“Abortion’s Place in Ethical Thinking”

“Abortion’s Place in Ethical Thinking”   Click here to see the video 

January 28, 2018         Dr. Roger Ray  

A SPANISH TRANSLATION IS ADDED TO THE END OF THE ENGLISH TEXT.

 In 2008, the Evangelical Manifesto, signed by over seventy evangelicals leaders, stated: "We are firmly opposed to the imposition of theocracy on our pluralistic society...expansion of our concerns beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and gay marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel ... engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation."

During my more than two decades of writing liberal articles for the Springfield NewsLeader, I have received hundreds of pieces of hate mail and a few dozen death threats, some of which, I always suspected, anonymously came from my editors at the newspaper. I can’t say that those things don’t bother me, they did, they would bother anyone, but I came to realize that being hated is the price you pay for bringing up uncomfortable ethical topics in a public forum.

But there are a few of those letters that stand out in my mind. Most opinion writers get hate mail, but I suspect that I am one of the only writers who received hate mail from a Catholic nun. We can be light hearted about it now, but I tend to take celibate religious communities very seriously. Monks and nuns are often the brunt of cruel jokes but on the whole, they are very bright people who have made huge self-sacrifices to serve a cause they passionately believe in . . . and boy was she ever passionate!

The column that got Sister all hot under the habit was one I had written on the subject of abortion. For many Catholics and Evangelicals, there is no room in that topic for even slight disagreement. They see legal abortion as a holocaust against babies in which nearly one million lives are sacrificed in America every year. If you believe that a fetus is a person, then nothing can possibly compare with this slaughter of the innocents that would put Herod to shame.

And we liberals have been poking fun at their hypocrisy for two generations. We have pointed out a number of absolutely irrefutable weaknesses in their opposition to reproductive rights. I realize that this is purely review for you but let me click a few issues off:

1)   Conservatives tend to be passionate about making access to abortion illegal but they don’t want to criminalize getting an abortion because the daughters of the middle and upper class will always get an abortion when they choose to even if it is illegal in America. They can go to Canada or Europe and turn their unfortunate procedure into a vacation while the poor are forced to either risk their lives in a back-alley abortion or to face the responsibility of child care prematurely.   

2)   And, conservatives can get very exercised about not allowing a woman to abort a pregnancy but then do everything they can to avoid any public support for the child’s health care, nutrition, housing, or education. It is as if their concern for the welfare of children ends at birth.  

3)   Finally, if they really want to reduce the rate of abortion we have always known the three things that really work: contraception, sex education, and a raising of the standard of living of young women. Contraception and sex-education work because they prevent unwanted pregnancies. . . that’s obvious, but the economic factor is less obvious. What we saw during the dot-com boom of the 90’s was that when wages and employment went up for poor women, the abortion rate was cut in half. Poverty causes abortion because poor people cannot afford to raise a child properly.

We just have not had a conversation partner on the other side of this issue that was willing to talk about what works to reduce the abortion rate. They don’t want to reduce it, they want to condemn it outright, as a matter of principle.

The facts that expose their hypocrisy are irrelevant to them. Abortion is bad and there are no circumstances, economics, or practical life issues that can move that needle.

Catholics are opposed to contraception. They have rather contrived theological reasons for that policy but the naked truth of it is that a higher birth rate swells the ranks of Catholics and so their no contraception policy is just numerically self-serving. I wish there was some more noble reason but there is not, and we should be honest about that.

Evangelicals are opposed to sex-education because, they are convinced, that it is not millions of years of evolution that causes young people to have sex, it is sex education. It is as if to say, that without training, teenagers could never figure out how the deed is done. That may say a great deal about their own sexual coming of age stories, but it otherwise flies in the face of rational thought.

And, here in their Ozarks, I have always said that our local Assemblies of God colleges and universities oppose sex education because it could lead to education . . . but that is another matter.

What has had progressives heads spinning like tops in the past several months has been the undeterred evangelical support for Donald Trump even have dozens of women have come forward reporting sexual harassment, sexual assault, and even rape.

Even though his affairs, divorces, and flings with porn stars are matters of public knowledge, they still support him.  It seems inconceivable that the religious right, both Catholics and Evangelicals, could possibly still support him. But it boils down to this one issues. Abortion. Trump is appointing judges that are anti-abortion and he is appearing at their pro-life rallies and, sadly enough, he has revealed that absolutely everything else either protestants or Catholics have had to say about morality, ethics, piety, boils down to your stance on abortion and as long as Trump as least acts like he is opposed to legal access to medically safe abortions then he really can go out and shoot someone on 5^th Avenue and not lose a single supporter.

It must be said that neither Catholics nor Evangelicals are homogenous communions. There are astonishingly insightful moral voices in both the Catholic Church and in traditional Christianity that are loudly protesting the moves towards theocracy, towards giving up on faith and becoming simply a right wing political lobby. There are those who warn against any single-issue focus that ignores the broad horizon of ethical concerns in the world. Sadly, however, those voices are truly a voice crying in the wilderness, almost entirely ignored by the larger body of church goers.    

A few years ago Drury University brought Sister Helen Prejean to Springfield for a series of lectures on abolishing capital punishment.  Next to the pope himself, Sister Prejean is probably the best known and most loved Catholic in the world and yet, at the end of her address, our local Catholic Bishop publicly chided her for not focusing more on abortion. The Catholic Church is officially opposed to capital punishment and he wasn’t sorry that there had been a movie made about her work and that she had drawn so much attention to the issue.

He was, however, perplexed by how she could care so much for convicted capital felons and not use her considerable influence to speak out about abortion. And, you might think, that in a setting filled with academics and progressive faith leaders that the audience would just be embarrassed for this simpleton of a Bishop but, to be honest, there were many nods of agreement around the room. . . and all of the people nodding were not nuns.  

In the United States there are about 2 dozen executions every year. Compare that to a million abortions and you can begin to see, from the Bishop’s perspective, why Sister Helen seems to be inscrutable. The anti-abortion religious world simply sees the world through that lens only.

And the difference boils down to this: Unexamined, they have been taught to believe that a fertilized egg is a person. The rest of us believe that a fertilized egg could potentially, under the right circumstances, become a person. But the difference between being a person and having the potential to become a person, is huge.

If ethics always has to be boiled down to a bumper sticker, the anti-abortion folks have a clean and simple policy: life is sacred. Catholics get an “A” for consistency. You don’t abort pregnancies, you don’t start wars, you don’t execute prisoners…because life is sacred. Conservative evangelicals get an “F” on consistency because they tend to be big on executions and wars but they are against abortion rights and that, frankly, makes no sense at all.

