Punishing Women for Abortion: Wrong

OK. Enough.

Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for the office of president of the United States, has stepped over a line.

In the Bible, there is a very familiar story about a woman who has been “caught in the act of adultery.” She is being taken to task for her indiscretion. The scribes and the Pharisees bring her to Jesus, and say, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now, what do you say? The next sentence says they “said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.”

That scripture always got to me because only the woman was called to task. Presumably, if or since she was “caught in the very act” of adultery, there was someone with whom she was committing adultery with. Where were the men?

Jesus proceeds to bend down and begin writing in the sand, and in my exegetical imagination, I have always seen him writing the names of men who might have also committed adultery with her – or with someone else. Nobody was beyond fault. As he writes the names, the scriptures say that they “went away, one by one.” Finally, only the woman was left, but she received no judgement from Jesus. He tells her to go and not to “sin” again.

When Donald Trump said today that women who get abortions should be punished, I thought of that scripture. The suggestion is outrageous, it is draconian, it is unjust …and it is sexist.

If women become pregnant by men – which they do – and a pregnant woman seeking abortion should be punished, then so should the man who impregnated her.

There is no more immaculate conception. Men are complicit, to say the least, in the condition called pregnancy.

Trump’s statement shows his bigotry toward women. If his antics to date have not been enough, then this suggestion ought to open the eyes of those who have been wooed and seduced by his “telling it like it is.” This man is a buffoon. He hasn’t given clear policies on much of anything, and he claims not to be a “politician,” but now, as the fire heats up and his statements about women are being showcased in negative ads about him, he is being the preeminent politician by saying things that he believes Conservative, religious women want to hear.

I wonder if he’s thought it through. I wonder if he understands that women who have abortions includes wealthy white women who are no strangers to abortion procedures. Is he advocating that they be punished too?

And I wonder if he has the chutzpah to talk about how men who believe in impregnating women and then leaving them to fend for themselves ought to be punished as well. Or if he believes that husbands of wives who decide they want an abortion should be punished, too?

Is this as sexist as it sounds?

This stance of Trump’s is pure reality TV. It is an act of manipulation to get those who are fascinated with him drawn in even deeper. His supporters are not thinking. They are tired and angry and just want things to change – and Trump is taking advantage of that fact.

But to stoop this low is bad, even for Trump. His bullying has been bad. His changing his story on issues has been bad. His inability and unwillingness to admit wrong, when he’s been wrong, and to apologize for even the appearance of impropriety …has been wrong. His xenophobia has been wrong. His lack of knowledge about what is going on in the world has been wrong. His desire to deport millions of Muslims has been wrong. His statement that he’s going to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it …has been wrong and ridiculous.

But to suggest that women who go through the pain and anguish of abortion is inhumane. His statement will give people an excuse to use their guns to shoot women seeking abortions; they don’t need much of an excuse. Such an action, were it actualized, would mean, most probably, that it would be poor, black and brown women who would be the primary victims, because rich, white women have always had ways to get around the system. Just as the War on Drugs was developed to criminalize the drug use of black people, (http://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon) this action would criminalize predominantly women of color, almost certainly.

Nixon got away with declaring his war on black people by declaring the War on Drugs. That action caused non-violent drug users to be criminalized. It caused their families to be destroyed. It affected their children. It ruined their lives …while white people using far more damaging drugs got away with it. There is a gathering at the United Nations in April of multi-faith leaders to protest and to encourage the replacement of draconian, punitive drug laws globally with drug policies which emphasize compassion, care and the health of those who use drugs. (http://www.unodc.org/ungass2016/) I would hate for women who seek abortions to be criminalized and marginalized even further than they are already, just as we work hard to get out of the destructive pit caused by the War on Drugs.

Enough.

Such an asinine and inhumane as this one suggested by Trump ought not be allowed past the front door out of which it has stepped.

A candid observation …

ISIS at Home

It just doesn’t stop.

While the media has gone crazy nuts, covering the terrorist attack in Brussels, which was, for sure, horrific, America’s own terrorism against people of color, specifically and especially against black men, continues with hardly a whisper.

