Illustrations For Inspiration

Officially, no matter that some claim we are a "christian nation," the United States is a secular nation.  However, given the demographics of  the USA a majority of those elected to office, both local, state and national, profess to being some variety of Christian.

Given that, I'd like to propose that there are four prints that need to be on the office walls of every legislator who processes to Christianity.

These are all from the artist Fritz Eichenberg, who was a Quaker from his forties until his death at the age of 89, contributed hundreds of illustrations and articles to the Catholic Worker publications.

These four woodcuts remind us that Christ valued, and called for us to value, all people, no matter their creed or nationality or economic station, that to be Christians we need to remember his exhortations on treating all people, and that there are none so far gone as to be exempt from redemption. (The title for "The Lord's Supper" is a reminder that this feast is still ongoing)

"The Prodigal Son" dates from 1978, "The Lord's Supper" from 1951, "Christ of the Breadlines" was produced in 1950 and "Christ of the Homeless" in 1980.

"Christ of the Breadlines"

"Christ of the Homeless"

"The Lord's Supper"

"The Prodigal Son"

The American Promise 1965/2014

In 1965, almost 50 years ago, President Lyndon Bains Johnson stood before a joint session of the Congress of the United States of America, announced that he would be sending a bill for consideration, a bill that would be known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Just a week earlier, on March 7, 1965, a group of 600 civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, were attacked by state and local police.   Two nights later, on March 9, segregationists attacked three white ministers who supported the march, killing one, James J. Reeb.

In announcing this bill, President Johnson made what may be his most eloquent and moving speech, where he recalls, as a young man, teaching at a school where his eyes were opened to what poverty really looks like.  The full written speech can be found here.  A full video of the address before Congress is above.

In March of 1965 I was all of 12 years old, and had no idea of the momentous nature of the events, no idea of the import of the oppression and degradation being visited on my fellow citizens.  Now, looking back at those times I see what my youth and location in a Northern city sheltered me from. I never knew what youth of my ages in Mississippi, California, Alabama or Texas experienced.

Looking at that speech now, for me, the most moving part of the address is below, where Johnson details his experience in that school:

"...Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right.

All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. 

It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.

Of course, people cannot contribute to the Nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.

So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.

My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry.

They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice.

They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes.

I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965.

It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chance—and I'll let you in on a secret—I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.

This is the richest and most powerful country which ever occupied the globe.

The might of past empires is little compared to ours.

But I do not want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion.

I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world.

I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax-eaters.

I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election.

I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races and all regions and all parties.

I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth..."

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on August 6, 1965.

Sadly, shamefully, parts of the protections for voting that Johnson called for in this 1965 speech are under attack, a half-century later, under the guise of "protecting the vote" by use of "voter-id" laws. 

Passport denied because name change not recognized.

Last week's [Worcester, Mass.] Telegram & Gazette detailed a small story where the U.S. passport office has refused to recognize not the marriage itself, but the name change involved in a person choosing to alter their legal name under which they are known when they are married.

On May 20, 2004, three days after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriages in the Commonwealth, Alicia Lison and Amanda Ginese were legally married in a small ceremony. Amanda elected to change her last name to Lison. Under Massachusetts state law, that made her name change a legal fact, not requiring a trip to the Probate Court Department. For the past three years she has used that as an identified for such things as her state driver’s license and her Social Security card.

A few months back Amanda sent in photographs and the required fees in order to obtain a U.S. Passport. This was in preparation for a vacation cruise. A week before her cruise was due to leave, however, she received a letter from the Passport Office saying that the application was being denied because her name change was not being recognized as valid.

The agency said it refused to recognize Amanda’s married name, even though she had wed three years earlier and had legally changed her surname to that of her spouse.

According to the federal government, Amanda had married the wrong gender.

“I guess I’m not all that surprised,” said Amanda, sans passport, as she waited for her cruise ship to sail out of New York City last Thursday. “I should have known. It was amazing to be able to get married. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. But I never had an issue until this passport thing.”

Of course,this kind of intrusion is inevitable, given the language of the so-called "defense of marriage act."

A spokesman from the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., said same-sex couples seeking a passport under a married name can’t do so absent additional documentation, and that the government doesn’t recognize such name changes based solely on marriage certificates, as it does for heterosexual married couples.

....