We feminists and progressives stress individual freedom. We insist that a woman has a right to choose, to make decisions over her own reproductive life. However, we would not say that a woman has a right to choose to terminate her three and four year old children because she just isn’t ready to raise a family yet. No one would say that a mother could terminate a 2 year old but conservatives often fail to make any discernment between a fetus in the womb and a 2 year old in a preschool. If we can make ourselves see the issue from their perspective, we can understand their moral revulsion.

So the real issue is this: Is a fertilized human egg a person or is it just a potential person? I have three things that I want to say about this:

1)   The first is that the Bible doesn’t say what traditionalists have been led to believe that it says. By and large, the subject does not come up at all because there were no reliable medical procedures for abortion in the ancient world. The one time that abortion does come up in the Bible is an obscure passage in the 5^th chapter of Numbers. This passage says that if a man believes that his wife has been pregnant by another man that he is to bring her to the priest and the priest forcers her to drink a poisonous concoction called “bitter waters.” They believed that because of the liturgical injunction of the priest, if the woman is without fault, that she and the baby will survive. If, however, she has strayed and lain beneath another man, she would lose the baby and possibly die herself.

Don’t be surprised if you have never heard a sermon on this odd text but let it be said that the only time that the Bible discusses abortion, it is telling you how to do it. And not to be flippant about it, but in that culture, land ownership and the stability of the tribe was predicated on knowing who the father of a child was and when paternity was in doubt, even in the ancient near east, they were willing to terminate the pregnancy and they did not think of it as executing a person. Even then, they saw a fetus in the womb as being a potential person but not yet a person. Everything else about the toxic patriarchy and malignant religion described in Numbers chapter 5 should be shocking and offensive but it does reveal an ancient take on pregnancy.

2)   My second illustration is this:  If you work in a fertility clinic that has child care on site you might have this crisis. In the freezer there are ten thousand fertilized eggs being preserved for potential implantation in a woman’s uterus. In the day care center there are five children being cared for. Suddenly, you are warned that there is a bomb in the building and you have only moments to escape. You can either save the five children or try to rescue the 10,000 fertilized eggs. Which do you choose?

I submit that even our local Bishop would save the five children. In an instant you could go down to your deepest convictions and you know that those eggs are not actually people and though you may be horrified by the loss of so many potential people, you would not dream of sacrificing five actual children to save them.

3)   Finally, and I believe it was this third point that drew the venom from the nun’s pen who wrote to me so many years ago: If even contraception is considered to be wrong because an IUD or a diaphragm or a condom prevents an egg from being fertilized, then, I submit, anytime a young man and a young woman are standing in line at Starbucks that there are eggs and sperm in close proximity to one another. Are they then obligated to take the necessary steps to fertilize an egg?

Now, I’ll admit, that is an argument from reductio ad absurdum, but isn’t it really equally absurd to tell college students not to use birth control? I am convinced that from a Biblical perspective, from a philosophical perspective, and from a medical perspective, a fetus is not a person but because it has the potential to become a person, it is also not simply a collection of organic cells.

The issue is not, however, simple. Folks, I am a father today because abortion was not available in South Korea when my daughter was born. I only have one child because when South Korea changed their laws, there were no longer thousands of babies needing adoption. I have sat in the waiting room of abortion clinics with young women I was escorting through the lines of protestors on the streets and I know how tortured the young women sitting all around me were both instinctively wanting to be mothers and knowing that it was not their time.

Though I am convinced that abortion is not murder and it should never be cast in that light, I get the fact that it is still a huge, complex, and painful issue.

Saying that a fetus is a potential person means that there is some point in the pregnancy in which the fetus does, in fact, become a person. We talk about being “viable outside of the womb” but with advances in the care of pre-mature births, the point of viability is, itself, absolutely in question. Babies born at the 25 week mark now often survive with even relatively few physical challenges later in life. The first child we baptized in this church was one of those babies and she is today a remarkable little human being. Small for her age but bright, happy, and full of life.

What I am trying to say to anyone who hears this message who is adamantly opposed to reproductive rights is that I can feel much of what you feel. I understand the gravity and anguish behind this huge issue. What I am begging you to try to hear from my perspective is that a potential person is not yet a person and we really must pull back the lens of ethical deliberation to see that we cannot simply wave off such things as a president tweeting insults at a nuclear armed but massively insecure sociopath in North Korea. A nuclear exchange between the USA and North Korea could result in hundreds of millions of deaths.

The gutting of environmental laws that protect our planet and the restructure of tax laws to impoverish the masses in order to enrich a tiny group of the super-rich, the fostering of prejudices against Muslims, refugees, immigrants, homosexuals, and, frankly, liberals, are all ethical concerns that demand serious thought to all persons of faith, progressives and conservatives alike.

I am bringing this message as the fourth and final part of our series on the #MeToo movement because Catholic and Evangelical voices have been noticeably absent in the conversation about sexual harassment and women’s rights. I realize that you have waited for a long time to have a government, from the White House to Capitol Hill, would make the kinds of judicial appointments you have been praying for. You are reticent to even let yourselves think too much about how deeply flawed these people are who are carrying out your agenda.

And, I know all too well, because I have read your letters for years, I’ve read what you have written about me in the papers and what you have said on line…

I know that we have deep differences in how we read the Bible, we differ in our theological convictions, and our views on politics but I do believe that we have some common ground. I have a 29 year old daughter. She is smart, and beautiful, and wonderful. She is also very happy, and trusting, and deeply invested in a career where she has to travel, set up trade shows, and interact with medical professionals, eat out in restaurants, rent cars, and stay alone in hotels. And I love her and I don’t want anything bad to ever happen to her.

I don’t want powerful corporate buyers to try to exploit her because she is young and just starting her career. I don’t want men in bars, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters and airports to think that they can be disrespectful and harassing. I know that you know what I am talking about. I want for my daughter to have a better world to grow old in than my mother did, or my sister did.

And I know that you must surely love your daughters too. Surely you want for your daughters to be able to get a job waiting on tables while they are in school and have confidence that they will be treated well. We are now at a juncture in history when we can help to create that kind of world. This is no time to be silent.

Thankfully, it never happened in my family, but if my daughter had been in a situation to make the decision to have an abortion, regardless of how many right wing appointments there are to the Supreme Court or what happens with Roe v Wade, my daughter, and your daughter, could fly to Paris, exercise their choice, and be home before next Sunday with some wonderful new clothes from Le Bon Marche’. But do you really believe that right should be reserved to our daughters and not to the daughters of the poor?

