Hypocrisy 101
The vetting of Judge Sonia Sotomayor
By Ellen Snortland 07/23/2009
Does Republican US Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have cotton in his brains? I was listening to the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor today and was gobsmacked to hear Graham’s “lecture” about the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. Graham, in his southern gentleman drawl, droned, “Because I think fundamentally, judge, you’re able, after all these years of being a judge, to embrace a right that you may not want for yourself, to allow others to do things that are not comfortable to you but for the group, they’re necessary. That is my hope for you. That, to me, is what makes you more acceptable as a judge and not an activist because an activist would be a judge who would be champing at the bit to use this wonderful opportunity to change America through the Supreme Court by taking their view of life and imposing it on the rest of us. I think and believe, based on what I know about you so far, that you’re broad-minded enough to understand that America is bigger than the Bronx, it is bigger than South Carolina.”
I am a person who is ardently, openly and publicly pro-choice in the now understood usage of “pro-choice,” the label for people who believe in a woman’s fundamental right to decide when and with whom she will bear children. Go back and reread Graham’s statement but apply it to abortion and reproductive rights. Does the senator from South Carolina not understand that his patronizing statement to Sotomayor is the VERY same principle that abortion rights folks have been standing for since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973?
What kind of disconnect has to exist for a public official to fight for the right to bear arms and yet fight against a woman’s right to bear children or not?
I’m going to come out of the closet here as a pro-choice Second Amendment person in the mold of the type of person Graham stated he believes Judge Sotomayor to be. With regard to gun rights, I too am able, as Graham put it, “to embrace a right that you may not want for yourself, to allow others to do things that are not comfortable to you but for the group, they’re necessary.” I do not own a gun. I probably will never own one. I am a skilled shooter. I have had fun on firing ranges. As a self-defense advocate, I am often asked about carrying weapons.
My usual answer to someone who asks if they should own or carry a gun is this: Owning a gun is a serious responsibility. If you decide you need one, understand that you hold a tool that could extinguish life without much effort. You’ve got to train with it, store it properly and make sure that no one else can get to it. That said, please don’t substitute a gun for learning the basic skills of protecting yourself with your own body. Know that any gun owner may not always have access to the gun when it is needed most. On the other hand, no matter where you are — in the shower, in an elevator, on a train — you always have your own body with you. Your elbow will always be harder than an assailant’s face. A gun, or mace, or pepper spray may not be handy. You can’t say, “Oh, wait a minute Mr. Assailant, I need to find my gun. Oh, man, my purse can be such a mess!”
I understand that with this pro-choice gun stance I open myself up to attack. Gun rights are as divisive as reproductive rights. And that makes sense because they both deal with life and death issues. But as Sen. Graham put it, I have decided I need “to allow others to do things that are not comfortable to me, but for the group they’re necessary.”
It would be truly hypocritical of me to insist that other people not own guns — even though I CHOOSE to be unarmed — because I do not presume to walk in anyone else’s shoes. Some people live lives that make arms necessary. It’s not up to me to decide.
Do I support restrictions on gun ownership? Of course I do! Really. I do not want any Tom, Dick or Harry, or Tanya, Denise or Harriet, to walk into any store and buy a gun. Indeed, to be even more honest, I often muse that we should consider licensing people to bear children. Just because people CAN reproduce doesn’t necessarily mean that they SHOULD reproduce. I am being facetious, of course.
But I do have relatives who probably could never have passed a parenting license test.
Indeed, it looks like Sotomayor will be deemed to be “broad-minded” enough to ease the fears that so many conservatives apparently have of “broads” joining longtime all-male power bastions. I do hope, however, that Graham’s Second Amendment pro-choice statement will return to “broadside” him about reproductive rights. Hey — a broad can hope, can’t she?
Contact Ellen at snortland.com.
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