Why Kavanaugh Should Withdraw

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

I believe her

The #MeToo movement marks a distinctive cultural difference between 1991 and 2018. This is obvious in how the public (and the Senate) have responded to Anita Hill vs. Christine Blasey Ford.

I remember the Anita Hill hearings vividly. They were televised live and were on every TV in sight. This was a remarkable feat in 1991 before the era of cable news. Or the phenomenon of “breaking news.”

In an era of blame the victim, Hill’s accusations were definitely breaking news. And, oh boy, was she ever bombarded with victim blaming. Forced to relive some of the most humiliating experiences of her professional life, Anita Hill became a hero.  A generation of women were struck by her willingness to call a public figure to account for his abusive behavior.

Women across the country took to wearing pins that said, “I believe Anita Hill” and simply, “I believe her.”

Unfortunately, Hill was treated to shameful and shaming abuse in front of the entire American public and Clarence Thomas was still confirmed. That is the history of justice (or lack of it) for women who are victims of sexual harassment and sexual violence and assault.

#MeToo movement

Fast forward to 2018 and the newly emerging allegations of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

In the wake of Ford’s accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager, fewer people are questioning whether she was assaulted. While this is a cultural step forward, his defenders are also not saying, “Let’s find out if these allegations are true because we wouldn’t want an unrepentant sex offender on the nation’s highest court.”

As we have heard in other #MeToo cases, some people are asking if people’s lives should be ruined by actions they took when they were teenagers. Clearly preparing a line of defense for his nomination if the allegations prove to be true. What his defenders are really asking is whether men’s lives should be ruined by the behavior of their younger selves. No one is asking about the lives of the women who were deeply marked by the violence of these boys.

Michelle Goldberg pointed out in a NYTimes column that we are not really asking if boys and men should be accountable for their sexual violence, but rather, which boys and men should be accountable. As she notes, sex offender registries regularly mark men for life for their crimes in an effort to protect vulnerable populations.

But prep school boys and other boys of privilege are rarely held accountable in the same way for their abuse of power and physical strength in perpetrating violent actions against their dates or even just women at parties. And Kavanaugh is on record promoting a storied secrecy of the boys club world.

Sexual violence and restorative justice

The problem with confirming Kavanaugh “even if he did it” on the premise that men shouldn’t have their lives and careers ruined by the actions of their youth is that if he did it – he has clearly shown no remorse, no recognition of the harm that he caused, nor any understanding of the restorative justice that is required before forgiveness is possible.

Restorative justice is the principal that injustices need to be remedied. When people are victims of injustice, their experience can rarely be undone. Such crimes often include violations of a person’s body, mind, and soul. The body’s memory of rape or sexual assault can never be undone. Just as degrading and demeaning verbal abuse cannot be unheard. The fear and terror associated with these crimes or with a mugging or physical attack cannot be erased or forgotten.

Our culture routinely accepts sexual violence against women as normal. Or at the very least, as a woman’s fault for putting herself in a vulnerable situation. In such a culture, it would not be particularly surprising that the boy who grew up to become Judge Kavanaugh didn’t remember the encounter.

Violent, terrifying, and abusive encounters with boys and men mark the histories and psyches of countless women. Across this country and across the world. The normalization of this violence and the refusal to hold boys and men accountable for violent, sexually aggressive behavior is a symptom of a culture that cares more for protecting male privilege than defending women’s human rights.

Compromising the Court’s moral authority

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Why the Supreme Court’s Decision to Respect “Sincere Religious Beliefs” is Wrong

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

 

https://www.123rf.com/profile_fintastique
https://www.123rf.com/profile_fintastique

Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld a Colorado baker’s decision to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. It was an oddly narrow decision that reaffirmed protections for gay rights while simultaneously allowing the baker to violate them.

The case was argued on two grounds – free speech and free exercise of religion. Regarding free speech, the argument that baking a cake is a speech act did not seem to hold much traction. Neither did the majority opinion hold that a businessperson has a right to discriminate based on their religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court’s Decision

Surprisingly, perhaps, the decision was ultimately decided on very narrow grounds. The majority ruled in favor of the baker based on the judgment that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated “hostility” to religion. The Civil Rights Commission had made the original ruling against the baker.

What Justice Kennedy is referring to here are remarks that were made by one member of the Commission who said:

Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be – I mean, we – we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination.

So far, what this Commissioner said is simply fact. Religion has been used in exactly this way throughout history. Furthermore, religious people continue to claim “freedom of religion” to justify misogyny, violence, homophobia, and other egregious and uncivil behaviors.

Here’s where it gets tricky

However, the Commissioner went on to say:

And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to – to use their religion to hurt others.

This is what really seemed to set Justice Kennedy off. He argued in response:

To describe a man’s faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use” is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical – something insubstantial and even insincere.

Based on this statement of one Commissioner, Kennedy held that the whole Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to uphold their responsibility of “fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law – a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.”

The opinion equivocated on a number of points and fairly invited further cases by stating:

The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.

Just what is “undue disrespect”?

It is the phrase “without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs” that gives me pause.