You hate abortion. Frankly, I do too. But you must know that you do not have the right to impose a lack of choice on the poor that is not imposed on the middle and upper-class families in America. I suggest that we hate abortion together. We can dramatically reduce the number of abortions by simply raising the minimum wage to a living wage. A $12 minimum wage would prevent 500,000 abortions. I’m telling the truth and I can prove it. If you can consider contraception access and sex education, we could probably avoid another quarter of a million abortions.

Years ago, a very wise elderly Baptist Sunday School teacher counseled me when I was in grad school. She said, “Sometimes, you can be so right that you are wrong.” There are times that you can defend a powe4rful and important conviction in such a way that you do more damage to your cause than helping it. You want to end a million abortions a year though you know that you cannot and will not. But you could avoid 700 or 800 thousand of them. Are you such a purist that such a victory does not appeal to you? If so, then I fear that you are not really opposed to abortion, but you are enamored with your own ego. Surely you can take “yes” for an answer. Surely you can enthusiastically embrace progress, even if perfection is forever beyond our grasp.

Honestly, we don’t really have a shared view of scripture, of theology, of salvation, or of the afterlife. But we do have this, we both love our daughters and in the end, that will be enough for us to work together.

Durante mis más de dos décadas escribiendo artículos liberales para Springfield NewsLeader, he recibido cientos de mensajes de odio y algunas docenas de amenazas de muerte, algunas de las cuales, como siempre sospeché, vinieron anónimamente de mis editores en el periódico. No puedo decir que esas cosas no me molesten, lo hicieron, molestarían a cualquier persona, pero me di cuenta de que ser odiado es el precio que uno paga por mencionar temas éticos incómodos en un foro público.

Pero hay algunas de esas cartas que se destacan en mi mente. La mayoría de los escritores de opinión reciben correo de odio, pero sospecho que soy uno de los únicos escritores que recibió correo de odio de parte de una monja católica. Podemos ser livianos al respecto ahora, pero tiendo a tomar muy en serio a las comunidades religiosas célibes. Los monjes y las monjas son a menudo el blanco de las bromas crueles, pero en general, son personas muy brillantes que se han sacrificado mucho para servir a una causa en la que creen apasionadamente. . . y puedo decir que era ella apasionada!

La columna que hizo con que la hermana se enojara tanto era una que yo había escrito sobre el tema del aborto. Para muchos católicos y evangélicos, no hay espacio en ese tema, ni siquiera para un ligero desacuerdo. Ven el aborto legal como un holocausto contra los bebés en el que casi un millón de vidas se sacrifican en Estados Unidos a cada año. Si crees que un feto es una persona, entonces nada puede compararse con esta matanza de inocentes que avergonzaría a Herodes.
Y los liberales nos hemos estado burlando de su hipocresía durante dos generaciones. Hemos señalado una serie de debilidades absolutamente irrefutables en su oposición a los derechos reproductivos. Me doy cuenta de que esto es puramente una revisión para ti, pero déjame hacer clic en algunos problemas:

1) Los conservadores tienden a ser apasionados por hacer que el acceso al aborto sea ilegal, pero no quieren criminalizar el aborto porque las hijas de la clase media y alta siempre abortarán cuando elijan hacerlo, incluso si es ilegal en Estados Unidos. Pueden ir a Canadá o Europa y convertir su desafortunado procedimiento en unas vacaciones mientras los pobres se ven obligados a arriesgar sus vidas en un aborto clandestino o enfrentar la responsabilidad del cuidado infantil prematuramente.

2) Y, los conservadores pueden hacer mucho ejercicio sobre no permitir que una mujer aborte un embarazo, pero luego hacen todo lo posible para evitar cualquier apoyo público para la atención médica, la nutrición, la vivienda o la educación del niño. Es como si su preocupación por el bienestar de los niños terminara en el momento del nacimiento.

3) Finalmente, si realmente quieren reducir la tasa de abortos, siempre hemos sabido las tres cosas que realmente funcionan: la anticoncepción, la educación sexual y el aumento del nivel de vida de las mujeres jóvenes. La anticoncepción y la educación sexual funcionan porque previenen embarazos no deseados. . . eso es obvio, pero el factor económico es menos obvio. Lo que vimos durante el boom de las puntocom de los años 90 fue que cuando los salarios y el empleo aumentaron para las mujeres pobres, la tasa de abortos se redujo a la mitad. La pobreza causa el aborto porque la gente pobre no puede permitirse criar a un niño adecuadamente.

Simplemente no hemos tenido alguien para establecer una conversación del otro lado de este tema que esté dispuesto a hablar sobre lo que funciona para reducir la tasa de abortos. No quieren reducirlo, quieren condenarlo directamente, como una cuestión de principio.
Los hechos que exponen su hipocresía son irrelevantes para ellos. El aborto es malo y no existen circunstancias, economía o problemas prácticos de la vida que puedan mover esa aguja.

Los católicos se oponen a la anticoncepción. Han ideado razones teológicas para esa política, pero la pura verdad de esto es que una tasa de natalidad más alta engrosa las filas de los católicos y, por lo tanto, su política de no anticoncepción es numéricamente egoísta. Ojalá hubiera alguna razón más noble, pero no la hay, y deberíamos ser honestos al respecto.

Los evangélicos se oponen a la educación sexual porque están convencidos de que no son millones de años de evolución lo que hace con que los jóvenes tengan relaciones sexuales, es la educación sexual. Es como decir que sin un entrenamiento, los adolescentes nunca podrían entender cómo se hace la acción. Eso puede decir mucho acerca de sus propias historias sexuales en la vida adulta, que rebota en la cara del pensamiento racional.

Y, aquí en sus Ozarks, siempre he dicho que nuestros colegios y universidades locales de las Asambleas de Dios se oponen a la educación sexual porque podría conducir a la educación. . . Pero eso es otro asunto.

Lo que ha tenido cabezas progresivas girando como toda velocidad en los últimos meses ha sido el apoyo evangélico sin freno para Donald Trump, aunque haya habido docenas de mujeres que lo han denunciado por acoso sexual, agresión sexual e incluso violación.
A pesar de que sus escapadas , divorcios y aventuras con estrellas porno sean de conocimiento público, aún lo apoyan. Parece inconcebible que la derecha religiosa, tanto católicos como evangélicos, aún pueda apoyarlo. Pero se reduce a este único problema. Aborto. Trump está nombrando jueces que son antiaborto y él está apareciendo en sus mítines pro-vida y, lamentablemente, ha revelado que absolutamente todo lo demás que protestantes o católicos han tenido que decir sobre moralidad, ética, piedad, se reduce a su postura sobre el aborto y mientras Trump actúe como quien se opone al acceso legal a los abortos médicamente seguros, entonces realmente puede salir y dispararle a alguien en la Quinta Avenida sin perder un solo seguidor.

