A CHANGE OF MIND OR A CHANGE OF HEART — YOU TELL ME, PLEASE!

By Edwin Cooney

I’ve changed my mind on what has become an emotional political issue.  It isn’t easy to change one’s mind, and I’m not even sure exactly when my change of mind (or if you prefer, change of heart) occurred.  It’s really possible that I haven’t changed either mind or heart — more about that later!

The issue is pro-choice.  The truth is that I’ve never been all that excited about the “freedom of choice” alternative (whether or not a woman should have an abortion).  I’ve leaned in that direction primarily because I’m sympathetic to the crucible many women go through when faced with the physical, social, emotional, and certainly spiritual uncertainties of an unplanned pregnancy.  That crucible intensifies two or three fold depending on the circumstances at conception.  Sadly, that often heartrending crucible has become distorted by politics. 

The most compelling argument in favor of the “pro-choice” option is the argument that a woman owns her own body, that no man ever faces pregnancy issues and the complications in as an intensely personal way as women.  “How dare any man,” women righteously demand, “assume he is qualified to judge an experience he can never face?”  The answer is that he ultimately does qualify to face a woman’s plight if he is truly a responsible human being!  As for the true ownership of her “own body,” with ownership comes the responsibility of maximum control of that vital vessel, for every woman’s body is a potential home to a new human body that possesses its own physical and moral sovereignty.  If my right to control my own well being within the letter and spirit of the law ends where my fist and your nose meet, it seems reasonable to me to assert that a woman’s personal sovereignty ends where and when a new life begins growing.

Several times since I’ve been writing these musings, including last week, I’ve waxed as eloquent as I am capable on the subject of capital punishment arguing that the circumstances of life are far more powerful than any threat or message of death.  The same is true on this issue.  Women, and their responsible lovers, face the pressures of living conditions as they struggle over what to do about an unexpected pregnancy.  Economic, physical, social and emotional living circumstances come into play at a time like that.  Our problem in 21st Century America is that we seem to prefer to litigate and politicize important moral questions rather than take them where they ought to go, primarily into our minds for assessment by our consciences.

Roe v. Wade was decided in January 1973.  By 1976, both Republicans and Democrats were tugging at each other to get control of the issue.  Hence, they divided the moral and the practical.  Republicans who want government out of your pocket decided they want government in your bed.  Democrats who are usually suspicious of private forces and motives believe a woman’s right to privacy is more legitimate than a public corporation’s right to decision-making and privacy.  So, Republicans preach conservative principles and Democrats preach liberal doctrine and neither touches the heart of the matter. There is nothing either liberal or conservative about this issue.  Perhaps soon, I will offer a little more history on that topic.

My change of mind is from “pro-choice” to “pro-life” on the abortion vs. the anti-abortion option.  With the exception of a few very lucky people, we all face agonizing moral dilemmas from time to time!  They may include, for example, whether or not to remove a loved one’s life support system; whether one to offer a home to a struggling relative; whether to send a child away to boarding school; whether to report a child’s uncontrollable activities to juvenile authorities; or whether to have a child given life altering circumstances.

I never knew my biological mother.  I’m reasonably sure that she would have aborted me had I been conceived in the 1970s rather than the 1940s.  My mother, whom I’m sure is a fine human being and who has been kind to and supportive of others including four half sisters I’ve never met, chose to remain separate from me throughout her life.  That’s been painful for me to effectively grasp on occasion, but that decision doesn’t make her an unworthy human being.

Until recently, I have categorized myself politically and socially as a pro-choice advocate.  Most of those with whom I am philosophically and ideologically oriented are pro-choice.  Rather than “pro-choice,” I’ve decided to be “pro-obligation.”

“Ah!” you may well ask, “what does “pro-obligation” mean?”  It means the task of combining my knowledge of circumstances and my best assessment of resources and morals to make the most responsibly humane life-affecting decisions as possible.

The truth is that I am still more tolerant of a woman’s choice to have an abortion than I am of a societal decision to allow capital punishment. That’s primarily because individual choices are just that — individual choices.  As for whether society ought to declare abortions illegal, I might vote for that if society was actually eager to vote for the funds and establish the support systems and, at the same time, obliterate the shame of awkward pregnancies.  These conditions are, as I see them, both practical and moral in nature.  Unfortunately, no society appears to be even close to taking the necessary steps I just named to bring about such an act on my part!

Hence the question, have I changed my mind or my heart?

