Friday, September 4, 2015

Two Bad Moves By Two Mistaken People

I previously wrote about two people who were in the news, Donald Trump and the clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. I said that Trump should NOT sign the pledge to support whoever ran for the nomination in the Republican party and that the clerk should quit rather than refuse to do her job. Both chose to do the wrong thing.

Lets start with Trump. The man signed a pledge to the Republican party above and beyond his pledge to the United States. Some might excuse this but watch the reaction from his audience when he announced  that he had signed it, there was not immediate applause, his people had to begin the applause. If he truly rejected partisan paid for politics he would not have signed it. He has run on the fact that all his opponents have sold out and now he has promised to support them if they beat him in the primaries. That is hypocritical and he will be called on it. The biggest mistake the Republican party has made is to require that oath and it will ensure that they lose this election. The party made it an issue so that Trump would go easy on the other candidates, you cannot call Bush and Walker and Carson losers and then justify supporting them if they beat you, the Democrats will have a field day with that after the primaries.

The second person, the clerk in Kentucky is equally foolish. After the court insisted that she issue marriage licenses to gay couples, she refused to do her job. This is easy, how can a judge allow someone to just ignore the law and their orders? Ignoring the gay or religious misdirection, what should the law be regarding following the law? Should civil servants be allowed to ignore the law and make up their own rules? The judge put her in jail as he should have. He did not put her in jail for her religious beliefs or because he believed in gay marriage, he put her in jail for refusing to follow the law and do her job.

Now, here is where these two items intersect. You cannot say that coming into this country without a visa is breaking the law and that ignoring a court order is not breaking the law. Do you want to live in a nation where the law matters or not? We have seen this before and should already know the outcome. Remember, if you are old enough, when a judge said that black kids could go to school with white kids and the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, tried to block their entering the schools. The kids got in.

I am old now so I remember history and I remember when Wallace ran for president. My father voted for him and my mother voted against him. Wallace later in life said he was wrong to have been against blacks and whites living together. He discovered that the world did not end when blacks and whites went to school together and the world will not end because people continue to be gay; but, have the "right" to be controlled by the government when they choose not to be together anymore.