Debe decirse que ni los católicos ni los evangélicos son comuniones homogéneas. Hay voces morales asombrosamente perspicaces tanto en la Iglesia Católica como en el cristianismo tradicional que protestan enérgicamente por los movimientos hacia la teocracia, a abandonar la fe y convertirse simplemente en un lobby político de derecha. Hay quienes advierten contra cualquier enfoque de un solo tema que ignore el amplio horizonte de preocupaciones éticas en el mundo. Tristemente, sin embargo, esas voces son verdaderamente una voz que llora en el desierto, casi completamente ignorada por el cuerpo más grande de asistentes a la iglesia.

Hace algunos años, la Universidad de Drury llevó a la Hermana Helen Prejean a Springfield para una serie de conferencias sobre la abolición de la pena capital. Junto al mismo Papa, la hermana Prejean es probablemente la católica más conocida y amada del mundo y, sin embargo, al final de su discurso, nuestro Obispo católico local la reprendió públicamente por no centrarse más en el aborto. La Iglesia Católica se opone oficialmente a la pena capital y él no lamentaba que se hubiera hecho una película sobre su trabajo y que había llamado tanto la atención sobre el tema.

Sin embargo, estaba perplejo por la manera con que podría preocuparse tanto por los delincuentes de capital convictos y por no usar su considerable influencia para hablar sobre el aborto. Y, podría pensarse que en un escenario lleno de académicos y líderes progresistas de fe, la audiencia se avergonzaría por el comentário simplón proveniente de un obispo, pero, para ser honesto, hubo muchos asentimientos en la sala. . . y todas las personas que asentían no eran monjas.

En los Estados Unidos hay alrededor de 2 docenas de ejecuciones a cada año. Compare eso con un millón de abortos y puede comenzar a ver, desde la perspectiva del obispo, porqué la hermana Helen parece ser inescrutable. El mundo religioso antiaborto simplemente ve el mundo solo a través de ese lente.

Y la diferencia se reduce a esto: sin haber sido examinados, se les ha enseñado a creer que un huevo fertilizado es una persona. El resto de nosotros cree que un óvulo fertilizado podría, potencialmente, en las circunstancias correctas, convertirse en una persona. Pero la diferencia entre ser una persona y tener el potencial para convertirse en una persona, es enorme.

Si la ética siempre tiene que reducirse a una pegatina para el parachoques, la gente antiabortista tiene una política limpia y simple: la vida es sagrada. Los católicos obtienen una "A" por consistencia. No abortas embarazos, no comienzas guerras, no ejecutas prisioneros ... porque la vida es sagrada. Los evangélicos conservadores obtienen una "F" en consistencia porque tienden a ser grandes en las ejecuciones y las guerras, pero están en contra del derecho al aborto y, francamente, no tiene ningún sentido.

Nosotros, feministas y progresistas acentuamos la libertad individual. Insistimos en que una mujer tiene derecho a elegir, a tomar decisiones sobre su propia vida reproductiva. Sin embargo, no diríamos que una mujer tiene derecho a optar por terminar con sus hijos de tres y cuatro años porque aún no está lista para formar una familia. Nadie diría que una madre puede acabar con la vida de un niño de 2 años, pero los conservadores a menudo no logran discernir entre un feto en el útero y un niño de 2 años en un preescolar. Si podemos hacer que veamos el problema desde su perspectiva, podemos entender su repulsión moral.

Entonces, el verdadero problema es este: ¿es un huevo humano fertilizado una persona o es simplemente una persona potencial? Tengo tres cosas que quiero decir sobre esto:

1) La primera es que la Biblia no dice lo que los tradicionalistas han sido llevados a creer que dice. En general, el tema no aparece en absoluto porque no había procedimientos médicos confiables para el aborto en el mundo antiguo. La única vez en que el aborto aparece en la Biblia es un pasaje oscuro en el capítulo 5 de Números. Este pasaje dice que si un hombre cree que su esposa ha estado embarazada de otro hombre, debe llevarla al sacerdote y el sacerdote la obliga a beber un brebaje venenoso llamado "aguas amargas". Se creia que debido a la orden judicial litúrgica del sacerdote, si la mujer no tenia culpa, ella y el bebé sobrevivirian. Pero, si ella se havia extraviado y acostado con otro hombre, perdería al bebé y posiblemente ella también moriría.

No se sorprenda si nunca ha escuchado un sermón sobre este extraño texto, pero déjeme decir que la única vez en que la Biblia discute el aborto, le está diciendo cómo hacerlo. Y sin ser frívolo al respecto, en esa cultura la propiedad de la tierra y la estabilidad de la tribu se basaba en saber quién era el padre de un niño y cuando la paternidad estaba en duda, incluso en el antiguo Oriente, estaban dispuestos a terminar el embarazo y no se pensaba que era ejecutar a una persona. Entonces, veian a un feto en el útero como una persona potencial pero no como una persona. Todo lo demás sobre el patriarcado tóxico y la religión maligna que se describe en el capítulo 5 de Números debería ser impactante y ofensivo, pero revela una versión antigua del embarazo.

2) Mi segunda ilustración es la siguiente: si trabajas en una clínica de fertilidad que tiene guarderías en el lugar, es posible que tengas esta crisis. En el congelador hay diez mil huevos fertilizados que se conservan para su posible implantación en el útero de una mujer. En el centro de cuidado infantil hay cinco niños atendidos. De repente, se te advierte que hay una bomba en el edificio y que solo tienes un momento para escapar. Puedes salvar a los cinco niños o intentar rescatar los 10,000 huevos fertilizados. ¿Cuál eliges?

Yo creo que incluso nuestro Obispo local salvaría a los cinco niños. En un instante, se puede mergullar en sus convicciones más profundas y uno sabe que esos huevos no son en realidad personas y, aunque uno pueda estar horrorizado por la pérdida de tantas personas potenciales, no soñaría en sacrificar a cinco niños reales para salvarlos.

3) Finalmente, y creo que fue este tercer punto el que sacó el veneno de la pluma de la monja que me escribió hace tantos años: si la anticoncepción es considerada incorrecta porque un DIU o un diafragma o un condón impiden que un óvulo sea fertilizado, entonces, pienso que cada vez que un hombre joven y una mujer joven hacen cola en Starbucks y hay huevos y esperma muy cerca el uno del otro. ¿Están entonces obligados a dar los pasos necesarios para fertilizar un huevo?

