Dear Editor,
The usually balanced Rev Raulston Nembhard used the Jesus' reference for obedience to the State, "Render unto Caesar" to argue that the state clerk, Kim Davis, in Kentucky was wrong in her refusal to issue marriage licences to gay couples, that in such a matter she cannot by guided by her conscience, she must comply or resign.
It is one of the oldest questions in human experience whether the individual can refuse to obey a State mandate when the individual is convinced that the State's mandate violates some fundamental code of human conduct, "natural law", which is superior to human law.
It is one of the oldest questions in human experience whether the individual can refuse to obey a State mandate when the individual is convinced that the State's mandate violates some fundamental code of human conduct, "natural law", which is superior to human law.
That is the theme of Sophocles' Greek tragedy, Antigone: Whether a woman's natural duty to give the rites of burial to her rebel brother, entitled her to defy the ruler's edict that his body be left to rot in the field. The playwright and the Greeks believed that Antigone did the right thing and, although she was executed, Creon, the ruler was in the end discredited and destroyed.
Men and women have, based on ethical or religious beliefs, defied State edicts in the USA that declared black people to be subhumans who should be returned to their owners if they ran away. In the communist world, religious leaders have administered the sacraments of faith in defiance of State edicts. The judgement of history has been on the side of the defiant ones. In the present case, the Supreme Court of the USA has authorised gay unions.These justices have given State sanction to unnatural unions, the falsification of gender difference and the destruction of the normal family that has been the cradle of civilisation. This woman, like all the heroes before her, has appealed to this higher natural law that when the state commands the citizen to do something fundamentally unnatural, immoral, or unethical, the individual has a right to resist. This woman is a hero, she is a prisoner of conscience in the decadent United States of America.
Orville Brown
Bronx, USA
Kim Davis is a hero
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The usually balanced Rev Raulston Nembhard used the Jesus' reference for obedience to the State, "Render unto Caesar" to argue that the state clerk, Kim Davis, in Kentucky was wrong in her refusal to issue marriage licences to gay couples, that in such a matter she cannot by guided by her conscience, she must comply or resign.
It is one of the oldest questions in human experience whether the individual can refuse to obey a State mandate when the individual is convinced that the State's mandate violates some fundamental code of human conduct, "natural law", which is superior to human law.
It is one of the oldest questions in human experience whether the individual can refuse to obey a State mandate when the individual is convinced that the State's mandate violates some fundamental code of human conduct, "natural law", which is superior to human law.
That is the theme of Sophocles' Greek tragedy, Antigone: Whether a woman's natural duty to give the rites of burial to her rebel brother, entitled her to defy the ruler's edict that his body be left to rot in the field. The playwright and the Greeks believed that Antigone did the right thing and, although she was executed, Creon, the ruler was in the end discredited and destroyed.
Men and women have, based on ethical or religious beliefs, defied State edicts in the USA that declared black people to be subhumans who should be returned to their owners if they ran away. In the communist world, religious leaders have administered the sacraments of faith in defiance of State edicts. The judgement of history has been on the side of the defiant ones. In the present case, the Supreme Court of the USA has authorised gay unions.These justices have given State sanction to unnatural unions, the falsification of gender difference and the destruction of the normal family that has been the cradle of civilisation. This woman, like all the heroes before her, has appealed to this higher natural law that when the state commands the citizen to do something fundamentally unnatural, immoral, or unethical, the individual has a right to resist. This woman is a hero, she is a prisoner of conscience in the decadent United States of America.
Orville Brown
Bronx, USA
Kim Davis is a hero
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