You tell me, please!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DEATH — HUMANKIND’S EMPTY MESSAGE

By Edwin Cooney

At approximately 3:30 pm last Friday, May 15th, 2015, an American Federal jury sent the following “message” from a Boston courtroom to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and to all criminals and terrorists around the world:

“Respect the lives of humanity or pay with your own life!”

Hence, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is on notice that he has forfeited whatever value he has had for his own existence by his act of depriving three innocent 2013 Boston Marathon spectators, the youngest an eight-year-old boy named Martin, of their lives.  Additionally, he has painfully and permanently altered the lives of some 200 other people who were in attendance at the 2013 Boston Marathon.  To describe his actions as outrageous is to understate the case.  His act of revenge for the fate of innocent Muslim minorities in the Balkans, if that is what it was, is woefully misplaced.  After all, America went to war in the Balkans in 1999 to redress the legitimate Islamic grievances against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. 

Since becoming convinced that capital punishment is ineffective as a deterrent to murder, I have come to be very dubious as to the wisdom of the law.  Although justice requires the code of law for stability, law requires justice for absolutely nothing.  Somewhere I’ve heard it observed that very often there’s little or no justice in a court of law.

As for the fate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, justice demands that it be as severe as possible!  His victims deserve our sympathy and our support just as the victims of natural disasters or Amtrak accidents deserve our sympathetic support.  However, sympathy and support for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s victims does not, in my view, require application of the death penalty.

The problem, with the death penalty is at least threefold. First, it is clearly class punishment.  Those who can afford good legal representation don’t receive legal death. Try this analogy on for size!  Had John Hinckley actually murdered -- rather than merely wounded -- President Ronald Reagan back on Monday, March 30th, 1981, it is possible that the Hinckley money wouldn’t have been enough to spare young John’s life. However, if an eight-year-old boy from Boston had been Hinckley’s only victim, the family money would probably have done the trick quite nicely, thank you very much!   Ask yourself, “what does that say about our value of human life?”  Was President Reagan’s right to life more precious than that of an eight-year-old boy’s? After all, Mr. Reagan was President of the United States.  I certainly hope not and I’m sure that even President Reagan himself would concur with that conclusion!

Second, capital punishment flies in the face of the contention that all life is sacred.  There are those who will argue that only all innocent life is sacred.  The legitimate response to that is to ask, “who’s innocent and what are they innocent of?”  The answer to that question depends on who’s running the society that sets the standards of and therefore judges the presence of innocence.  Ought they be the leaders of an enlightened republic or the leaders of ISIS?

The third problem with capital punishment is that it stultifies one of life’s most powerful natural punishments, namely, the rigors of life itself!  Life brings about feelings and sensations we’ve all experienced.  Few people exist who can painlessly cope with the inevitable onset of regret and mental anguish fostered by a lifetime of enforced confinement in a maximum-security prison.

 Here’s the bottom line for me.  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s fears, regrets, forebodings and, to a limited degree, his agony are totally beyond my concern.  He deserves punishment and society deserves to be rid of him!  His execution, however, neither undoes his act nor returns lost loved ones.

More to the point, Tsarnaev’s execution fosters a deadly illusion on our part.  By executing Tsarnaev, we’re convinced, as he was when he helped his older brother do their deadly deed, that we’re redressing a redressable grievance.  Tsarnaev’s grievance is too deep to be redressed.  It’s beyond remorse and immune from correction.  Likewise, the past injustices the Tsarnaev brothers sought to redress were beyond their capacity.  Hence, they wasted their lives and the agonies of their fates are legitimately beyond our capacity for sympathy.

The act of murder is fundamentally a selfish act.  As such, its motives are obviously exceedingly compelling in comparison to the threat of death.  These motives, money, revenge, a sense of power and superiority, are the clarion calls of life.  Brave men and women risk all for these motives.  Statesmen appeal to these motives as they raise armies they expect to be death defying in victory.

Keep in mind that every human being has one thing in common.  That commonality is not love or hate, perfection or imperfection, politics or religion.  Our single commonality is that we’ve never experienced death. That’s why the threat of death in comparison to the delicious promises and rewards offered by life too often go unheeded even at the expense of life itself!

Fame, wealth, power, opportunity for professional and social advancement, and the favors of romance are the prizes or, if you prefer, the rich treasures of life.  The nothingness of death never beckons because it’s is a barren vessel beyond our ken.