How are we to determine what constitutes “undue disrespect”? Is that another way of saying we need to respect these “sincere religious beliefs”? Who decides what is “undue”?

After all, we live in a country where Christians hold some horribly disrespectful beliefs.

Some of these beliefs are against the law. As in, some Christians sincerely believe that they have the right to beat their wives and some of their wives have been taught to believe they deserve it.

Some of these beliefs are used to harm women. As in, some Christians who sincerely believe that fertilized eggs are human beings are interfering with women’s access to birth control and abortion.

Some of these beliefs are simply morally abhorrent. As in, some Christians sincerely believe that the white race is morally, physically, and intellectually superior to all other races.

Freedom of speech means that we must allow people to express their beliefs, however abhorrent. It doesn’t mean we must respect those beliefs.

The same must be said for freedom of religion. While people have a right to believe whatever they wish, they do not have a right to act on those beliefs when they harm other people.

My faith calls me to challenge hatred

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Debunking the Myth of “Bootstrap” Morality

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

When I was in college, my dad lost his job and my parents made due for a year selling people buttons with their kids pictures on them at malls and craft shows while he worked to find a new church. As a preacher’s kid, I had grown up solidly middle-class. While I had a lot of hand-me-down clothes and we rarely bought a new car, we always had enough. We were comfortable.

Continue reading Debunking the Myth of “Bootstrap” Morality

Safe Sex, Healthy Sex, Sacred Sex

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

A couple of years ago, when my daughter was in seventh grade, I got a notice from her school that I could go and sit in on her first sex education class. I was surprised at how few parents actually showed up and far more of us were parents of girls than boys.

The film they showed was from the 1980s, complete with ginormous pads that are so outdated to look ridiculous to these kids, not to mention the clothes and the hairstyles. I was a teenager in the 1980s and I couldn’t take the film seriously. Not only that, the genders were separated and the girls watched the “girl” film and the boys watched the “boy” film. I thought to myself – they should be watching each other’s films. They must have at least as many questions about what’s happening to their opposite sex friends’ bodies as they do to their own – maybe even more!

Continue reading Safe Sex, Healthy Sex, Sacred Sex

Forgetting Lynching at Our Peril

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

My third grader is a white child in a Title I school in our town. She’s writing a report on Harriet Tubman for her Black History month project and has spent the week devouring information about Tubman and proudly sharing stories and facts about her life with our whole family. “Mom, did you know Harriet Tubman was a spy during the Civil War!” We have spent the week talking together about Tubman, slavery, and the history of racism in the South. As a white mother of two white daughters, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to educate my children about history and slavery and how each of these continue to shape the racism in our communities and in our lives.

It is imperative that I teach my children that their white skin is a privilege in a country where brown people are discriminated against in both conscious and unconscious ways. But, talking about privilege is hard, and not just for parents. For most people with privilege, talking about it makes us uncomfortable. Admitting that we have privilege seems unseemly at best, but worse than that, for many of us, it feels arrogant. The fact that people have difficulty even recognizing their own privilege is well documented and one of the reasons that privilege is so hard to address as a cultural phenomenon. For starters, how do I teach my children about social privilege without reinforcing social privilege? Well, its not easy, but it certainly won’t happen if we ignore it or pretend like we don’t have it.

Continue reading Forgetting Lynching at Our Peril

Progressive Christian Ethics

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

I am a Christian social ethicist by training and by vocation. In a highly secular world people often wonder what that means. Am I the church police, there to tell people how to behave? Am I the wise counselor, there to offer advice on how to live morally? Or, am I, simply there to make Christians feel guilty about engaging in behavior they already know is morally wrong?

Well, thankfully, my job is none of those things. When I explain that my work is focused on questions of social ethics and contemporary society, questions related to economics, the environmental crisis, globalization, poverty, and women’s access to reproductive health care – people often wonder why I bother with the Christian part. I mean, after all, aren’t those social questions matters for public debate in a public forum, a place where the church should keep its nose out? Certainly it is true, there is nothing particularly “Christian” about any of these social issues or about how we as a society should seek to address them.

Continue reading Progressive Christian Ethics

Solidarity Ethics

Posted on by rebecca todd peters

In my book Solidarity Ethics, I explore the richness, depth, and challenge that a theology of solidarity offers as the foundation for economic and social relationships as opposed to the guiding principles of individualism, profit, and wealth accumulation that currently drive the economic structures of human society. The ethic of solidarity that flows from a theology of solidarity is both a model for first-world Christians for how to live faithfully in the midst of a globalizing world (personal complicity and behavior) as well as a framework for a new way of imagining our political economy and our social networks and interactions (structural analysis and accountability).

Solidarity ethics asks people to risk, change, and act. To risk examining our various privileges and disadvantages in order to see how these factors have shaped us and how we can leverage our power for the work of justice. To change the way we see the world by developing relationships with people who inhabit different worlds than we do, we can learn to see the world in new ways, ways that may help us to move from despair to action as we learn how to ask political and social questions that proceed from justice. To act in ways that change the shape of globalization toward justice and respect for human dignity and the integrity of creation.

Kristopher Norris just wrote a review for the Political Theology blog.