[Worcester, Massachusetts] City Clerk David Rushford said Amanda’s case is the first he has heard of a gay person being denied a passport based on her married name, partly because many gay couples have kept their own name. Both he and Mr. Bell [Bruce Bell, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders] said that, because a name change is a state issue, Amanda’s name change should be legal.

“So what they’re really rejecting is the change in marital status,” Mr. Rushford said. “They’re not treating people equally with that kind of action.”

Amanda, 23, said she’s contacted the offices of state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. and Gov. Deval L. Patrick, and is angry that the Boston Passport Agency has refused to refund her money. She didn’t have time to get another passport in time for her Eastern Caribbean cruise, which left Thursday from New York. Speaking by telephone from the dock, she said she’s nervous to be without one because if she had to fly home for any reason, she’d have a hard time getting back into the United States.

Mostly, though, she’s sad that her cruise has been dampened by a federal law she thinks is all wet.

“No one told me this could happen and I had no way of knowing it,” she said. “It’s just not fair. We went through so much to legalize gay marriage, and to deny me something like a passport doesn’t make much sense.”

This is just another data point on how that prejudice and unfounded fear of a few is continuing to affect the many. The DOMA is an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of people who are citizens of this nation, and enshrines an effective religious test into the recognition of marriage, because the arguments in favor of this particular definition of "marriage" all fall back to appeals to "tradition." A "tradition" which is based on a particular religious "standard" itself.

One of the fears of these prejudiced few is that the U.S. Supreme Court has itself declared that the freedom to marry of one's own choice is itself one of the "unenumerated rights" declared in the Constitution -- see, in a Supreme Court case involving involuntary sterilization of criminals, that marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man.” (SKINNER v. STATE OF OKL. EX REL. WILLIAMSON, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) ). And the supreme Court reiteratd that view when they referenced Skinner v State of OKL in the miscegnation case "Loving v VA" (1967)

In the comments to the T&G piece, someone claims that they were able to get the Passport Office to give them the passport under their married name, apparently when they notified the passport office that they were represnted by legal counsel.

Lets look at a couple of pieces of law

First, some old, really “settled” law

Article. IV.
Section. 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Section. 2.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

AMENDMENT XIV
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now some law that hasn’t really been validated yet by confirmation through the U.S. Supreme Court

SEC. 2. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES.
(a) IN GENERAL- Chapter 115 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by adding after section 1738B the following:
`Sec. 1738C. Certain acts, records, and proceedings and the effect thereof
`No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.'.

This second, to my unlettered eye, contradicts both cited sections of the first.

These are, of course, the Constitution of the United States () and the “Defense of Marriage Act”

The analysis by the DOMA sponsors claims that they have, in essence, their own little set of extra-judicial rules akin to what are commonly referred to as the “presidential signing statements.” Their claim is that they can substantially bypass the “Full Faith and Credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution that would normally compel all the states in the nation to recognize a “same-sex” marriage. However, this interpretation is illustrated by affirmative examples (requirements for the states to recognize and enforce child custody and child support orders), while this legislation allows the several states to effectively ignore the judicial proceedings, and civil contracts, of another state. The analysis itself is a little contradictory, -- in the last paragraph of the analysis:

“DOMA is not meant to affect the definition of "spouse" (which under the
Social Security law, for example, runs to dozens of lines). It ensures
that whatever definition of "spouse" may be used in Federal law, the
word refers only to a person of the opposite sex”. >

Either you are “affecting” the definition or not, guys – you cannot have it both ways.

Both Skinner and Loving hinged on the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that may be the eventual road taken to overturn DOMA. Also, of perhaps more direct import, is ROMER v. EVANS, ___ U.S. ___ (1996) which decision directly confronted a CO state constitutional amendment that directly precluded the granting of equal rights, based upon gender roles. Romer also hinged on the Equal potection language.

My own feeling is that the Full Faith & Credit clause may be more important, and I really don't see the free-market zealots being willing to weaken the part of the U.S. Constitution that relates to the enforcement of civil contracts.

The above is, of course, old news, but it needs to be kept in our minds as an example of how simple it is for the rights of the citizens to be abrogated.

After this, who knows? Maybe the federal government will decide that they can bypass the constitutional protections against warrentless searches, and the requirements of habeas corpus and the guarantee of a speedy trial and to be able to face your accusers. Oh, well. Never mind....