Ahora, lo admitiré, ese es un argumento de reductio ad absurdum, pero ¿no es igualmente un absurdo decirles a los estudiantes universitarios que no usen métodos anticonceptivos? Estoy convencido de que desde una perspectiva bíblica, desde una perspectiva filosófica, y desde una perspectiva médica, un feto no es una persona, sino que tiene el potencial de convertirse en una persona, no es simplemente una colección de células orgánicas.

El problema no es, sin embargo, simple. Amigos, hoy soy un padre porque el aborto no estaba disponible en Corea del Sur cuando nació mi hija. Solo tengo un hijo porque cuando Corea del Sur cambió sus leyes, ya no había miles de bebés que necesitaban adopción. Yo estuve sentado en la sala de espera de las clínicas de aborto con mujeres jóvenes. Estuve escoltando a los manifestantes en las calles y sé cuán torturadas estaban las jóvenes sentadas a mi alrededor que instintivamente querían ser madres y sabían que no era su hora.

Aunque estoy convencido de que el aborto no es un asesinato y nunca debería ser considerado de esa manera, entiendo que todavía es un problema enorme, complejo y doloroso.

Decir que un feto es una persona potencial significa que hay un punto en el embarazo en el cual el feto, de hecho, se convierte en una persona. Hablamos de ser "viables fuera del útero", pero con los avances en el cuidado de los nacimientos prematuros, el objetivo de la viabilidad es, en sí mismo, absolutamente cuestionable. Los bebés que nacen en la marca de las 25 semanas a menudo sobreviven incluso con relativamente pocos desafíos físicos más adelante en la vida. El primer niño que bautizamos en esta iglesia fue uno de esos bebés y hoy ella es un pequeño ser humano notable. Pequeño para su edad pero brillante, feliz y lleno de vida.

Lo que estoy tratando de decir a cualquiera que escuche este mensaje y que se opone firmemente a los derechos reproductivos es que puedo sentir mucho de lo que siente. Entiendo la gravedad y la angustia detrás de este gran problema. Lo que estoy pidiendo es que traten de escuchar desde mi perspectiva es que una persona potencial aún no es una persona y realmente debemos retirar la lente de la deliberación ética para ver que no podemos sencillamente despedirnos de cosas como un presidente tuiteando insultos a un sociópata armado pero terriblemente inseguro en Corea del Norte. Un intercambio nuclear entre EE. UU. y Corea del Norte podría provocar cientos de millones de muertes.

El destripamiento de las leyes ambientales que protegen nuestro planeta y la reestructuración de las leyes que empobrecen a las masas con el fin de enriquecer a un pequeño grupo de súper ricos, el fomento de prejuicios contra musulmanes, refugiados, inmigrantes, homosexuales y, francamente, liberales , son todas preocupaciones éticas que exigen un pensamiento serio por parte de todas las personas de fe, tanto progresistas como conservadores.

Traigo este mensaje como la cuarta y última parte de nuestra serie sobre el movimiento #MeToo porque las voces católica y evangélica han estado notablemente ausentes en la conversación sobre el acoso sexual y los derechos de las mujeres. Me doy cuenta de que has estado esperando durante mucho tiempo para que un gobierno, desde la Casa Blanca hasta el Capitolio, haga los tipos de nombramientos judiciales por los que has estado orando. Usted es reticente incluso a ponerse a pensar demasiado acerca de cuán profundamente problemáticas son estas personas que están llevando a cabo su agenda.

Y, lo sé muy bien, porque he leído sus cartas durante años, he leído lo que ha escrito sobre mí en los periódicos y lo que ha dicho en línea ...

Sé que tenemos profundas diferencias en la forma en que leemos la Biblia, diferimos en nuestras convicciones teológicas y en nuestros puntos de vista sobre la política, pero creo que tenemos algo en común. Yo tengo una hija de 29 años. Ella es inteligente, hermosa y maravillosa. También es muy feliz y confiada, y está profundamente involucrada en una carrera en la que tiene que viajar, organizar ferias comerciales e interactuar con profesionales médicos, comer en restaurantes, alquilar automóviles y quedarse sola en hoteles. Y la amo y no quiero que le pase nada malo.

No quiero que los poderosos compradores corporativos intenten explotarla porque es joven y recién comienza su carrera. No quiero que los hombres en bares, restaurantes, hoteles, cines y aeropuertos piensen que pueden ser irrespetuosos y hostigadores. Sé que sabes de lo que estoy hablando. Quiero que mi hija tenga un mundo mejor en el que pueda envejecer mejor que el que mi madre o mi hermana tuvieron.

Y sé que seguramente también debes amar a tus hijas. Seguramente deseas que tus hijas puedan conseguir un trabajo esperando en sus mesas mientras están en la escuela y tengan la confianza de que serán bien tratadas. Ahora estamos en una coyuntura de la historia en la que podemos ayudar a crear ese tipo de mundo. Este no es el momento de callar.

Afortunadamente, nunca sucedió en mi familia, pero si mi hija hubiera estado en una situación de tomar la decisión de hacer un aborto, independientemente de cuántas citas de derecha haya en la Corte Suprema o de lo que ocurra con Roe v Wade, mi hija , y su hija, podrían volar a París, hacer su elección, y estar en casa antes del próximo domingo con algunas ropas nuevas maravillosas de Le Bon Marche '. ¿Pero realmente crees que ese derecho debería reservarse a nuestras hijas y no a las hijas de los pobres?

Odias el aborto. Francamente, yo también. Pero debes saber que no tienes el derecho de imponer una falta de opción a los pobres que no se le impone a las familias de clase media y alta en los Estados Unidos. Sugiero que odiemos el aborto juntos. Podemos reducir drásticamente la cantidad de abortos simplemente elevando el salario mínimo a un salario digno. Un salario mínimo de $12 evitaría 500,000 abortos. Estoy diciendo la verdad y puedo probarlo. Si puedes considerar el acceso a la anticoncepción y la educación sexual, probablemente podríamos evitar otro cuarto de millón de abortos.

Hace años, un maestro de la Escuela Dominical Bautista muy sabia me aconsejó cuando estaba en la escuela de posgrado. Ella dijo: "A veces, puedes tener tanta razón que estás equivocado". Hay ocasiones en que puedes defender una convicción poderosa e importante de tal manera que le hace más daño a tu causa que ayuda. Deseas terminar un millón de abortos al año, aunque sabes que no puedes y ni podrás. Pero podrías evitar 700 u 800 mil de ellos. ¿Eres tan purista que tal victoria no te atrae? Si es así, me temo que no estás realmente en contra del aborto, pero estás enamorado de tu propio ego. Seguramente puedes aceptar "sí" por una respuesta. Seguramente puedes abrazar con entusiasmo el progreso, aunque la perfección esté para siempre fuera de nuestro alcance.

