her being better than me in every way and on her own she had to find out that this was wrong. ... That's right, she was tryin' to treat me very special because she still felt a bit superior but wanted me to know that she admired me just the same."

"Mrs. M ...," I said, "you just treat me like you would anybody else that might be workin' for you in any kind of job. Dont' be afraid to talk to me because if you say the wrong thing I promise to correct you, and if you want to get along you won't mind me doing so. After all, if I got into all your personal business and wanted to know everything about your life and your husband and your friends, pretty soon you would be forced to correct me even though it might make me uncomfortable." "Oh, Mildred," she says, "I didn't realize . . ." "Of course you didn't," I cut in, "but can't you see that it's unfair to push a one-sided friendship on me?" "Mildred," she says, "I wanted to be friendly." "Now of course you did," I answered, "but, for example, when you told me the other day that you're going to drop by my house and see me sometime I don't appreciate that because I never invited you, and you never had me to your house except to do a day's work." She looked down at her hands as I went on, "I don't think it's fair that you can invite yourself to my house and I can't tell you that I'll be over here for tea on Sunday afternoon."

Marge, she shook her head sadly. "You mean that there is nothing that we have in common, nothing that we can talk about?" "I didn't say that at all," I sad, "but let's just relax and feel our way along and not try to prove anything, and before you know it everything will go along easy-like."

She smiled then, "You mean you don't want to be treated special?" "Well, I do and I don't," I answered; "because I knew a woman once who was awful rude to me and said that was the way she was with everybody, no matter what color, and she didn't want to treat me special. I told her that if that was her general way then I'd appreciate her treatin' me special and I'd bet that other folks would like the change, too." Marge, Mrs. M . . . fell out laughin' and says, "Mildred, people are the limit!" ... And I guess she's right too. . . . No indeed, I don't take that time and bother with most folks because when I run into a mean, hateful one who comes chatterin' around me about "What do you do after work?" I just give her a short smile and say, "Oh first one thing and then another." And by the time she's figured that out, I'm in another room busy doin' something else! . . . That's right, but, as I said, Mrs. M . . . is a nice person, so I told her. 

Threatening Messages and Student Speech

Today's post is from David L. Hudson, Jr., author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools, which was released this week by Beacon Press. Hudson is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law and blogs at the First Amendment Center, where this post originally appeared.

Administrators didn’t violate the First Amendment when they expelled a Nevada high school student who sent instant messages containing an alleged hit list, a federal judge has ruled.

In 2008, Landon Wynar sent messages to a friend known in court papers as J. In his messages, Wynar threatened violence against some female students. One message read: “that stupid kid from vetch, he didn’t do shit and got a record.  I bet I could get 50+ people, and not one bullet would be wasted.”

J. forwarded the messages to R., another student, who suggested that they tell Douglas County High School authorities.  After J. and R. told school officials, Wynar was suspended for 10 days and then expelled for 90 days.

In October 2009, Landon and his guardian, Mark Wynar, sued school officials claiming that they violated Landon’s constitutional rights, including his First Amendment right to free-speech when he was punished for his off-campus speech.

On Aug. 10, U.S. District Judge Larry R. Hicks rejected these claims in Wynar v. Douglas County School District. Hicks reasoned that even though the speech originated off campus, most courts would apply the “substantial disruption” test from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District if the speech were brought to the attention of school authorities. Under the Tinker test, school officials can restrict student speech if they can reasonably forecast a substantial disruption of school activities.

“Where a student’s speech is violent or threatening to members of the school, a school can reasonably portend substantial disruption,” Hicks wrote, adding that “the court finds that defendants had a reasonable basis to forecast a material disruption to school activities.”

Hicks noted that Landon Wynar specifically referenced April 20 — the anniversary of the infamous school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., as a date for the shooting and “made specific references to girls and the school by name.”

Wynar insisted that the messages were only jokes, not real threats. But Hicks said that even if they were jokes, school officials “still had a reasonable basis to forecast a substantial disruption to school activities.”

The Wynars’ attorney, Jeffrey S. Blanck, said his clients hadn’t decided whether to appeal the ruling.

“I am not happy with the decision because this was purely off-campus speech and the kid did not intend to harm anyone and didn’t convey an intent to harm anyone,” Blanck said. “This was joking between friends and the friend joked back.

“This kid spent 33 days in jail before a juvenile court judge tossed out the criminal charges.”

Requests for comments from the school district’s attorney went unanswered.

Just Published: Let the Students Speak! A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools

Released Today: Let the Students Speak! details the rich history and growth of the First Amendment in public schools, from the early nineteenth-century's failed student free-expression claims to the development of protection for students by the U.S. Supreme Court. David Hudson brings this history vividly alive by drawing from interviews with key student litigants in famous cases, including John Tinker of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Joe Frederick of the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, Morse v. Frederick. He goes on to discuss the raging free-speech controversies in public schools today, including dress codes and uniforms, cyberbullying, and the regulation of any violent-themed expression in a post-Columbine and Virginia Tech environment. This book should be required reading for students, teachers, and school administrators alike.

David L. Hudson, Jr. is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law. Read his posts on Beacon Broadside.

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Let the Students Speak! Excerpt