Author: Joshua B. Kay

Rick Santorum, aspiring theocrat

/ Joshua B. Kay / 2 Comments

Last I checked, America was not a theocracy. Yes, America is a rather religious nation, and our money says “In God We Trust,” but I think there’s some stuff in the Constitution about the separation of church and state. Yup, I’m actually pretty darn sure about that. In fact, it’s part of the brilliance of the Constitution that the drafters of the Bill of Rights recognized that when the state is involved in religion, religious freedom suffers, so they got the state out of it and explicitly protected religious freedom.

It would be nice if Rick Santorum, Republican primary combatant, blowhard, and nut job, would read the Constitution. While he’s at it, he might want to read up on some science, history, and other useful subjects.

“Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative policies, said that Obama’s agenda is ‘not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.'”

via Rick Santorum questions Obama’s Christian values – Boston.com.

Rick, it shouldn’t be about theology at all. And if it were, other people – Obama or anyone else – don’t have to share your theology. And they wouldn’t be wrong. They’d just have a different opinion.

The concept of opinion – as opposed to fact – is an important one to keep in mind as we consider these issues, because the conflation of opinion and fact appears to be rampant in Santorum. He obviously believes that his views on religion are right. Just flat out right. Not right for him. Nope. Right for all. Far right. His opinion on the matter is fact to him.

He also has claimed that birth control doesn’t work and that it harms women. What? I mean, Rick, you don’t have to use it if you and your wife don’t want to. That’s not my business – of course, the corollary to that not being my business is that my choices on the subject aren’t your business. But birth control doesn’t work? Really? And it harms women? Really? On what authority do you claim that?

Usually, enough is enough. With this guy, enough is too much.

 

A flea for justice

/ Joshua B. Kay / Leave a comment

During an anti-slavery speech, Sojourner Truth was heckled by an old man, who yelled, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.”

“Perhaps not,” Truth replied, “But the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”

Keep them scratching.

I’d like to think that I’m a flea for justice, and that millions of others are, too. I know that each of us is rather small, really, while the degree of callous disregard for the people by the powerful is staggering. Injustice is a big dog. But I’ve had big dogs who’ve had flea problems, and they don’t appear to be all that happy about it. Those fleas keep them scratching.

I teach in a legal clinic devoted to child welfare law, and a huge injustice that’s on my mind is Michigan’s so-called “one parent doctrine.” It goes something like this: based on one parent being found by a court – either through a trial or by entering a plea – to have abused or neglected the child, the other parent faces severe burdens and legal sanctions. The non-adjudicated parent, even if they had nothing whatsoever to do with any abuse or neglect, and even if they stand ready, willing, and able to take custody of the child, can be forced to engage in a “treatment plan,” can have their child kept from their custody, and can have visits with the child limited to supervised visitation at the child welfare agency for one hour per week. This can happen even if the parent not only wasn’t ever proven to have been abusive or neglectful, but in cases where the parent wasn’t even accused of having done anything wrong. Once ordered to do a treatment plan, failure to adhere to it perfectly could eventually lead the child welfare agency to seek to terminate your parental rights. Forever. And they may well win that case in court.

So imagine that you’re a parent, and the child’s other parent has primary custody. Something happens when the child is with the other parent, and Children’s Protective Services (CPS) looks into it. Whatever happened is bad enough for them to remove the child from that parent. To your horror, your child isn’t placed with you. Why? Well, CPS doesn’t know much about you. True, you have no record with them or with the criminal justice system. But they tell the court that they don’t know much about you, whatever that means, and despite the fact that you demand custody, you’re not given the child. Instead, you’re given visits, and you’re given a treatment plan. No, there’s no evidence for why you even need treatment services, much less why you shouldn’t have custody of your child. Apparently, evidence doesn’t matter.

Is this unconstitutional? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make it easy to fix.

There’s a lot of ghastly stuff like this going on behind the scenes or in the shadows, and a lot also happens right in front of us. Yet if there’s one thing that we’re seeing more and more, it’s that with awareness, outrage, and persistence, we actually can change or fend off some pretty bad stuff. And with that, I’ll close and go back to biting that darn dog.