Honestamente, no tenemos una visión compartida de las Escrituras, de la teología, de la salvación o del más allá. Pero tenemos esto, ambos amamos a nuestras hijas y, al final, eso será suficiente para que trabajemos juntos. 

"We Are Not the Fragile Ones"

"We Are Not the Fragile Ones"  by David Ketchum

click here to see the video 
CW: sexual harassment and violence, including rape, child abuse, LGBTQIA+ phobias; oppression and violence related to disability, race, and class
Summary: From an LGBTQIA+ perspective, I'll reflect on how sexual violence has impacted the LGBTQIA+ community, how sexual violence has been an integral part of maintaining oppression historically and sociologically, and how marginalized communities have been resisting and healing from sexual violence while also working to create safer and more just communities in which we can live and love.
Despite the fact that I spend much of my time laughing, playing ridiculously silly games, singing my way through house work, and generally talking in funny voices, I am usually invited to talk about really serious topics. This morning is no exception, since I will be reflecting on the #MeToo movement, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and my experience as a bi- or pansexual, demisexual, genderqueer person. I personally feel ambivalent about the opportunity: I’m grateful for the invitation and for the chance to speak about crucial issues; I’m also exhausted by the necessity of repeating how gender and sexuality have been weaponized against vulnerable people, including how speaking up too often makes folks targets of more coercion and violence. So here is my current best attempt to put it into words, a lot of words, that will include discussion of sexual harassment and violence, including rape, child abuse, and LGBTQIA+ phobias. I’ll also talk about the intersection of this kind of violence with disability, race, and class.
Me, Too?
By choice and circumstance, I don’t participate much in social media, and so I didn’t post #MeToo when the phrase went viral in in October 2017. But, even if I were more active on twitter or facebook, it would have been a difficult choice for me to type those words. To begin, some LGBTQIA+ people risk outing themselves or another person by sharing their stories. Further, although the general response to #MeToo has been supportive, there is still the risk of people asking intrusive questions or giving unsolicited advice. Even in best case scenarios, we run the risk of being reduced to the status of victim, and that label can stick. In worse scenarios, we run the risk of word reaching past abusers or other dysfunctional relationships, which can bring about further harassment or violence. In a society that does little to heal communities from violence, there is often a fine line between empowering and endangering us when we speak up.

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There is also a commonly held myth that abuse causes people to become LGBTQIA+, so declaring #MeToo can get us pulled into conversations that leave us with a difficult choice: allow people to hold an erroneous assumption about our gender and sexuality, or be pushed to share very personal and private stories about our lives, desires, and experiences. So I’ll share a little – only a little – of my own story, in the hopes that it will spare other LGBTQIA+ folk the hassle and pain. In my own case, I don’t remember a time when I was comfortable with being assigned male at birth, and those memories predate the first time I was sexually abused. I do believe that my gender variance made me a target for at least some of the abuse I endured throughout my childhood. Further, enduring harassment for being “too effeminate” has made me very careful about how I express myself, and I often choose more stereotypically masculine presentations as a tactic to protect my own safety and try to be less vulnerable to bullying or abuse. And that’s all I’ll say about this topic this morning.
I’m still shocked by how frequently people act like they are entitled to the details of these stories, as if it is my duty to prove to acquaintances and even strangers that my gender and sexuality are legitimate. So to all of you lovely people living in the heteronormative, cisgender camp: please be respectful of other people’s gender, sexuality, personal dignity, and stories. In almost every normal circumstance, no one owes you anything. Ask permission, take no for an answer, respect boundaries, and listen. Any of these small acts can be a wonderful and often too rare a gift.
Yet even if I were able to jump these first two hurdles, a third one would await me before I could have typed out #MeToo. It was not long after the hashtag picked up steam that disagreement emerged about who was allowed to participate. The original tweet by Alyssa Milano specifically invited “women” to participate, so there was controversy, with some folk wanting to include and others wanting to exclude broader participation, from disabled folk to people of color to LGBTQIA+ folk. Here locally, a prominent LGBT activist went on social media to make a point of excluding a trans man who had posted #MeToo. It was painful, discouraging, and awful. So as someone living under the transgender umbrella, assigned male at birth but correctly a genderqueer person, I doubt I would have risked incurring that kind of trolling.
While I am glad that I feel comfortable making a decision that supports my well-being, it is still troubling that I can self-censor so easily. It is a long habit, something I’ve been trained in for years, which is why it is so appropriate to name the heroes of this broader movement to expose sexual violence as “the Silence Breakers.” I learned silence very early, around preschool age. Something happened to me, and I tried to talk to a couple of people about it. It was embarrassing to the adults, and the hushed me.

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They reassured me that it was not a big deal, though I came to understand later that they were really reassuring themselves. Still, I learned then that these types of things were not to be spoken about; they were, paradoxically, both shameful and normal. I kept quiet.
By the time I was a teenager, my conservative Southern Baptist community had taught me two lies disguised as lessons. First, my gender and sexuality made me very disgusting and evil in God’s and the church’s eyes. I needed to work extra hard to avoid any kind of sexual sin, because my sins as a genderqueer and bisexual person were worse than other kinds of sexual sins, including the sin of sexual abuse. This was another reason to keep quiet. Second, I was taught that god would use the suffering that came with enduring sexual violence to make me a better person and, what’s more, even make my abusers better people. My job was not to expose them, but to save them. So I prayed, and I kept quiet. Lies are powerfully good at keeping people quiet.
I learned these things at church, but I have other stories where I learned similar lessons from different places – family, schools, pop culture, or peers. These kinds of ideas don’t have as much to do with religion as they have to do with social control, with patriarchy, with oppressive systems. I’ve shared these experiences because, for many of us, it is no easy thing to say #MeToo. Especially in public spaces, we’ve come to expect that our experiences will be minimized or dismissed at best; more often, we will be interrogated and then blamed for our own suffering.
Sexual Violence and the LGBTQIA+ Community
We have good reason to be cautious. Our personal experiences and the stories we share with one another are also reflected in statistics, statistics that reveal a terrifying reality. The Human Rights Campaign have summarized the “CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey” findings from 2010 -
• “44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35 percent of heterosexual women
• 26 percent of gay men and 37 percent of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 29 percent of heterosexual men • 46 percent of bisexual women have been raped, compared to 17 percent of heterosexual women and 13 percent of lesbians
• 22 percent of bisexual women have been raped by an intimate partner, compared to 9 percent of heterosexual women

