How Others See Our Choices

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial
Foundation Dinner in New York City. Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The whole world is watching us.

Over the last month, I have logged tens of thousands of miles, visiting three continents. From the steamy poverty of Sierra Leone to the pubs and castles of Ireland, there is one thing that tied all the people together. Nearly every conversation I had began by someone asking, “So, what do you think of Trump and Hillary?”

This question occurred with such regularity that it soon evoked spontaneous laughter. It was comical to me that people as diverse as a tipsy Irishman, Lady Dunsany (originally from Columbia) and an African preacher from the bush should all be fixated on American politics.

At first, it made me wonder if these people have nothing better to do with their time than watch a dog and pony show taking place a half a world away. Has the American presidency become something akin to the royalty of the British Empire? Do they watch us like we watched the soap opera of Charles and Lady Di?

Actually, no. In time, I learned that their interest is not idle entertainment. It was the Irishman who drove home the reality: we are talking about the leader of the free world.

I have heard this phrase for decades, but I had never heard it through the mouth of a non-American. The simple reality is that America is the world’s greatest super-power, and the only one with freedom at its very foundation. As America goes, so goes the rest of the world. And as America’s freedom goes, so goes that of the entire free world.

What has dawned on me over the last month is that the President of the United States of America is, for better or for worse, the world’s president. American hegemony is so powerful and so influential that American politics and culture have a direct impact upon the politics and culture of countries scattered around the globe. The people that I met on my travels know this well — even if you have never thought about it.

All this reminded me of a startling realization that I had back in graduate school. I can remember the very lecture when it happened. We were studying the politics of the Roman Empire at the time of the first Christians. It blew my mind when I learned that the average man on the street had absolutely no say about the people and the way he would be governed.

His leaders were chosen for him by politics and wars, treaties and betrayals far above his paygrade. A Roman citizen at the time of Christ could go his entire life without ever casting a vote. But no matter how far he might be from having any control over the politics of Rome, the politicians of Rome had a great deal of control over him. Other people and other factors chose his rulers, but he was not unaffected by it.

For a Christian in the first century, an emperor like Nero could dip you in tar and light you on fire, or an emperor like Nerva could stop the persecutions and roll back corruption. Either way, you had no say whatsoever about which it would be. It suddenly dawns on me that this is very similar to the way much of the world looks on American politics. They are affected by both the good and the bad of our choices.

They watch from afar as we select leaders who will affect them in ways we cannot fathom. They are more than curious. They are concerned.

If you have ever tossed up your hands in frustration and said, “My vote doesn’t matter anyway,” you might want to think about the billions of people around the world for whom that is really true. Your vote may be only one in a hundred million, but it is still that. Pastor Lansana, the preacher from the bush, and Lady Dunsany of Ireland don’t even have that.

Think about that as you go to the polls in November. People around the world are depending on the American voter. What we do here will most certainly affect billions of people beyond our shores. Not only does your vote truly matter for you, it matters for people you have never met, in places you have never visited.

While you are thinking about these things, think about something else as well. The relationship between American politics and people around the globe is not the only place where other people’s actions affect innocent lives profoundly. This is, in fact, the constant reality of the entire human condition.

None of us are islands. Our personal choices do not affect only us. They affect everybody around us in ways that we may never understand. We live in community. That means there are no such things as private sins or inconsequential choices. Every decision you make has a ripple effect upon the entire world.

What parents do in private affect their children. What families do behind closed doors, affect the whole community. What countries do within their own borders have an impact on those beyond the border. Life is made up of a thousand choices between good and evil, right and wrong. And those choices matter to people that you never even knew existed.

Perhaps there is a silver lining to this strange campaign season. Perhaps in the flawed charactors of Clinton and Trump we can be roused into remembering these basic truths. Character counts. Virtue matters.

Remembering these things, perhaps we will also stop obsessing with the flaws of others and start looking more honestly at ourselves. Anxiety comes with the feeling that nothing you do matters to the world around you. By that same thought, virtue fades.But confidence and humanity are restored when you know that even your most miniscule and private battle to do the right and shun the wrong has a greater impact on the world than you will ever know.

You matter. Your choices matter. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Hope After Rape Conception

HopeAfterRapeConception.org

“I was adopted nearly from birth. At 18, I learned that I was conceived out of a brutal rape at knife-point by a serial rapist. Like most people, I’d never considered that abortion applied to my life, but once I received this information, all of a sudden I realized that, not only does it apply to my life, but it has to do with my very existence. It was as if I could hear the echoes of all those people who, with the most sympathetic of tones, would say, ‘Well, except in cases of rape… ,’ or who would rather fervently exclaim in disgust: ‘Especially in cases of rape!’

“All these people are out there who don’t even know me, but are standing in judgment of my life, so quick to dismiss it just because of how I was conceived. I felt like I was now going to have to justify my own existence, that I would have to prove myself to the world that I shouldn’t have been aborted and that I was worthy of living. I also remember feeling like garbage because of people who would say that my life was like garbage — that I was disposable.”

These are the words of Mrs. Rebecca Kiessling, who recently spoke in Rock Springs to a crowd of over 300. She is a nationally-known speaker and a co-founder of HopeAfterRapeConception.org, an organization focused on supporting women who have conceived as a result of rape and advocating legislation to protect them.

It’s not hard to understand why. When your very existence hangs in the balance, a person tends to become focused and passionate. 

Rebecca’s story is not unique. Congress found that rape-related pregnancy occurs approximately once for every 20 rapes. That translates to over 32,000 people per year conceived as a result of rape. For these women and for the children they carry, how we support them speaks volumes about how we value them as human beings. 

If they take it personally, we all should. Once we consider these women and children as innocent victims, we cannot help but care about them as persons. It is only so long as they remain abstract statistics that society can turn a blind eye to their plight.

Many people assume that these 32,000 women would want only to abort the children conceived in rape. But, perhaps surprisingly, that is not the case. Congress found that nearly 75 percent of these women carry the children to term. Studies also suggest that an even higher number would like to do so if we would only support them better.

Rape is a terrible thing. It is violence against a woman’s person at the very core of her womanhood. Nobody with a heart would want any woman to suffer one iota more from rape than she has already suffered. On that we can all agree. 

Before she even considers the status of the child, she must also ask if she herself will suffer more by giving birth, or by undergoing an abortion? The woman faced with this terrible choice should not be denied the facts. Real data and real answers are critical. She needs good advice and she needs it now. But where are such answers to be found? 

To date, there is only one clinical study that has reached out to real women who faced a rape pregnancy and listened to their stories. The Elliot Institute in Illinois has conducted a follow-up survey of women who were impregnated by rape or incest. The results of their study help to explain why so many women choose to carry the child to term.

They found that no victim of rape who carried her child to term regretted her choice. But many of those women who underwent an abortion felt additional trauma. Especially in the instance of incest, these findings are important. Incest is a particularly evil form of rape. It is often ongoing, and enabled by secrecy and family power structures. Women who suffer from it are further victimized by the secrecy surrounding it.

When it results in pregnancy, she is afforded the opportunity of breaking the unbearable silence. For this reason, it is rarely the victim of incest who wants an abortion, but the perpetrator. By it he can deny the consequence of his actions and continue the power dynamics of silence. He can also use the specter of a prolonged custody battle intimidate her into aborting.

For the sake of our sisters who suffer in silence, we should not perpetuate the silence. Our laws can and should be structured to give her a real choice and to strip her tormentor of the tools of power he uses to perpetuate the abuse. 

This is not a political issue. No matter how you feel about Roe v. Wade, we should all want the victims of rape to have every available remedy for their situation. If Wyoming would enact laws which support the victims of rape and incest, we would be helping both the children so conceived, and the women who are victims of this powerless situation.

For this reason alone, it would be beneficial to change our laws. Current Wyoming law allows a rapist to sue for custody rights in order to avoid paying child support. For the victim of rape or incest this is a horrifying reality. Oftentimes against her own desires, she will opt for abortion in order to prevent the intolerable situation of dealing with her rapist for the rest of her life.

Many states have already passed laws to prevent this situation. It is high time that Wyoming joined them. The Rape Survivor Child Custody Act (H.R. 1257), was signed into federal law in June 2015. It offers just the kind of help that Wyoming women need. 

Introduced by a broad coalition of legislators, ranging from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., to Mimi Walters, R-Calif., this legislation encourages states to address this problem. It offers federal money for combatting violence against women to states that pass legislation to protect the victims of rape and incest from perpetrators who would later sue for custody of the child. 

Let’s build a coalition beginning in Evanston to change Wyoming law and give both women and children a chance. Join me in encouraging your representative and senator to sponsor Wyoming’s own version of the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. Together we can make a real difference.

If you, or someone you love, have conceived as a result of rape, there is hope and help available. Contact Rebecca Kiessling at HopeAfterRapeConception.org. Not only will you receive sound support and help, you will also have the opportunity to help others. Nothing is more empowering than that.

An Uncivil Report on Civil Rights

The United States Commission on Civil Rights recently issued a report titled, “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties.” This report was three and a half years in the making. It releases the findings from a briefing held on March 22, 2013. 

One wonders what they were actually doing during this time. One thing is certain. They were not reconciling nondiscrimination principles with civil liberties. 

I realize that is a very brash statement. I would not have said it except for the plain language of the Report itself. “The Commission endorses the briefing panelists’ statements as summarized at page 21 of the Report.” This bland sentence announces a wholesale and one-sided endorsement of those who oppose any religious exemptions to SOGI laws, and a complete rejection of the arguments for any religious accommodations. 

Lest the reader miss their point, they repeat the seven points that they endorse: “1) schools must be allowed to insist on inclusive values, 2) throughout history, religious doctrines accepted at one time later become viewed as discriminatory, with religions changing accordingly, 3) without exemptions, groups would not use the pretext of religious doctrines to discriminate, 4) a doctrine that distinguishes between beliefs (which should be protected) and conduct (which should conform to the law) is fairer and easier to apply, 5) third parties, such as employees, should not be forced to live under the religious doctrines of their employers, 6) a basic right as important as the freedom to marry should not be subject to religious beliefs, and 7) even a widely accepted doctrine such as the ministerial exemption should be subject to review as to whether church employees have religious duties” (26).

Fathom the chutzpah of telling a Roman Catholic, for whom marriage has been a sacrament for centuries before America was in diapers, that marriage can no longer “be subject to religious belief.” Notice the dismissive claim that religious doctrines are unstable and ever-changing. Catch the delicious irony that the Commission teaches a “doctrine” that denies religions the right to teach doctrine. According to this “doctrine,” only what is privately believed in the heart “should be protected,” every other conduct, including teaching and living out these beliefs, “should conform to [our] law.” Shiver at the menacing accusation behind the phrase, “pretext of religious doctrines.” It’s hard to imagine a paragraph dripping with more contempt for religion and the faithful.

With the stated goal of “reconciling” two positions, the Report started out on the right track. The first 22 pages lay out two respective positions, together with their legal and philosophical justifications. But then, instead of offering any discussion on how these two complex and divergent positions might be reconciled, the Commission jumps the tracks and immediately gives a full and unqualified endorsement to one position over the other. This does not bode well for those seriously seeking reconciliation. 

All this leaves the reader to wonder, is no reconciliation possible? Or was no reconciliation desired? There is plenty of documentation available to explore this question. For though the entire report is only 27 pages, the full document released by the Commission is nearly twelve times that. The additional pages include 120 pages of written statements from those who testified at the March, 2013 hearing. These can help you understand the technical, legal and philosophical arguments involved. But it is especially the 141 pages of comments from the commissioners themselves that give the greatest insight into their bias against compromise and middle ground. 

Take, for instance, the statement of Martin Castro, the Chairman of the Commission: “today…religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.” As Chairman Castro sees it, there is no middle ground to be sought. If you have religious reasons for objecting to the insertion of sexual orientation and gender identity language into existing civil rights laws, your religion is a mere pretext for illegal discrimination. You are an outlaw and no religious exemptions should be afforded you whatsoever. 

