Among the terrible things Donald Trump has done in his time in office is to encourage our worst emotions and stoke our fears. Hey, hate those who are different. America used to be like that. It should not be. We can progress beyond that.
In late April, the Legacy Museum for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama. This six-acre project is dedicated to over 4400 victims of racially-motivated murders in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. It is the nation’s first memorial addressing the treatment of enslaved black people. They were dehumanized, raped, hanged, burned, and mutilated. This led to racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, and police brutality.
Work on the museum started in 2010 by the Equal Justice Initiative. The group investigated the crimes, the terror and trauma that led to them. Six million black people fled the South. This led to “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror” in 2015. The staff visited lynching sites, collected soil samples and erected public markers. Artists, such as Kwame Akoto-Bamfo created sculptures for the memorial square where 800 six-foot hanging blocks of corten steel at varying heights represent the counties where the atrocities took place. With each is a plaque describing the prey and the incidents. The trip through the museum ends with a display of current events dealing with police violence and hate crimes. For details see: contact_us@eji.org.
Homophobia is on the rise. There has been an eighty percent rise in LGBTQ attacks in England and France since 2016. In 13 United Nation member states, consensual same-sex is punishable by death.
In nine countries there is constitutional protection for same-sex involvement. In 26 countries, including the United States, adoption by gay couples is lawful, except in Texas, where the House of Representatives approved a bill that would allow foster care and adoption agencies to refuse to place children with families that go against their religious beliefs, including to gay couples. The bill may soon be approved by the state Senate, and signed by the governor’s signature becoming law. “The energy of the Trump era is very much opening the gateways for this kind of very regressive discourse,” Aengus Carroll an Ireland-based human rights consultant and researcher said.
According to Masha Gessen, Mississippi House Bill 1523, also known as the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act, aka the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, went into effect in 2017. It legalizes discrimination based on any of 3 beliefs: “that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, that sexual relations can take place only within such a marriage, and that gender is an immutable biological characteristic.” Doctors, lawyers, and adoption agencies, and others, may now discriminate on the basis of sexual and gender identity.
Early that year the Trump Administration rescinded protections allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice. Then Trump signed an executive order directing his Attorney General to support and defend religious-freedom laws like the one in Mississippi. In July 2017 he tweeted a ban on transgender service members. Fortunately, the Pentagon has ignored the order. Then the Justice Department filed a Supreme Court brief supporting a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Then, Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed U.S. Attorneys to stop interpreting federal law as protecting transgender employees from discrimination.
Bigots and homophobes are the problem. Some cite religion as an excuse. This can’t be right because all Christians are not. The flaw is within themselves by ignorance or inanity. They do not represent the best in America. If you know such a troubled soul speak out. We have become too divided to let this continue.
Ed Fisher is a Morning Sun columnist.