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• 40 percent of gay men and 47 percent of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence other than rape, compared to 21 percent of heterosexual men” (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community )
These trends are also seen in the transgender community. For example, the September 2017 report on the U.S. Transgender Survey documented that, of the transgender people who participated in the survey, 35% of heterosexual, 37% of gay and lesbian, 41% of bisexual, and 51% of pansexual respondents “reported being sexually assaulted in their lifetime”. (http://www.lgbtmap.org/file/A%20Closer%20Look%20Bisexual%20Transgender.pdf )
There is another level that demonstrates how comfortable our society in general is with violence against LGBTQIA+ folk, and how we are demonized and dehumanized for our gender and sexuality. In the legal world, “gay panic” and “trans panic” are considered actual, legitimate defenses that, in the words of the American Bar “ask the jury to find that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction. They characterize sexual orientation and gender identity as objectively reasonable excuses for loss of self-control, and thereby mitigate a perpetrator’s culpability for harm done to LGBT individuals.” These defenses “have been used ... to mitigate a charge of murder to manslaughter or justified homicide ... . By fully or partially excusing the perpetrators of crimes against LGBT victims, these defenses enshrine in the law the notion that LGBT lives are worth less than others.” (https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/abanews/1373479339_31_1_1_9_resolution _summary.docx )
As of late December 2017, only 2 states – California and Illinois – have banned the use of gay panic or trans panic as legal defenses. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/12/28/574453009/illinois-to-ban-gay-panic-defense-in-new-year)
We could say more. We could note the ways that systems often fail us when we try to access resources and help. We could, for example, look at discrimination in housing, employment, and health care, and then investigate how navigating those realities make LGBTQIA+ folk more vulnerable to all kinds of violence, including sexual violence. But I’d like to go another step and reflect on how sexual violence has operated historically and sociologically as a part of larger oppressive systems and cultures.
Sexual Violence as a Mechanism of Oppressive Systems & Cultures
Although citizens of the United States have, as a cultural rule, enjoyed thinking about themselves as the shining pinnacle of all that is good in the world, as a kind of exception to the unjust practices of all the other nation states, the difficult truth is that oppressive

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systems have long used sexual violence as a mechanism for power and control, to traumatize and terrorize in ways that reinforce how those oppressive systems work. This includes the United States, and it is true whether we are considering how our society is arranged economically, socially, or politically. It is also why many of us at the margins remain skeptical that the systems can be reformed to work without oppression. Oppression is a feature of the way things are, not a breakdown.
A trip through the historical record of the West in general, and the United States in particular, is not a pleasant journey. From the earliest documents of the colonial age, the journals of explorers and bureaucrats record stories of sexual and other acts of violence as if they were cataloging how many barrels of rum were in the hold. The stories are graphic and horrifying, and they are also completely normal. The men writing these accounts have no shame in their stories of rape and murder. In many accounts, they come across as bragging about what they have done, as in the infamous case of Michele de Cuneo, to whom Admiral Christopher Columbus “gave” an indigenous woman.
This same history spills over into the exploitation of enslaved people in the United States. The rape of enslaved women by their male masters was an open secret, detailed in the words of people like Harriet Jacobs, who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, or in the tragedies of people like Missouri’s own Celia, who fought back against Robert Newsome, was convicted of first degree murder, and was executed. Racially motivated sexual violence continued after the abolition of slavery, perpetuated in stereotypes about African American sexuality and demonstrated in the lynchings of black men falsely accused of raping white women. In the latter, these are the only widespread and socially acceptable cases of which I am aware of in US history where false accusations of sexual violence are tolerated and even encouraged, up to today.
We could tell similar stories of sexual violence against immigrants, indigenous people, employees, suspects and prisoners, the elderly, the disabled, children, or any other marginalized population. We could recount thousands of stories from these hundreds of years of sexual terror. It is, to say it again, a feature and not a breakdown. Oppressive systems have long used sexual violence as a mechanism for power and control, to traumatize and terrorize in ways that reinforce how those oppressive systems work.
Once we understand this, we can begin to unpack how oppressive systems, particularly in the West, have emphasized punishing individuals as a way to focus a society’s outrage and vengeance on a single person without threatening the oppressive system as a whole. Our society has proven itself more than willing to sacrifice a few individuals now and then, with no intention of actually changing the underlying structures and cultures that produce, permit, tolerate, and protect those behaviors. So many of the most talked about

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cases have been focused on prosecuting individuals, firing individuals, shaming individuals, forcing resignations of individuals.
Don’t get me wrong; I am quite happy to see a lot of these people go. But these actions in themselves don’t go to the root causes, and the systems that produced, permitted, tolerated, and protected those behaviors will continue long after this moment’s scapegoats are forgotten. The structures and cultures remain intact as long as we are relying on those structures and cultures to provide the solutions for the very problems they perpetuate. And so we risk reinforcing those very structures while missing key insights about how and why the problems arise in the first place. Our criminal justice system and media both focus on individuals. Our politics focus on reform. It all hinges on the promise that all of these problems would go away if only we could get the right people in charge. What we are missing is the reality that the system produces, permits, tolerates, and protects oppressive structures and behavior, even if it is required to sacrifice a few exceptional individuals along the way.
These two observations uncover a third, that coercion is normal in our society. It is what we learn and what we expect. Our society is organized around profit and has, both historically and sociologically, understood exploitation of all kinds as necessary means for achieving the accumulation of power and money. Even in these high profile cases that have come to light, it is, in the end, business as usual. So it is a common refrain, heard across stories and generations, by people within these systems: “I was not surprised.” Why would we be surprised? How many times have you heard the warning, or given it yourself, that those teen-aged boys just want to have their way with a girl? Or that this boss gives out perks for sexual favors? Or that you shouldn’t leave children with that one family member? Or that you shouldn’t walk alone at night, or in a certain part of town? Can you see how utterly normal it is? Can you see how we have come to accept sexual violence as just the cost of living in these societies that encourage toxic masculinities? Sexual violence is an integral part of patriarchy, and patriarchy is an integral part of our society. It is, quite literally, business as usual.
For example, since the 1990s, the US government’s Office of Compliance has paid more than $17 million in discrimination settlements, including sexual harassment cases (http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/politics/settlements-congress-sexual-harassment/index.html ). Of course, this is nothing compared to the approximately $45 million in publicly known settlement cases that were paid out over the years to cover the tracks of former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/10/21/report-bill-oreilly-struck-sexual-harassment-deal-january- former-fox-analyst/787360001/ ). In these and so many more cases, what we see is a pattern of abuse that is tolerated as long as keeping the abusive person around is profitable. In O’Reilley’s case, ad revenues totaled $100 to $300 million annually, depending on who was doing the counting, but affiliate fees of around $9 billion were also part of the