What’s stunningly tragic to me when I think about it is how hard we seek to use to our advantage a state of being we know almost nothing about.  We too often seek to use it as a weapon or as a wall of protection to preserve that which we value most.  Hence, we fill the void of death with our fondest hopes and fears, with the soldiers we’ve created to protect us, as well as with our enemies whom we hate.  Even more incredible, at the same time we fill the void of death with our hope for spiritual salvation!

Last Friday, twelve civic-minded, solid American citizens used the vessel of death to express their legitimate anger over Dzhokhar’s dastardly deed.  Like young Tsarnaev, we too often confuse murder with problem solving. We, the freest, most prosperous, most powerful and secure people on earth, too often use the empty vessel of death, rather than life, as our most alluring calling card! 

How can we expect to ever know peace of mind as long as we use Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s method of expressing our pain?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

WHEN “FREEDOM RINGS”

By Edwin Cooney

Last week, as the Supreme Court wrestled with the question of how it should adjudicate the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, some intriguing socio/legal issues were discussed.

Writing in the New York Times, Adam Liptak reported the likelihood that Chief Justice Roberts might find a way to concur in a 6 to 3 decision which would allow gay and lesbian couples to marry without tackling the question of the constitutionality of state laws affecting sexual orientation.

If Sue wants to marry Tom and Charles wants to marry Tom, Sue can and Charles can’t.  So, if Sue can and Charles can’t, isn’t Charles the victim of gender discrimination as opposed to sexual orientation discrimination?

Supporters of state bans on gay and lesbians argue that sexual discrimination would only exist if the sexes were treated differently.  In other words, if gays were not allowed to marry at all, that would be sexual orientation discrimination.  After all, no state currently bans gays from marrying lesbians, or lesbians from marrying gays.

Mr. Liptak speculates that Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to write the majority opinion freeing gays and lesbians to marry by applying other articles or clauses of the constitution as they relate to sexual orientation.  However, he doesn’t suggest what constitutional standards Justice Kennedy might apply.  My guess is that Justice Kennedy might use the right to privacy which other justices have found in the 14th Amendment.  In other words, since the decision to marry is a personal decision, it is a private decision as well.       

The point of all this is that as long as both sides in a dispute are treated equally there is no need to change existing laws.  The argument against that goes back to the days when most states didn’t allow interracial marriages.  Bans on interracial marriages, of course, affected both races and were ruled unconstitutional in Loving vs. Virginia back in 1967.

It’s amazing that after more than 200 years of living in a “free society,” so many Americans are unable to clearly recognize the legitimate domain of human freedom!

As I see it, there are two reasons for this.  First, some of the most prominent of our “founding fathers” originally granted themselves the right to enslave people for their own profit utilizing the “sovereignty” of the states to justify their personal socio/political prerogatives.  The second reason has to do with human nature.  Very few of us like to be told by anyone how to conduct our lives when our personal profit, security, or control over our well-being is at stake.

Back in 1964, Barry Goldwater opposed passage of the Civil Right’s bill, not because he was a racist, but because he believed that the public accommodations portion of the bill was an attempt to regulate human attitudes rather than human behavior.  “You can’t pass a law,” Senator Goldwater insisted during the 1964 presidential campaign, “that will make me like you or you like me.”  What Goldwater failed to adequately acknowledge is that discrimination in public accommodation extended beyond the comfort of personal choice.  So long as the choices we make directly inhibit the personal and private lives of others, they constitute human tyranny.

A word or two on the subject of marriage: human marriage is a worldwide institution. It exists in most cultures.  During the years of the old Soviet Union, which the world knew as a “godless society,” no one suggested that marriages in Communist societies weren’t legitimate.  As for gay and lesbian marriages, there is absolutely no evidence that the right of gays and lesbians to marry in any way affects the legitimacy of traditional marriage.  Most of the time, gay and lesbian couples treat the children they adopt (when they’re permitted that privilege) better than many traditional married couples.  Worthy and unworthy people are found living many lifestyles.  For that reason, and that reason alone, neither state nor church ought to intervene in a truly free society.

Freedom rings many times when we allow it and especially when we listen for it.  It rings on Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays, on the Fourth of July, on Patriots’ Day, on Labor Day, and on Thanksgiving Day.  It rings when we sing, when we salute Old Glory, and, of course, during the seventh inning stretch.  However, the bells of liberty ring most clearly when all of us live and let live, and most of all mind our own business.

Hence, if Sue can’t have Tom because Charles wants Tom and Tom ultimately wants Charles, Sue can always choose Dick or Harry!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY