29 October 2014 –

What we are really thinking

When I was the US Air Force Attaché to China, my wife and I lived in downtown Beijing.  We entertained diplomats from around the world and worked extensively with them and our Chinese hosts on all sorts of diplomatic and military issues.  Because we had information the Chinese government wanted, our apartment was bugged with audio and video sensors, our car had a GPS tracker on it, and I was followed virtually everywhere I went in the country.  My wife and I got used to the environment and  never talked about anything of importance while in the apartment or car, or near any Chinese.  We were there to do our diplomatic job, and we accepted the dictatorial Chinese state as the arena in which we did battle.  

  

The Chinese government’s intrusion extended to all aspects of our lives, including church.  Ours was not one of the country’s officially recognized denominations.  We could not invite Chinese citizens to worship with us, give them pamphlets, or even answer their questions about our faith or Christianity in general.  On a weekly basis, our pastor clearly stated these rules over the pulpit.  We rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar’s.

All the members of our congregation knew our services were electronically monitored to ensure we complied with government rules.  After all, it was a Communist dictatorship with 500,000 people in its security services who did nothing but monitor all communications within its borders.  Only our silent prayers were not subject to government scrutiny. 

There is an old Chinese saying:  Zai lin, chuang hei.  The direct translation is “toward the neighbors, dark windows.”  To the Chinese, whose natural and human rights have been suppressed for millennia by warlords, emperors, and Communist autocrats, it provides sage advice:  “Don’t tell anybody what you’re really thinking.”   In a dictatorship, this often is the only way to survive. 

I rejoice daily that our Constitution protects us from such government intrusion when we worship, speak privately or in the press, when we assemble, or petition the government for redress of wrongs.  The expression of our thoughts is constrained only by our ability to express them, not by the government.  Not by the federal government.  Not by the state government.  Not by the city government.  No government official can use legal mechanisms such as subpoenas to intimidate American religious congregations to quit calling a sin a sin, to quit public or private efforts to redress government wrongs, or to insist we pray only silently and away from others.  That is unconstitutional, and it is wrong. 

Five pastors’ names appeared in the City of Houston’s recent subpoena to turn over sermons which were thought to contain statements about the sins of our city leaders as well as information on how these religious leaders are trying to petition to redress the wrongs of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).  Pastors Steve Wriggle, Herman Castano, Khan Huynh, David Welch, and Ms. Magda Hermida spoke out boldly and refused to back down.  They are heroes in my book. 

In a press conference on Tuesday, 28 October, these pastors, including Reverend Bill Owens and others from the Coalition of African American Pastors, declared that this issue is as much about civil rights as were the marches and demonstrations some of them participated in more than four decades ago.  These brave Americans forced a suppressive, local government to honor the Constitution and to respect First Amendment protections for all Americans. 

On Wednesday, 29 October, because of the efforts of the “Houston Five” and others, Mayor Parker’s office withdrew the subpoena. 

These pastors’ moral courage inspires me as much as has any physical courage I saw in my three decades of military service.  May God bless these pastors, their congregations, and all who are willing risk everything to protect Americans’ rights and freedoms.  I echo the “amens” we spoke so freely during the press conference.  We can do that in this country.  We can do that in Texas.  We can do that in Houston. 

After all, we Americans can tell people what we are really thinking.  

16 October 2014 –

An Apology Is In Order

I must apologize for my final statement in yesterday’s column about Houston Mayor Annise Parker.  According to the official City of Houston website, she is only fifty-eight years old.  Therefore, she is not an ”Ole Gay Mayor.” 

Yesterday, I explained my view on how we should use personal passion to express our own rights and reasoned tolerance to examine others’ expression of their rights in the public forum.  This helps create a peaceful, ordered society where legitimate rights can be accommodated. 

Today, I want to posit how Mayor Parker’s personal passion for lesbian, gay, bi-and-transgender (LGBT) causes combined with her lack of reasoned tolerance for others’ rights to create an embarrassment for her as the leader of Houston government. 

Personal passion is essential to define and maintain one’s rights in society.  In that vein, I defend Mayor Parker’s constitutional right to say during the city council debate in June that the now-passed, non-discrimination ordinance was a “personal” matter.  This ordinance contains, among other clauses related to sexuality and gender identity, a statement that would allow self-described, transgender men and women to use any public restroom of their choice.  Public expression of support for such radical change in society is Mayor Parker’s right.   

     

But, when the Mayor, the Executive Officer of the City of Houston, publicly declared that her bill was a reflection of her personal mores, she legitimately invited conservative and religious groups to declare not only her bill, but her personally, as morally offensive.  Those are the rules of the game.  Welcome to the fight, Mayor Parker!

Mayor Parker’s second mistake was to not conduct a clear-headed assessment of others’ rights—the First Amendments rights of people and groups whose opinions are diametrically opposed to hers—when she fought to defend her position.  Mayor Parker should have exercised reasoned tolerance by writing her city ordinance with constrained scope and wording.  I would say that Mayor Parker failed to do so.   

She may still have survived the political storm if she had not tried to subpoena Christian pastors’ sermons on homosexuality, gender identity, or the Mayor herself.  Up to that point in this saga, reasoned and tolerant people may have concluded that Mayor Parker was using the political process to encode her passionately-held view of sexuality in a city ordinance.  In return, Christian-based political groups were using the same political process to produce overwhelmingly large petitions to require the ordinance be put on a city-wide referendum.  The political process was playing out with vigor in the public forum.  But, the game changed when the subpoena was issued.    