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considerations (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/19/heres-how-much-money-bill-oreillys-show-made-according-to- one-media-analyst.html ).
With profit as the standard, the lives of people who suffered from O’Reilley’s sexual violence were of little value. So not only was O’Reilley tolerated, he was empowered by his position at Fox News. With such money and power behind him, ready to bail him out, he was able to harass with near impunity, until his behaviors finally caught up to him and he became a financial liability.
Even when this is not directly the case, even when the person involved is not either holding the check book or laying the proverbial golden eggs, oppressive systems are so integral to our socioeconomic and political arrangement that to oppose patriarchy, to oppose racism, to oppose ableism is to oppose the very foundation on which our society is ordered. We excuse abusive behavior with platitudes and with a fatalism that accepts that patriarchy is a necessity, inevitable if not natural. Again, our society has, both historically and sociologically, understood exploitation of all kinds as necessary means for achieving the accumulation of power and money. And that’s the reality. On the whole, we don’t care about the well-being of most human beings. The simple equation at work is: how does this behavior impact our profit and power margins? Disrupting patriarchy or white supremacy disrupts the system, and threatens those in power, people whose power and wealth depend on the exploitation of masses of people and the earth itself. Sexual violence and its suffering are just another externalized cost.
Many of us understand this, even if only subconsciously, and I believe it’s a big reason why many of us never speak out. For the most part, the system promises to protect the abuser for as long as it is profitable, in terms of money, power, or image. Most of us cannot afford to stand up against such power. We risk losing jobs, families, immigration status, and our well-being. Even when we do make a successful fight, what the system offers us is a pay off, in the form of a settlement, or a pay back, in the form of public humiliation or revenge. What the system does not offer us is true and lasting change. We are asked to become martyrs, to sacrifice ourselves with the scapegoats on the altars of power. And the systems stay intact, to repeat the cycle.
Resisting, Healing, & Cultivating Just Communities at the Margins
Clearly, dismantling these systems and cultures that put money and power into the hands of the few is not quick work. So what are we to do? One of the lessons that has re- emerged with the #MeToo movement is that listening can be painful, hard work, especially when it asks us, personally and as larger communities, to change. We are uncomfortable hearing how others have been hurt, we are uncomfortable learning that people we respected and trusted have acted in inappropriate and even violent ways. We

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are uncomfortable with what it asks of us. And sometimes there are risks. It’s difficult, painful work, but it’s also where we begin.
Out of this listening, there are some very practical and beautiful examples of how folk have worked at building communities where we can practice and learn these alternative ways of relating to one another. We become better at taking care of ourselves, better at caring for one another. We simultaneously learn how to better recognize and resist coercive, dominating ways of treating one another while building the skills, networks, and resources we need to create new systems and cultures that replace oppressive ones.
Here are four of the lessons that, as a collection of diverse movements, we’ve learned over the years, and that can act as a beginning if you want to support genuine change.
First, we all have work to do, both personally and collectively. Most of us have grown up learning about power, sex, desire, and love in the context of imperialist-white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. Being aware of that does not make us immune to its influence. We all have internalized oppression, dominance, or a mixture of both. So we understand that there is grief, healing, and transformation that needs to happen, again and again.
Second, it’s much more difficult to silence people when you eliminate structural imbalances. The less hierarchical and the more partnership-oriented we are, the better we are at preventing, naming, addressing, and healing from harassment and violence.
Third, we must move our focus to include systems and cultures, resisting the temptation to focus solely on individuals. This means making our analyses and actions intersectional. This means centering marginalized populations. This means dealing honestly with how sexual violence has been part of the structures of power and profit.
Fourth, while we can support and agitate for reform in order to minimize harm, we must devote as much time, energy, and resources as possible into building community. We have to earnestly and intentionally cultivate practices, habits, and structures that dismantle patriarchy and replace it with non-hierarchical and partnership-based social relationships that rely on and embody mutual care, respect, and justice. This is also where restorative and transformative justice practices become essential, as well as community based conflict transformation. We have to make justice and love normal.
I want to conclude with the reflections of Tarana Burke, who created the Me, Too campaign in 2006 and continues the work through Girls for Gender Equity, “a non-profit devoted to helping young women live self-determined lives.” In an interview with The

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“We Are Not the Fragile Ones,” page 10 Nation, Burke emphasized the importance of centering marginal communities and
pursuing restorative and transformative justice. In reflecting on #MeToo, she said,
“The conversation is largely about Harvey Weinstein or other individual bogeymen. No matter how much I keep talking about power and privilege, they keep bringing it back to individuals. It would be very easy to get swept up and change directions and change the focus of this work, but that’s not going to happen. It defeats the purpose to not have those folks centered—I’m talking black and brown girls, queer folks. There’s no conversation in this whole thing about transgender folks and sexual violence. There’s no conversation in this about people with disabilities and sexual violence. We need to talk about Native Americans, who have the highest rate of sexual violence in this country. So no, I can’t take my focus [off] marginalized people.”
And,
“We have to start talking about nontraditional methods to pursuing justice. What does justice look like for a survivor? It’ll mean different things to different communities. ... we need to look at alternative approaches to justice, I’m talking restorative justice and transformative justice. ... We’ve got to get a clearer understanding of what justice is and what people need to feel whole. And if we’re ever going to heal in our community, we have to heal the perpetrators and heal the survivors, or else it’s just a continuous cycle.” (https://www.thenation.com/article/tarana-burke-says-metoo-isnt-just-for-white-people/ )
I titled this talk “We Are Not the Fragile Ones,” because victims are often spoken about in ways that patronize and condescend. The world knew it could break us, and they were right about that. Too many of us have had to live lives that were not ours, just to survive, locked away in a straight, cisgender world. And more - too many of us are wounded, and too many of us are dead. But I’d like to point out that it is oppressive systems that are brittle, and that it is people in positions of power and privilege who usually feel the most threatened and reactive to movements for justice.
Those of us with these stories, we are not the fragile ones. We are not the ones who need a gay panic or trans panic defense. We are not the ones who think that our families will disintegrate if we accept people’s gender and sexuality as they are, rather than as we say they should be. And we are not the ones who fear a god’s judgment. I offer my reflections as an imperfect tribute to all my comrades, to all my friends at the margins, who live as exiles amid these fragile, brittle egos. I offer my love to all of us fabulous and resilient and wounded people who, together, are creating a new and beautiful world.