The bravery of children

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Children are brave. Sure, they believe in monsters under the bed or lurking in their closets, and – partly because of those monsters – they might be afraid of the dark. But where it counts, in the real world, where they risk real pain or injury or failure, they are incredibly brave.

They plunge into school year after year and deal with transitions galore, from harder material to a particularly strict new teacher to a goon who might be sitting next to them in class or hassling them in the school yard. They climb trees with abandon and look down from those lofty heights, and while it might inspire a bit of caution, it doesn’t keep them from doing it. They learn to ride a two-wheeler or to ice skate and, again, just do it. They don’t like falling, and they don’t want to fall, but they don’t let the thought of failure or pain keep them from their goal.

Recently, my daughter was in a swim lesson at the Y, and I was doing an indoor cycling workout and watching her down below through the big bay windows that overlook the pool. In my daughter’s lessons, they use the adult lap pool. Back and forth she went, over and over again, her teacher walking alongside, periodically instructing her. Freestyle back and forth, back and forth. Back stroke. Breast stroke. Butterfly. OK, let’s work on your diving. Now your kicking. On your back, arms outstretched, no stroking, just kicking. Back and forth. Back and forth. Again. Again. Again. Meter after meter, length after length, lap after lap. And I’m sitting up there on the indoor cycle and taking inspiration from watching my daughter go. She swam without complaint. She worked quietly and determinedly. She was without fear. She had to have been suffering, particularly during the prolonged kicking drill, but she didn’t show it. She pushed through it, and I pushed myself on that bike, because I wanted to stand with her the only way I could at that point.

I can’t swim the way she does. I mean, I’m safe and fairly functional in the water, but I’m uncomfortable and stiff when lap swimming. I lack rhythm in the water. I don’t let myself do it. I’m afraid of swallowing water, looking like an idiot, not making the grade. And that fear stands in my way. What I should do is get some lessons and re-learn to lap swim. It would be great for me. But fear is a barrier. In contrast, my daughter joined a swim team over the summer unable to swim more than one-third of a length before stopping. That’s about 8 meters. By the end of the summer, swimming day after day, working herself hard, listening to her coaches, and just flat out swimming with the kind of grit and fearlessness that I think many kids possess, she swam 100 in competition. Straight through. No stopping. No fear.

Passing the beach test

Then came our annual family trip to a rustic, lakeside family camp. It is our one true get-away, and we love it dearly. At the camp, there are a couple of swimming tests, the longer and tougher of the two being to permit a child to go onto the beach alone. If they don’t pass, then they can’t even set foot on the sand without an adult, not even to look for sea glass or colorful stones. The beach test involves going from the little camp dock to the beach without touching the bottom, about 250 meters of open water, dealing with waves from boat wakes, currents, chilly pockets, sea monsters, what have you. My daughter did it, and she did it beautifully, with a strong crawl stroke, stopping only a couple of times to turn on her back for a quick rest and to chat with her mom, who was nearby. The thoughts that led to this post started as I watched her pass that test. Afterward, she confessed that it was a long way to swim, but she hadn’t experienced any fear. Not a bit.

After all that, I suppose her swimming length after length at the Y doesn’t feel like a big deal to her.

I suspect that children’s lack of fear is linked to their relative lack of inhibition, which in turn seems linked to their inherent playfulness and innocence. As adults, we gradually seem to play less. And we take far too much far too seriously. We let all kinds of things get in our way, including our fears of pain and failure, and particularly our fear of shame. Our inhibitions build up. We hold ourselves back.

I’ve heard it said more than once that great athletes have the capacity and willingness to suffer more than most people. They will work their bodies right up to that “oh no!” point and then push beyond it, making athletic gains where many would have stopped. They have a goal, and they are determined to achieve it. Maybe kids are a bit like that. They look at a task that they want to accomplish, and rather than dwelling on the barriers and potential bad outcomes and what others might think, they plunge in and just do the task. They get into the water, or on the horse, or on the bike, or on the ice, and rather than thinking about all the bad stuff that might happen next, they lose – and ultimately find – themselves in the sheer joy of seeking and achieving mastery through play. Sure, I’m proud when I see my daughter do something like that. But even more than that, I’m humbled.