Mary van Balen

The Supreme Court's ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional is a victory for equality in our country. When two people commit themselves to a lifelong relationship (That's the hope, anyway, for straight and gay couples), they should enjoy the same protections and support whether the union is between a man and a woman, two women, or two men. SCOTUS has ruled to do otherwise is unconstitutional. Still, most states do not recognize same-sex marriages. There is still work to do.

While striking down DOMA and passing on Proposition 8 is hopeful, it is not the whole story of this court's week of rulings. As Michelangelo Signorile wrote in the first paragraph of his Huffington Post blog, The Death of DOMA and the Transformation of America on Gay Marriage, the same court gutted the Voting Rights Act, removing federal oversight of changes in voting practices in states with a history of obstructing minorities right to vote. Read More 

I was a young teenager when civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, was assassinated, shot in the back, while returning home from a community meeting. Fifty years ago, today. His widow, Myrlye Evers-Williams, reflected on the event saying, "We are cursed as human beings with this element that's called hatred, prejudice and racism," said Evers-Williams, now 80. "But it is my belief that, as it was Medgar's, that there is something good and decent in each and every one of us, and we have to call on that, and we have to find a way to work together."( "Quoted in June 11, 2013 AP article")

Today is also the birthday of Anne Frank, famous for her diary, discovered and published after she died in a Nazi concentration camp after surviving for two years in hiding along with members of her family during Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during WWII.

Both Evers and Frank believed that, as Anne Frank wrote, "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart...I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness...and yet if I look up into the heavens I think that is will all come right..."

A call to faith. A call to action. A call to work each in our own way, for the common good. Read More 

I intended to write about some thought provoking articles in The Christian Century, but I clicked on the television to check news and watched the PBS special on the Freedom Riders instead. I was eleven in May, 1961, but remember news broadcast images of the Civil Rights struggle including some of the Freedom Riders. Watching the special last night was both horrifying and inspiring.

I know people who have marched with MLK Jr. in Selma and one who worked with the bus boycott in Montgomery. As a teenager, I joined in protests for the Farm Workers Union and marched in protests against the Viet Nam war. Facing National Guard bayonets on my college campus, I experienced rubbery knees and covered my nose and mouth with wet towels to lessen the effects of tear gas.

None of these actions of mine required the raw courage of those college students who became "The Freedom Riders." Trained in non-violent resistance, these young people knew they were likely going to face beatings, arrest, and possibly death, yet boarded the buses anyway, intent on calling national attention to the immortality of segregation and the need to change Jim Crow laws. Read More 

LINKS:
QUOTES: Martin Luther King
I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH AND VIDEO
WE SHALL OVERCOME: Historic places of the Civil Rights Movement
ROBERT GRAETZ'S BOOK: A White Preacher's Message on Race and Reconcilliation

Years ago, I sat in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery Alabama and watched a young service woman speaking with an elderly gentleman in the front pew: One was white; the other was black. Fifty-five years ago that encounter most likely would not have taken place. I imagined the space filled with voices of Martin Luther King Jr. and crowds gathered in prayer supporting the Montgomery bus boycott.

It began with Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, who along with other women mimeographed thousands of flyers asking Montgomery Blacks to boycott buses on the day Rosa Park's case was heard in court. The boycott's success encouraged the black community, and the following day many gathered in Dexter Avenue Church, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, and spurred on by its newly elected leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., called for a citywide bus boycott.

When we visited the museum at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church and watched historic newscasts, my young adult children expressed horror at scenes of protesters being attacked by dogs and thrown to the ground by water blasts from fire hoses. For many adults today, the early Civil Rights movement in this country is ancient history.

That reality prompted me to invite Rev. Robert and Jeannie Graetz to speak in my adult Even Start Class. He had accepted his first assignment as a Lutheran minister in Montgomery Alabama the same year Martin Luther King Jr. became pastor at Dexter Ave. The only white minister to publicly and actively support the bus boycott along with Jeannie, his family's home were fire bombed and his life threatened. Their neighbor, Rosa Parks, helped clean up the mess left by the bombs and took a neighborhood collection to replace tableware smashed in the attack.  Read More