February 9, 2011 – Leviticus 19

15 – I think sometimes we fail on both of these accounts.  We sometimes give people the benefit of the doubt because of their circumstances.  If a person has had difficulty in their lives, we make excuses for them in a situation where they in some aspects may quite trying.  We also give those with money and power pretty much a free pass in many cases.  Every once in a while a celebrity might go to jail for something, but it is usually after they have been given several breaks already.  We are to judge justly, which means the same rules apply to everyone.  What does that mean when you look at something like affirmative action.  That is a policy that specifically treats a person differently because of their ethnicity.  But that is in place because prior generations treated those same groups differently in a negative fashion.  Does the one fix the other.  Can giving people an advantage now alleviate the pain of discrimination in the past.  We live in a world that doesn’t treat people equally so we come up with rules that try to force us to, but they only force us to treat people differently.  Is it fair to hire someone based on ethnicity any more than it is fair to not hire someone based on ethnicity.  God tells us to treat everyone fairly.  No law is going to achieve that.  It must be a change in people’s mentality and any law that tries to force it only causes unfairness in the opposite direction to try and make up the difference. 

With this in mind, treating everyone equally, think about this.  In April of 1972, the US Supreme Court decided a case named Sierra Club v. Morton.  The main issue in that case is whether the group bringing the case had any standing, or the right to make a legal claim, for the inanimate objects, such as trees and nature that was going to be destroyed.  The court said that there wasn’t standing although one of the quotes states that , “With all respect, the problem is to make certain that the inanimate objects, which are the very core of America's beauty, have spokesmen before they are destroyed.” 405 U.S. 727, 745.  However one of the dissenters, judge that disagreed with the majority opinion, was Harry Blackmun.  That is important to note because Justice Blackmun, less than a year later wrote the decision in Roe v Wade.  This found that the baby inside a mother’s womb does not have any rights, is not a person, and can be destroyed at the discretion of the mother.  Just a thought about what this country sees as important.