The new Arizona law prompted a memory. My wife and I once lived in a town in Texas. It was common practice for the police there to pull over people passing through — often just for “driving while being Hispanic.” We are both ministers. We asked, “Is that how we would want to be treated, if we were Hispanic?” We protested then against racial profiling. We do so now.
My wife was the first woman ordained an Episcopal priest in Texas. I’m a Unitarian. Despite some people considering us to be “the odd couple” among clergy, we have been married since 1972. We apply the same Golden Rule logic to the issue of marriage equality for loving couples of the same gender. In my present Massachusetts congregation I have five such couples, all raising children together. They can marry in this state but still cannot file their federal income taxes as married couples. So we also protest the federal “Defense of Marriage” Act. It doesn’t help to defend our marriage, or any marriage. It gets in the way of applying the Golden Rule.
In what way will the Arizona law lead to racial or ethnic profiling? Cite to specific language in the law. Since the law emulates and cites to existing federal law how is it that federal enforcement is exempt for racial profiling accusations? Possible because the feds don’t enforce their own law?
Why is it the Golden Rule is always cast by these people as simply allowing people to do what they want? And why should marriage be limited to loving couples? Why need couples be loving and why only couples? Cannot groups enter into loving marriages? Does that mean that couples who marry for convenience should not be allowed to be married? In short what is marriage and why should people not fitting into whatever definition you come up with be excluded?
Like many of the people protesting this law, he hasn’t read it. The law provides that people who are lawfully stopped by police for some other valid reason can have their residence status investigated if there is good cause to suspect they are illegal — and mere looking and sounding Hispanic very specifically cannot be that reason.
The potential for abuse of this law certainly exists, and once enforcement begins, if actual abuse surfaces, that will be the time to begin complaining. As it is, the opposition assumes that Arizona police are all a bunch of bigots, including what must be large numbers of, um, Hispanic police officers.
Not sure how depriving a child of a father because of your OWN gender bias fits with the Golden Rule…
Seems cruel and unusual to me.
So, this couple charges that, in Texas, the problem was “driving while Hispanic.” Really? No expired stickers, no faulty equipment, no moving violations, no suspicious behavior, nothing except appearing to be Hispanic? I have a hard time believing that. Cops have enough to do without stopping minorities just for giggles, unless we’re talking about a tiny, insular place with a flashing light at one intersection. And, in that case, an out-of-state license plate might elicit a “howdy-do” from a local, as well.
Wonder how long they lived in Texas and how far from the Border that happened to be? Apparently not long or close enough to feel the effects that illegal immigration has had on our state. But I’m sure they’re now in Massachusetts smirking, as that ilk likes to do, about the lower wages, the higher drop-out rates, and the numbers of teen pregnancies in Texas and other Southern states. It won’t dawn on them to connect part of that to our illegal immigration problem, will it? And I’m sure they won’t even touch the troubling subjects of human and drug trafficking across the Border, will they?