I was shocked, then saddened, and then …angry…when I read about New York police officers who handcuffed an African-American mail carrier in Brooklyn because…well, because they could.

According to the article about the incident which appeared in the New York Times, Glen Grays, 27, yelled at a car which came careening around a corner, coming dangerously close to him and his mail truck. He was afraid he was going to be sideswiped.

When Grays yelled, the car was put into reverse and the driver said to Grays, “I have the right of way because I am law enforcement.” Inside the car were three other officers, all plainclothes. They all approached Grays and ended up handcuffing him, telling him to “stop resisting,” although a video taken at the scene doesn’t show him resisting at all, except to say, “I didn’t do anything!” He was handcuffed nonetheless, taken down to the police station, his mail truck left unattended. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and was released. He is going to have to appear in court to answer the charges. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/nyregion/glen-grays-the-mailman-cuffed-in-brooklyn.html?_r=0&login=google)

When will this craziness end? And when will the media take seriously the cry that black lives do matter, a cry which has come from generations of black lives being denigrated and destroyed by law enforcement? When will law enforcement stop whining about finally being called out on its behavior, a behavior with which it has gotten away with for generations, perhaps more so since the issuance of the Fugitive Slave Laws? When will this nation admit that, based on how its agencies charged with protecting American citizens, it has shown that black lives really do not matter?

The criminalization of black people has destroyed families and communities. It has caused little black children to be at risk..of being kids …kids who do things that all of us as kids have done. This week, a six-year old child was handcuffed in Chicago for taking candy off a teacher’s desk. (https://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/crying-6-year-old-put-in-handcuffs-under-schools-stairs-for-taking-candy-off-teachers-desk/) She was six years old. Perhaps being put in a corner would have been a suitable response, or being put in “time out,” but being handcuffed?”

It’s really hard to listen to the outrage expressed over terrorist attacks on cities like Brussels and Paris while equally or worse attacks are carried out in Nigeria and Turkey and Somalia and Palestine with little to no mention. I despise terrorism, but I despise more the selective reporting of terrorism.

But I am also incensed by America’s refusal to own her own brand of “ISIS.” Law enforcement officers in this nation, as well as the courts and entire justice system, have terrorized and demonized and in effect, killed the spirits of literally hundreds of thousands of African-Americans just because they could. The justice system has played with the lives of black people accused and of offenses which they often did not do, by putting them in mock courts with white prosecutors, white judges and all-white juries, basically condemning them and forcing them to second and third rate citizenship in this country which prides itself on having the best justice system in the world.

While the media is bleeding over what happened in San Bernadino, Brussels and in Paris, it has showed little stomach or empathy for the injustice and damage done on this side of the pond to African-Americans, surely, but also to brown people, and Native Americans. All day long the media has been talking abut Brussels and the ineptitude of law enforcement there. Isn’t there a lot of ineptitude here that the media ought to be lifting up? How in the world can America show horror at what ISIS did in Brussels without coming to terms what our justice system, America’s ISIS, did to Kalief Browder? If you remember, Kalief was a high school student when he was accused of stealing someone’s book bag – which he had not done. He was arrested and was in prison for three years without a trial. When he was finally released, after trying to reconnect with society and get his life back, he gave up and committed suicide. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/nyregion/kalief-browder-held-at-rikers-island-for-3-years-without-trial-commits-suicide.html)

Where is the outrage of the media, of the people running for president? While some white people try to steer the conversation away from the complaint about how black people are treated in this nation, urging the slogan to be “ALL lives matter,” the fact of the matter is that white power treats black lives as though they are nothing, like they are disposable income, so to speak.

Thinking about this young mail carrier, arrested and charged because he yelled at an unmarked police car that scared him, just makes my anger grow deeper and deeper. I need for America to stop talking so much about international terrorism and deal with the terrorism which is right in front of us all, on America’s Main Streets.

A candid observation …

Obama the Most Divisive Ever

Sometimes, I get confused.

I think I understand something and then someone says something that makes me …confused.

I have listened with interest …and confusion …to people who say that President Barack Obama has been the most divisive president in modern history. They are talking about issues including race, and say that he has divided the country along racial and economic lines. (http://theweek.com/articles/599246/republicans-say-obama-been-historically-divisive-thats-revealing).

Former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl) said continuously during his campaign that Obama was the most polarizing president in history, and a recent article in Newsmax concurred. (http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Barack-Obama-Gallup-polarizing-president/2015/02/06/id/623299/).

The country certainly is divided, but is it because of President Obama? Can it be said that those who vowed to oppose him on anything and everything he proposed to do have something to do with where we are today?

Certainly, the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made people furious. While millions of people now have health insurance who did not have access to it before, those who opposed it when it was on its way to becoming law still oppose it, and if a Republican wins the White House, the GOP still plans to repeal it.

The fight over the president’s landmark legislation did, in fact, pit people against each other.

But how else has Mr. Obama’s presidency divided the country? He has done some really good things, like, for example, pulling the country out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. He has said he didn’t know how bad things were, how the issues of Wall Street were spreading to Main Street, until he took office …but he worked on the economy and saved the country from a total economic meltdown. A lot of people were negatively impacted, and many are still trying to recover, but the president took the problem on and did the best he could do.

He wanted to be a president who worked across the aisle, but even before his inauguration was over, there were Republicans meeting to make sure that he would do no such thing; they wanted to make sure he was a “one term president” and they worked on a plan on how to best obstruct any and everything he tried to do.

I hear the subtle and often unspoken charges levied against him that he made the racial divide in this country worse, but that simply is not true. Obama has stayed away from “things racial” for the most part. America’s bubbling and diseased underbelly simply began to erupt to the surface as angry white people could no longer hold their resentment about a black man being in the White House.

The fact that the country is not so lily-white anymore, and that there are fewer jobs now for the masses than there were before is not, again, Obama’s fault. There are factors that “the angry” don’t really deal with, like who it was that voted in trade agreements that have resulted in the United States losing manufacturing jobs. “The angry” don’t seem to remember when “outsourcing” was going on like crazy, resulting in America losing its source of employment for so many people, especially white men.

Obama has supported trade agreements, as has Secretary Clinton, but he didn’t initiate them, right? He might have supported NAFTA, and he does in fact support the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), but has his support of those trade agreements been the reason America is so divided?

How about this: America has always been a divided nation. Romantic Constitutional rhetoric aside, America has always pitted the “haves” against the “have-nots,” and has not made it easy for the class differences it created to be overcome. Obama has had to deal with the normal antics of oppositional politics compounded by a Republican resolve to make him a “one term president.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/sorry-marco-rubio-obama-isnt-as-divisive-as-bush-lincoln-or-clinton/257483/) He has had his hands full, to say the least. America, in spite of its claim to be a democracy, is in fact an oligarchy and that system by definition divides people.

This is not to say that Obama should be pitied. He has found a way to get things done in spite of the cantankerous Congress with which he has had to work in a way that has made people spit-fire mad, but it feels like he did what he had to do because it was clear Congress was not going to take its foot off of his neck. He was elected to do some things and he worked hard to do just that.

He failed in unifying the nation, but really, who can? Donald Trump says he can do it, and all one can say to that claim is, “hardly.” Trump is dangerously divisive and everyone except his blind followers knows it.

In the end, all presidents cause some division because no president can please all of the people, but as I read it, Obama is no worse and no more divisive than some of the other presidents who have graced the White House. He has endured his time in office in spite of an openly and unreasonably stubborn Congress, and it feels like most of their opposition has been seeded in America’s garden of racism.

Nobody would ever openly admit that, though, just like few people are willing to admit that much of what Trump is doing is feeding that same garden, seeding it with pent-up resentment and anger. Trump’s divisiveness could throw this country into a downward spiral from which it might never recover.

It’s something to think about …and it is certainly a candid observation.

Why a Crazy Faith Can Beat Trump

It is the day after “Super Tuesday” and Donald Trump has come out victorious, as he promised he would.

Many people who laughed at his candidacy, saying he couldn’t win, are worried. The GOP, it seems, is worried. Trump has said all along that he will win. He has drummed those words into the minds, hearts and souls of people in his base who are angry and who feel marginalized. He has made them believe that they can and will win, no matter what the naysayers say, or who they are.

