The Lives of Others - if Texas Would Only Allow Folks to Live Them

Think about all the unnecessary pain human beings are causing each other.

Putin is wantonly killing civilians, destroying a promising democracy, and enforcing laws that make love a crime if your feelings differ from the official norm.

Florida and Texas are not only finding clever ways to undermine democracy, but persecuting those who differ.

Growing up is hard. Harder when you don’t fit in. It must be especially hard when your deepest feelings don’t match those of the other kids, or your skin color seems to be a problem. Discussing, acknowledging, growing to understand who you are, that must be like heaven. Must help you feel you’re as good as anyone.

I’m saddened by the huge overreaction to schools’ efforts to face up to the persistently racist aspect of our history and national character. (Persons of color see daily that racism hasn’t disappeared.) I’m appalled by states’ efforts to control women’s lives, and criminalize those helping women who need to abort a pregnancy. If your body and heart/mind disagree on your gender, you might need counseling; and your medical treatment should be decided by you, your parents, and your doctor – not some political ideologue; but states want to outlaw such counseling and treatment, labeling it “child abuse.” But they permit “programming” you back to “normal.” (Putin would love our recent anti-gay measures!)

I’m sad to see people being punished for trying to be who they are, without hurting anyone. I’m also sad for the folks who live in such constant fear of anything different that they have to act like Putin or Paxton or Desantis. How must it feel to hold such fear of people with different sexual orientations, ethnicity, or opinions that you lash out against them? What’s the fear? Just the unknown? Or do folks fear that if we were truly free, they might sometimes love someone their conscience and upbringing says they shouldn’t?

Fear engenders strange behavior. Folks who identify as “freedom-loving” trample all over other folks’ most personal and essential freedoms. They rage against intrusive government while passing incredibly intrusive laws. Folks who can’t abide the slightest restriction on owning weapons of war are the most eager to extinguish others’ freedoms to be themselves. Requiring masks is Hitlerian, but your insides are state business.

A deeper contradiction is the apparent belief that Jesus would somehow approve of harassing some poor girl outside a health clinic, denying kids in need the counseling and empathy they deserve, pretending that our society isn’t rife with racism, or kicking gays out of restaurants.

Jesus was inclusive. He told us even Samaritans were okay. He said whatever we did to poor folks and strangers, we did to him. That’s not an invitation to quiver in fear and throw people in jail. It suggests we withhold that first stone if we ourselves have ever sinned, and be courageous in meeting people where they are, even fallen women. Maybe we should try to imagine how we’d feel if criminal law forbade loving whom we love. Just as Jesus would have been appalled by people invoking him to justify slavery, He’d be pulling out his hair over how folks in Texas and Florida are misusing his name and words.

He’d invite us to walk along with those “others,” see our common humanity, understand them. He’d say, again, to accept and love.

But it’ll snow in Las Cruces before his followers even hear him.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[Texas’s law allowing private citizens to sure for $10,000 anyone who assists a Texas woman in getting an abortion, even in a neighboring state, is clever but vicious. The idea is that if Texas police aren’t actually enforcing the law, there’s no one to sue for a violation of her Constitutional rights. (Some conservatives opposed the law because they wondered if a more progressive state could do the same with the carrying of guns in public.) Even an uber driver can be sued by someone for the $10,000 reward.

Equally vile is the law urging that if a family tries to help a child whose gender identity isn’t what Texas says it should be, by counseling or medication, the family should be investigated for child abuse. Meanwhile in many states families who want to program their son’s or daughter’s gender identity out of existence can use means that amount to torture.

Two Texas Supreme Court decisions this week bear on these issues.

Friday, the Texas Supreme Court closed a narrow window for possible challenge to the law by holding that although state medical-licensing authorities normally had the power to discipline doctors or clinics who violated the law, since this law didn’t let them do that, they couldn’t be sued either.

I hope sanity will prevail once a Texas court awards some snitch $10,000 for “privately enforcing” the law. Texas courts are instrumentalities of the government, the Texas State Legislature passed it, and the Governor signed it. Legally, since at this point it flatly violates the U.S. Constitution, how is it different from a state law saying that citizens can sue a Jew or a Black person for walking in the wrong neighborhood? Or a law setting a $10,000 “reward” for proving someone had burned the flag, gone to a mosque instead of a church, or failed to get vaccinated against a communicable disease? Could Texas argue there too that since the law is privately enforced, there’s no Constitutional violation?

The other decision was more welcome, but hasn’t reached the Texas Supreme Court yet: a Travis County (Houston) judge halted enforcement of the law calling for investigations of families with transgender kids for possible child abuse for using medically-accepted forms of treatment. The decision enjoins such inquiries until after trial of the case (currently set for July), and is effective statewide. Such decisions include a finding that the law is probably (there’s a “substantial likelihood”) unconstitutional. The State immediately appealed. The Texas Supreme Court may or may not agree. (At this stage, it could not make a final decision on constitutionality, but could reverse her order and allow the investigations pending trial.)]