The other day I was working the election and a man came through from my church. After I took his paperwork from him he went to use the machine and had some trouble getting the ballot to slide through, which is not uncommon with these new machines we are using. They are tricky, and don't even get me started on the one for "disabled" voters. Whoever came up with that one ought to be punished by sitting in a wheelchair and being forced to use it all day. It took two of us "able-bodied" election officials several minutes figuring out how and where to put the test ballot in to verify that the machine was working properly, only to have it jam, rendering it unusable for the rest of the day. So the wheelchair-using voters ended up using a table in the corner to mark their ballots which we then put in the regular machine and everyone was much happier I think.
As he came back to my table he said something about the machine being "retarded" or himself being "retarded". Now I didn't call him out on that although in my younger, more combative years I might very well have, and ended up being booted off the election board as a result. I just let it go.
It was clear that this was just a casual word to him. He'd obviously not felt the sting of being labeled thus or any of his family members thus. It was simply ignorance. But, as Anna Sewell says in "Black Beauty", next to wickedness, "only ignorance" is the worst thing in the world and which causes the more mischief no one can tell.
A while back the Knights of Columbus, along with Lions Club International, started a campaign to end the use of the "R-word", a campaign I fully endorse. Because any time you use the R-word, you are making a judgement on the kind of people this word was first used to describe. That goes for some of the other words, moron, imbecile, you get my drift.
There was a time when people legally labeled as such were forcibly locked up, forcibly sterilized, as part of a eugenics program that was extremely popular in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. Hitler and his Nazis borrowed from the American program and took it to its logical conclusion. Eugenics went underground after that but it has quietly resurfaced in the form of genetic counseling. Of course, genetic counselors bristle at the idea that they are on a "search and destroy" mission, but it is a lot cleaner and easier to eliminate someone at the cellular embryonic stage than to abort a more developed fetus.
In 1980 a baby boy was born in Bloomington, Indiana who had Down's syndrome and an incomplete esophagus. It would have been a simple matter to do surgery to connect his esophagus to his stomach so he could eat properly, but the boy's parents along with his doctors, decided to do nothing. So Baby Doe, as he was known, was allowed to starve to death in the hospital. It took a week. Now, I work in animal research and there are a lot of people who don't like the fact that animals are used in research, but I can tell you that no lab animal in my facility would ever be allowed to suffer as did Baby Doe in that week. There are very strict federal regulations governing the treatment of laboratory animals. But Baby Doe did suffer, and his death raised a big stink, so much so that the Reagan Administration passed the Baby Doe regulations to prevent such a reoccurrence. And of course there was opposition to the Baby Doe regulations. Peter Singer, the darling of the animal rights movement, wrote an article defending the parents' and doctors' decision to starve Baby Doe, saying that a dog or a pig actually had more of a right to life than a handicapped newborn. It's called "Quality of Life or Sanctity of Life" and I'm sure it can be found online.
I just wonder, though, if Baby Doe's parents were the type to use the word "retard" on a daily basis. I just wonder if they ever teased handicapped children when they were younger. In other words, how much did bias and prejudice influence their decision to walk away from their son and let him starve? I have heard that Baby Doe cried that week while he was dying. No one to pick him up, no one to comfort him.
And so, when I hear someone use the word "retard" on a casual basis, I cannot look at it so casually. Especially when the person who uses it considers him or herself a Christian. I knew a woman who would not go to see a Harry Potter movie to save her life, because it glorified witchcraft, but had no problems whatsoever sharing the latest "retard" joke.
When I first met Pastor, I told him that his Christ did not die for everyone. His Christ only died for normal people. His Christ did not die for the autistic, for retards, for anyone not accepted by society. He gave me a pained look, for I was challenging something very precious to him. But I have yet to hear him speak on this topic.
As he came back to my table he said something about the machine being "retarded" or himself being "retarded". Now I didn't call him out on that although in my younger, more combative years I might very well have, and ended up being booted off the election board as a result. I just let it go.
It was clear that this was just a casual word to him. He'd obviously not felt the sting of being labeled thus or any of his family members thus. It was simply ignorance. But, as Anna Sewell says in "Black Beauty", next to wickedness, "only ignorance" is the worst thing in the world and which causes the more mischief no one can tell.
A while back the Knights of Columbus, along with Lions Club International, started a campaign to end the use of the "R-word", a campaign I fully endorse. Because any time you use the R-word, you are making a judgement on the kind of people this word was first used to describe. That goes for some of the other words, moron, imbecile, you get my drift.
There was a time when people legally labeled as such were forcibly locked up, forcibly sterilized, as part of a eugenics program that was extremely popular in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century. Hitler and his Nazis borrowed from the American program and took it to its logical conclusion. Eugenics went underground after that but it has quietly resurfaced in the form of genetic counseling. Of course, genetic counselors bristle at the idea that they are on a "search and destroy" mission, but it is a lot cleaner and easier to eliminate someone at the cellular embryonic stage than to abort a more developed fetus.
In 1980 a baby boy was born in Bloomington, Indiana who had Down's syndrome and an incomplete esophagus. It would have been a simple matter to do surgery to connect his esophagus to his stomach so he could eat properly, but the boy's parents along with his doctors, decided to do nothing. So Baby Doe, as he was known, was allowed to starve to death in the hospital. It took a week. Now, I work in animal research and there are a lot of people who don't like the fact that animals are used in research, but I can tell you that no lab animal in my facility would ever be allowed to suffer as did Baby Doe in that week. There are very strict federal regulations governing the treatment of laboratory animals. But Baby Doe did suffer, and his death raised a big stink, so much so that the Reagan Administration passed the Baby Doe regulations to prevent such a reoccurrence. And of course there was opposition to the Baby Doe regulations. Peter Singer, the darling of the animal rights movement, wrote an article defending the parents' and doctors' decision to starve Baby Doe, saying that a dog or a pig actually had more of a right to life than a handicapped newborn. It's called "Quality of Life or Sanctity of Life" and I'm sure it can be found online.
I just wonder, though, if Baby Doe's parents were the type to use the word "retard" on a daily basis. I just wonder if they ever teased handicapped children when they were younger. In other words, how much did bias and prejudice influence their decision to walk away from their son and let him starve? I have heard that Baby Doe cried that week while he was dying. No one to pick him up, no one to comfort him.
And so, when I hear someone use the word "retard" on a casual basis, I cannot look at it so casually. Especially when the person who uses it considers him or herself a Christian. I knew a woman who would not go to see a Harry Potter movie to save her life, because it glorified witchcraft, but had no problems whatsoever sharing the latest "retard" joke.
When I first met Pastor, I told him that his Christ did not die for everyone. His Christ only died for normal people. His Christ did not die for the autistic, for retards, for anyone not accepted by society. He gave me a pained look, for I was challenging something very precious to him. But I have yet to hear him speak on this topic.