He has replaced their despondency with hope. And hope wins, every time.

It was hope in “change we can believe in” that pushed President Barack Obama into the White House. Back then, the biggest change we were being asked to believe in was that a racist white nation could elect a black man to the presidency. We believed, and we won. Not even racism was an effective weapon against genuine hope, filled with something called “crazy faith,” a faith that says the impossible …is not impossible. at all.

In my book, Crazy Faith: Ordinary People; Extraordinary Lives, I share one of my most favorite stories in the Bible: that of Moses holding, really, a “stick” (the Bible calls it a rod) over the Sea of Reeds, expecting the water to part. God knows the people whom he was leading through, out of, the wilderness, thought he was crazy. They looked at what seemed impossible, and most probably chided Moses for being so stupid.

But Moses held on, and, I imagine, in Trump fashion, kept saying to the naysayers, “the waters will part.” We don’t know how long he stood there. We don’t know how much of a beating he took from “rational” friends who most probably put him down. But we do know that according to the story, the Sea of Reeds did part. The waters parted, the ground on which the Israelites were to walk was dry (where water had been only moments before) and the Israelites got through to the other side. The waters came back together in time to drown the Egyptians, who were after them, to kill them.

Crazy faith got the Israelites through the Sea of Reeds.

I would imagine that Moses had to keep on saying to himself, and then to them, in Trump fashion, “We can do this! We can win. We can beat even this body of water that is here to keep us from moving forward to liberation.” Moses had to make himself believe it so that he could make the Israelites believe it.

Donald Trump is saying to people who believe they have been ignored that they can turn the tide, that they can win, that they can “make America great again.”

What non-Trump supporters have to do is get their message straight, believe it to their cores, and keep on saying it until people believe it.

Donald Trump is not God.

Donald Trump is a very smart man, who knows how to manipulate people and the media for his own good. He does in fact know how to broker a deal.

But he is not God. His power is not absolute. People who do not want him to be president have to adopt a message, keep it, internalize it, believe it, and, with crazy faith in place to keep their hope alive, participate in this system of government which at least hypothetically leaves room for the voices of people to be heard.

At this point, on the non-Trump side, this is a crazy faith battle. There is no time to sit and call Trump names or put him down. That is counter-productive anyway. It is time to get strategic, and to get a mantra in place that will woo doubters to the edge of the Sea of Reeds, believing that the water will part.

Crazy faith is always accompanied by an action, and this is critical. Those who are willing to believe that Donald Trump is not God must be willing to participate in the process to get through the Sea. People will have to work, have to register people, have to make sure people get to the polls. Sitting back is not an option. Moses held the “stick” over the water, but people in the wilderness, confused and afraid, had to decide to participate in the crossing over or there would have been no miracle.

There is no time to be afraid, despondent or discouraged.

Donald Trump has launched a perfect time for the exercise of crazy faith. It is by and through crazy faith, and not by sophisticated political discourse and debate, that Donald Trump can be stopped.

Donald Trump is not God. A faith that defies hopelessness is greater than any obstacle er face.

The power to beat him is in the people, a people filled with fire and this thing called crazy faith. It is that faith which gives us our power.

A candid observation …

(Rev. Dr. Susan K Smith is the founder of Crazy Faith Ministries, and is available to speak on this topic and topics related to the intersection of politics and religion. See the website, http://www.crazyfaithministries.org for information)

And crazy faith

Trump, Racism, and God’s Grace

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee!” Those are words from the song “America the Beautiful” that we all learned in elementary school.

Well, if America ever needed grace…and salvation…it is now.

Donald Trump won the Nevada primary. He will most likely be the Republican nominee for president. Though my politically astute friends try to calm my fear that he will win the White House, I am not so sure. America’s racists are on a roll, and they are not about to stop.

Donald Trump says that he will “make America great again.” That’s merely a euphemism for putting white supremacy back on top. It’s a euphemism for making it so that black and brown people are under the foot of the Empire, denied of justice in the courts, fair treatment in housing, education and employment. America’s white people are afraid of losing power, plain and simple. Some say they are angry because of the economy, but the biggest issue for them is that the numbers of black and brown people are steadily increasing. They are afraid that their base is getting smaller and smaller, and with that, their power, their capacity to oppress “the least of these.”

And Donald Trump says he will make it all better. He is giving them pablum and they are eating it like starving children in underdeveloped countries eat when they are finally given substantive food.

I read a troubling article this morning, about Trump and the so-called “Central Park 5” Trump was on the case, calling for the five black teens accused of raping a white woman, to be convicted and put to death. Actually, his statements seemed more to ask that they simply be killed. (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york?CMP=share_btn_fb#_=_)

What Trump said and did in that case was appalling and troubling …but not for people who still believe in vigilante violence when it comes to black people accused of doing something to a white woman. When it was proven that the teens did not rape the white woman, and the charges were dropped, Trump was furious, and was even more furious when the city of New York awarded the young men, collectively, $41 million in damages.

This is not a man who believes in justice for all people. He is clearly racist, and openly so. He is unabashed in what he says and believes, and he knows he has a large group of Americans, mostly white but not completely so, who are with him.

They want the America of the past, where black people stayed in their place. They don’t care much that America’s “exceptionalism” came mostly from this country’s boast that it was a democracy where everyone could come (pluralism) and make good on “the American dream.” (capitalism). Racists never ascribed to that claim. They were clear that America was to be the land of opportunity for white, property-owning men. Colored people were not worthy of having full citizenship. They were merely the tools which white men would use to make this country the powerful country it became.

They were to be used, not respected.

Trump is singing their song. He is sounding like George Wallace and Ross Barnett and Sam Bowers and other racist demagogues. His being in the White House, his followers believe, will provide a calm to the rising tide of multiculturalism in this country. They believe he will bring things into normalcy in the White House.

They celebrate, it feels like, that he will be like President Woodrow Wilson, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who had screenings of The Clansman and Birth of a Nation in the White House.

So many white people are not disturbed at all at what Trump says because he is speaking to the pain they have felt as white oppression has been steadily addressed. They would not think it bad that not only was Woodrow Wilson a member of the Klan, but so were four other presidents, including Warren G. Harding, who was actually sworn in a KKK ceremony that was held at the White House. Calvin Coolidge allowed cross burnings on the steps of the capital and also allowed KKK parades in the nation’s capital in 1925 and 1926. Trump’s followers are not disturbed at this history, nor, I would imagine, would they be rangled if Trump said he was a member of the KKK. (http://www.thetrentonline.com/revealed-5-us-presidents-members-racists-cult-ku-klux-klan-photos/)

They are just tired of “the coloreds.”

White people of the ilk I am describing have been mortified that a black man has been in the White House, his wife dancing on popular television shows, letting little black children inside those hallowed walls. Many white people believe that America was created to be a “white man’s country,” and all these people of color are messing up what is “supposed” to be.

The media must be in sympathy and in agreement with Trump and his ideology, because from the beginning, they allowed Trump so much free air time – this to the most wealthy man of the bunch running for president. They put his foot on the first rung of the ladder. If he couldn’t come into their studios, they interviewed him by phone. The American media has done much to usher in a racist, hate-filled man, showing that it is not objective at all. They let America hear this demagogue over and over ..and they hardly challenged him.

There is an important chink in this argument, however, that we have to consider. Trump is not only winning with racist white people. In Nevada, he got a big swath of the Hispanic vote as well. According to reports, 45 percent of Hispanics there are Trump supporters, that in spite of his stance on immigration. (http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/entrance-polls-trump-dominates-latino-vote-in-nevada/) Does that mean that they do not care about Trump’s open racism?

So, now, here we are. Trump most probably will get the Republican nomination. He will continue to be a bully and a political thug, much to the admiration of his followers. Evangelicals have shown that their love for God leans toward maintaining their view of God in a white-ruled country. They have shown that the words of Jesus, for Christians to be forgiving and to care for “the least of these” have little to do with their religion. And America’s “silent majority” is showing that what they believe in is America’s mandate to be white. If a bully will keep it that way, so be it.

What does God’s grace look like in a situation like this? It is clear that my understanding of grace, and that of whites and others who ascribe to racism, are two different things.

A candid observation …