Three Peas in a Pod?

I note this week an editorial in our local rag that linked Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jerry Falwell. What do they have in common? They were divisive.

Hey, that puts me in the same category. I've been labeled divisive at times. Plus, all of us had noses. What do you know - I didn't realize I was in such august company.

Since 'divisive,' like body parts, doesn't really denote any significant similarity amongst people, I'll propose something that does: dignity. The first two men sacrificed their lives to raise the dignity of their fellow human beings; the last was an instrument of an institutional prejudice and oppresion that serves to crush the dignity of those made society's scapegoats.

Right after Bishop Robinson's consecration, vestry meetings in our parish were quite lively events. During one, an African-American woman, in an interracial marriage, spoke up. She was highly emotional, hard to follow, but I believe the gist was she had known real discrimination, and what Gene Robinson had endured wasn't it. I was new to vestry, awed and intimidated by the governance process, so I didn't raise points for clarification. I've thought much about it since and regretted my silence.

If I still could, I'd ask her, that if she believes being gay is a choice, is it similar to her choice to enter into an interracial marriage? If she denies being gay is a matter of choice, is there no similarity to the discrimination she endured as an African-American woman? It's not illogical to assume her situation, either way, might have rendered her sensitive to the plight of gays and lesbians. Apparently, it had the opposite effect. I'd like to understand why.

I wonder if she'd be influenced after reading what happened in May in Pakistan as reported by the AP: both partners of a same-sex couple who'd sought protection by the courts from harassment by relatives were sentenced to three years in prison for lying to a judge that transsexual surgery had transformed one partner into a man. They said they wed to protect one partner from being sold into marriage to pay off her uncle's gambling debts. They admitted they lied because they were in love and desired to live together. After the judge pronounced their sentence, they clasped each other, before police led them away, separately, to serve their sentences.

It was only forty years ago in Virginia that my fellow vestry member would have been jailed for the choice she made of who to marry.

Over the past three decades in business, I've cheered on women who've broken the glass ceiling in our office. Some, however, upon reaching the pinnacle of power, act in the same troubling ways as they men they've replaced. I expected more, although perhaps a dysfunctional system consistently requires the same methods to reach the top, regardless of gender. Does it always have to be as Pete Townshend of the Who sang in the rock opera Tommy: "meet the new boss, same as the old boss," or can the chains of excessive ego and self-interest ever be broken?

A few weeks ago, I noted a Spectator article critical of the election of a Zimbabwean as chairperson of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development despite that Government's horrendous record in this area. I note this week a response to the article in the Banjul Daily Observer.

The piece exposits that President Mugabe "is a product of the criminal 19th century Cecil Rhodes conspiracy against the Ndebele and Shona people; the product of the 20th century British colonial policy; and a product of the illegal white-state of Rhodesia established in 1965 by the racist outlaw Ian Smith." All of that is certainly undeniable - I recall in my own family when my mom cut off communications with a crochety aunt who lived there after receiving letters containing the racist vile of superiority.

The writer recalls after Ian Smith's rule had come to an end, in 1979, that "Mugabe strode to the Conference Hall like a victor, "a cold austere figure bent on achieving revolution, threatening that Ian Smith and his criminal gang would be tried and shot." The comparison was made that "Mugabe is the Founding Father of Zimbabwe just as much as George Washington is the Founding Father of the United States."

Perhaps, like the editorial in our local rag, you might say that Mugabe and Washington were both divisive. They also both had noses. Mugabe still has one. I haven't yet, however, identified any text where Washington called for loyalists to be shot after the Revolution. Rather, vengence gave way to reconciliation, just as it did in South Africa after apartheid.

Dr. King's immortal language continues to inspire millions: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Bonhoeffer taught us: "There remains an experience of incomparable value...to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled...in short, from the perspective of those who suffer...to look with new eyes on matters great and small."

Falwell's legacy lives on in the person of the current Polish Minister for Children's affairs who, like her mentor, said of the notorious Teletubbie, Tinky Winky, he "has a purse, but I didn't realize he's a boy; at first, I thought that must be a bother for him. Later I learned that there could be some hidden homosexual undertones."