Castro is not alone in his attitude. Three other Commissioners join him in labelling Religious Freedom Restoration laws as, “thinly-veiled attempts to turn back the clock, …motivated by animus” (33). After a reference to “persons of faith, and of good will,” they feel compelled to add this ominous footnote: “Despite Obergefell’s nod to the existence of good faith religious opinion against same sex marriage, religious objections to same sex intimacy will ultimately retain no more respect than religious objections to racial integration and inter-racial intimacy” (40).

By now, you may be asking: what then becomes of the religious understanding that I and my co-religionists have held for our entire lives and for countless generations before? The Commission has a clear and uncompromising answer for you: “2) throughout history, religious doctrines accepted at one time later become viewed as discriminatory, with religions changing accordingly” (26). There you have it. Change accordingly, or else.

They specifically justify this stance by saying, “religious doctrines that were widely accepted at one time came to be deemed highly discriminatory, such as slavery, homosexuality bans, and unequal treatment of women, and that what is considered within the purview of religious autonomy at one time would likely change.” But is this true? Have entire religions changed their doctrines about male and female, homosexuality, or slavery? Hardly.

For starters, what the Commission derides as the “unequal treatment of women,” the vast majority of Christians throughout the world (both male and female) practice simply as an all-male clergy. Which churches, exactly, does the Commission think have changed on this point? Have the Roman Catholics, the Greek Orthodox, Lutherans, or Evangelicals? Obviously not. Neither do L.D.S. have female bishops, nor Jews, female rabbis, nor Muslims, female Imams. 

To be sure, there is internal dissension found in some parts of these communions. But is it the place of a government commission to judge which party represents the entire religion and which has departed from it? Isn’t this precisely the governmental establishment of one denomination over another which caused our forebears to seek religious freedom in the New World and to guarantee it in the First Amendment?

As for slavery, it borders on mendacity to suggest that Christianity, as such, ever enjoined it. True, some misguided Christians attempted to construct a case for slavery from the Bible, and due to secular entanglements, the church sometimes muted her objection to slavery. But throughout the shameful history of slavery, principled Christians invoked the ancient doctrines of Christianity against the slave trade. Chief among these anti-slavery doctrines was that mankind is directly created by God in His own image. Can anyone really imagine the end of slavery without the theology of the Declaration of Independence: “we hold that all men are created equal”? 

And that brings us to the most troubling aspect of this Report. If the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has its way, it will use the formidable power of U.S. law in a bid to force all churches to stop being churches and become agencies of the state. If successful, what institutions will remain to stand up for their fellow human beings as Wilberforce and the abolitionists did against the slave trade, as Bonhoeffer, Niemoeller and the Pope stood against Hitler’s holocaust, or as Russian Orthodoxy stood shoulder to shoulder with Lutherans against the communistic purges of Stalin and Lenin? 

In the cruelest irony of all, the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, is laying the groundwork to dismantle that one institution which has historically served as the last wall of defense for the civil rights of all men against the tyranny of government-sanctioned religions.

Of Mosquitos and Men

It is early morning in the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone (Portugese for the Lion Mountains). Shortly after 5 a.m. I sit in the dark. Crickets are singing outside. A rooster crows far away. Dogs quietly scavenge the rubbish piles and loudly fight when they find a scrap. I have been here for almost a week. Things are settling into a kind-of normal.

A cool breeze carries the sweet smells of unknown plants and flowers through the window. On the same breeze wafts the distant sound of a mosque’s call to prayer together with the nearby smoke of a freshly lit cooking fire. 

But mosquitos are the one thing that must not come in on the air. Life here depends on it. The first order of business upon our arrival was to inspect and repair the screens in our quarters to make sure the mosquitos stayed out.

By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
commons.wikimedia.org0

There are many health precautions to take here. Don’t drink the water. When you do drink a canned beverage, wipe it off first. Take your daily dose of anti-malaria pills. Update your vaccinations — particularly yellow fever and typhoid. But most of all, avoid mosquitos.