Many Houstonians are deeply religious Christians.  They hold traditional views of marriage, sexual relations, and public displays of sexuality.  Many believe that God defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman and that sexual activity is sanctioned only within the bounds of that institution.  To them, all sexual activity outside of such a marriage, including homosexual acts, is a sin.  They also see the public use of restrooms by those who aren’t of the same sex as deeply offensive.  Their views are religious tenets of their faith in God.  Expressing such tenets of faith has been and is fully protected by the First Amendment.  This protection has consistently covered public expression as well as sermons and discussions within a religious congregation. 

Mayor Parker either did not understand the universal legitimacy of the religious, speech, and redress of grievances rights in the First Amendment or she allowed her supporters to intolerantly dismiss them.  Either way, the buck stops with her.

Apparently, the Mayor’s supporters wrote, then made public, a subpoena for some of Houston’s more vocal Christian pastors to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity, or Mayor Parker herself.  Their response to the obviously illegal subpoena went national within hours.  Pastors publicly refused to comply.  Protestors gathered outside city offices.  Pundits had a field day.  Quickly, city attorneys and the Mayor herself backed off; they said that the subpoena’s wording was obviously too “broad.” 

It seems to me that the Mayor’s passion for LGBT causes clouded her and her supporters’ reasoned tolerance of others’ rights of expression.  This has put her into an embarrassing and politically damaging predicament.  What’s worse—or better, depending on your personal beliefs—is that the subpoena may have condemned her pet ordinance to the dustbin of public opinion and her personal credibility to the narrow hallways of her most ardent supporters. 

A lesson learned. 

15 October 2014  –

Of Course We Disagree. 

I regularly correspond with a friend I met while working together in the US embassy in Beijing, China.  He is passionate and well-reasoned when he expounds on the human condition.  His views occasionally may not line up with mine; but, because of his virtues mentioned above, I associate with and learn from him. 

Recently, my friend sent me a pamphlet by Paul F. Boller, Jr., “To Bigotry No Sanction,” which highlights George Washington’s critical role in “establishing the ideals of religious liberties and freedom for conscience…for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—and for Deists and free thinkers as well—firmly in the American tradition.”  I recommend its thirty-six pages to anyone who wants to understand constitutionally guaranteed rights as well as to construct a guide to exercise those rights in public forums.   In George Washington’s example—in my friend’s example—I find the keys to protecting our personal rights while sustaining a free and functioning society. 

Examining and expressing our constitutionally guaranteed rights always should be a meditative, thorough process.  Also, we should never lie to ourselves about the rights we have or how to express them; there are plenty who will later to lie in the political arena. 

When we examine, then express, our rights, we must recognize that we almost always do so with passion.  When we pray at our bedside, in the pew, or on a trout stream in the Rockies, we do so with passion.  When we write letters to the editor, talk with friends, and instruct our political leaders, our passion inspires and punctuates the communication.  We instinctively straighten our backs when we demand security in our homes.  Our eyes well up with tears when we confirm in our souls that God, not any government, gave us our rights.  Expressing, defining, and protecting our personal freedoms is an emotional experience.  Without that passion, history shows that personal freedoms—however magnificent they may be—atrophy and are supplanted in the public forum by imposed manifestos on societal governance. 

Fervent advocates of Americans’ personal freedoms are legendary.  Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine have emblazoned freedom’s passion in many minds.  Their fiery speeches and actions announce exactly what I have told my children during difficult times in their lives:  Welcome to the Fight!  The passion of the fight defends and sustains what would otherwise be trampled and killed in a godless world.    

But, when and how should I “fight” for my personal rights?  I have learned that it also is my obligation, as a responsible citizen, to ensure that my discourse and my interaction in the public forum—in defense of my rights and liberties—not devolve into acrimony.  Passionate expression of a person’s or a group’s rights well defines the different parts of a pluralistic society.  That said, however, the larger society must function for the benefit of all.  Here is where tolerance and reason, not passion, are the necessary virtues.  In a free, yet ordered, society, a calm, clear-headed assessment of others’ rights, in order to determine how to accommodate all citizens, is just as important as passionate adherence to one’s personal code.  All life’s experiences tell me that such an assessment must be the product of reasoned tolerance. 

I like classic liberalism’s description of tolerance:  My neighbor can do what he wants—as long as it doesn’t scare the horses.  I recognize that most things my neighbors do don’t abridge my rights or detract much from the quality of my life.  But, when their actions do rub against me and mine, my definition of how my neighbors “scare the horses” must be a clear, passionless, assessment.  Reasoned tolerance demands a constrained scope and wording of my conclusions.  Otherwise, opportunistic foes will use my emotion to ridicule my arguments for their advantage.  

   

A reasoned, tolerant approach to others’ views of personal freedoms improves the political process.  Importantly, it impels all to clearly tie their political assertions and demands to constitutional principles and obligations. When discussions of rights and freedoms are so framed, they reveal rather than hide an argument’s constitutional weaknesses.  Only by being tolerant of other, well-delivered opinions can I learn more about who wants and who doesn’t want to sustain individual freedoms in society.  Only by reasonably accommodating others’ rights can we all better protect our rights.  

  

That’s all fine and dandy.  But what about the politicians who abuse others’ constitutional rights and processes in order to maintain their power?  Tomorrow, I will try to follow the philosophy above to contend that Houston’s Ole Gay Mayor “just ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be”…not so long ago.