Pastor Zach's Blog

A Judge and #MeToo

September 24, 2018 at 5:15 am 2 comments

Credit: Wikipedia

Last week was a raucous one in politics.  Last Sunday, The Washington Post published a bombshell investigative report detailing allegations of sexual assault against President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.  Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of clinical psychology at Palo Alto University, claimed that Judge Kavanaugh, at a party in the early 1980s, when they were both in high school:

…pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.

The details of this account, if true, are deeply distressing.  Yesterday, another accusation was leveled against the judge, this one concerning some sexually aggressive behavior in his college years during an alcohol-fueled party.  Hearings on the initial accusation are tentatively set to begin on Thursday.

While these stories continue to unfold, and facts, evidence, and debate continue to trickle – and, in some instances, flood – in, there are some important lessons for us to consider from what we already know.

We can learn something about honor.

Whether or not these accusations ultimately prove to be credible, this much is indisputably true:  we live in a culture that has lost its way sexually.  These allegations may turn out to be false.  But so many others have turned out to be, if the preponderance of evidence is to be believed, true.  Harvey Weinstein.  Les Moonves.  Charlie Rose.  Bill Cosby.  Al Franken.  Roy Moore.  Matt Lauer.  Kevin Spacey.  Steve Wynn.  And there are many more.

This must stop.  Sex is not a right, a rite of passage, or an unrestrainable drive.  Sex was created to be an expression of love and commitment, which sometimes results in the blessing of children, between a husband and a wife in marriage.  Committing to a woman publicly before God and a group of witnesses to be a faithful, gentle, and servant-hearted husband till death do you part is the most honorable thing a man can do for a woman before he lays a hand on her sexually.  Ripping sex out of this commitment and context provides a seedy breeding ground for sexual entitlement instead of gentle chivalry.

We can learn something about power.

Dr. Ford’s allegation against Judge Kavanaugh first came to light in the middle of a contentious and hyper-politically-charged Supreme Court confirmation hearing.  Sadly, partisans on both sides have proven to be more concerned about the political power in play than the moral rectitude at stake.  From a supporter of Judge Kavanaugh came an argument that it doesn’t really matter if the judge is guilty of sexual assault, because his good deeds clearly outweigh his bad deeds overall.  The judge should get a pass.  Conversely, a detractor of the judge who knew of these accusations as early as late July and decided to sit on them and not address them, now appears to be using them to maximize the political chaos surrounding Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.

When partisans on either side engage in these kinds of arguments and actions, they insult justice.  The treat the terrible truths of two women’s claims or the shameful besmirching of a man’s character as less important than a political victory.  Human lives get trampled for the sake of maintaining and extending political power, which, by definition, sounds less like a democracy where human dignity is supreme, and more like a tyranny.

We can learn something about truthfulness.

There is really no way to assert that both Judge Kavanaugh and his accusers are being truthful.  Two women have made accusations.  Judge Kavanaugh has categorically denied them.  Contrary to some clumsy efforts to try to exonerate all parties, someone is almost certainly lying.  In a cultural consensus that seems all too content to bake deceit into some sort of pragmatic cake because “everybody lies,” and to downplay the need for the truth as secondary to other, supposedly larger, concerns, this case reminds us that the truth really does matter.  Lives, reputations, and, in this case, the public good are stake.  This is why, for the sake of justice, and for the sake of our country, I hope the truth comes out.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Entry filed under: Current Trends. Tags: #MeToo, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Sexual Assault, Supreme Court.