It is troubling that the most threatening health concern is also the most difficult to avoid. Once I have had my vaccinations — and as long as I properly clean things — I can forget about it. But mosquitos are different. They are tiny — tinier than ours. They can hide in nooks and crannies. You can never be quite sure that you are out of danger. 

Stateside, we have nothing that compares. We avoid mosquitos and spray for them because their bite may raise a welt and make you itch. But that is all. In a day or two, the itching stops and you are comfortable and safe. You were never in any danger. But in Africa, mosquitos mean malaria.

What troubles me the most is that I live in safety while my new friends — the men I came to teach — live with this hazard every single day of their lives. Long after I have returned to Evanston, James, Tamba, Bona and the rest will still be living with malaria-bearing mosquitoes. What is more, they have none of the protections I have. They live daily without malaria pills, without screens, without mosquito repellant and with a disease that America eradicated decades ago.

From the swamps of Washington DC to the bayous of the deep south, Americans, too, used to face the daily threat of malaria. Then, during the Italian campaign of World War II, the retreating Nazis began using mosquitos for germ warfare. They deliberately created a mosquito-rich environment so that Allied troops were threatened not only with bullets and bombs but with malaria as well.

Many sickened and many died. Along with the troops, innocent Italian civilians suffered as well. Finally, an effective pesticide was invented. It was safe for humans and the animal population but killed the deadly mosquito. Through this life-saving pesticide, many American and Italian lives were spared. DDT eradicated malaria on the Italian peninsula. 

When the war was over, DDT was used across Europe and America to remove the threat of malaria throughout the First World. It was so wildly successful that you probably never knew that Americans used to die from malaria. You probably thought that malaria was just an unsolvable African problem. But it is not unsolvable. We solved it. But now the solution is being withheld from those who need it.

In 1960, Rachel Carson wrote a book entitled “Silent Spring.” In it, she claimed that DDT was destroying our environment and must be banned. It was a popular book and accomplished its purpose. Production lines for DDT were shut down, and its import and export was restricted. 

However, Rachel Carson was not a scientist, and she was wrong. Science has long since debunked her book. Not only was there no scientific evidence that DDT would destroy the environment, common sense shows this as well. Anyone can see for themselves. We have the benefit of an environment made malaria-free by DDT, and we have a flourishing, healthy environment. Even after the full employment of DDT, our animal population has grown right along with the human population. 

But while the histrionic claims against DDT have been disproven, the effects of these false claims are still very, very real. Science or no science, America and Europe have turned their collective backs on the Third World. The cheap and effective pesticide that has made your world safe from malaria is not available for the people of Africa.

Hundreds of thousands of precious human beings die every year from a disease we know how to cure. Think about that. We spend billions of dollars to find a cure for diseases like cancer and AIDS and heart disease. But when it comes to malaria, once we cured ourselves, we refused to share the cure with our brothers and sisters in Africa.

Some diseases in Africa interest us greatly. In 2014, there was an outbreak of Ebola. All of America held its breath in great fear that it might spread to our shores. To protect Europe and America from Ebola, the World Health Organization imposed travel restrictions in West Africa that decimated their economy, which was only beginning to recover from years of a terrible war. 

But did you know that during the same period when 11,500 people were dying of Ebola, over 20,000 people were dying of malaria? Now that Ebola’s threat has ended, malaria continues unabated. Twenty thousand people die per month — every single month. But as long as there is no threat that it might come to us, nobody seems to care.

It is time to care. It is past time. We ourselves live in an environment made safe from malaria. How can we callously deny the means for others to make their own environment just as safe? Science long ago corrected the wildly false claims of Rachel Carson. It is time to educate ourselves and our children on the scientific truths. Maybe then public policy will catch up to the science. To live by science and not superstition is always an improvement. There is already plenty of superstition in Africa that detracts from life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Let us join hands to lift the single most deadly superstition that oppresses them, for this superstition came from America and can only be corrected by America. The Third World should be allowed to benefit by the same science that made us safe.