I do not believe I am alone in suspecting that the Milam account of Till’s last words was an outright fabrication. Milam wanted it to look as if Emmett had brought the murder on himself by boasting, and that perhaps a little humility could have saved him. Milam was trying to exonerate himself in white Southerners’ opinions by painting himself as an agent of the intimidation that forced black people themselves to accept white supremacy, and, perhaps more importantly, by portraying himself as a valiant defender of the taboo against interracial relationships between black men and white women.
But Milam failed on both counts. In fact, his efforts backfired.
Milam and Bryant were unable to get loans to do business in the Mississippi Delta after giving that interview. Both of them had to leave the area in shame. And both Milam and Bryant saw their marriages end in the wake of the trial. Their wives decided to leave them and start lives free of the stigma of being married to murderous white supremacists. The South was beginning to change, although very slowly.
Racist violence declined in popularity in the wake of the Till open-casket funeral, which had forced the whole nation to confront the horror of lynching. The name of one woman who was moved by that open casket should be familiar to you. I am referring to Rosa Parks. After she saw Emmet Till’s horribly disfigured face, she was inspired to refuse to give up her seat to a white person on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. In death, Emmett had helped launch the Civil Rights Movement.
In many respects, things have gotten better since Emmet Till’s death. And they will get better still. (Not that you’d know that from listening to progressives. They always seek to enhance the allure of their future utopia by exaggerating the misery of our present reality. They’re also not big fans of the United States Constitution, which they frequently point out was written and ratified by a bunch of racist slave owners. But the First Amendment played a major role in the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Without a free press, the corpse of Emmet Till would have moved few people.)
The legacy of Emmett Till continues to resonate in the battle against another human rights abuse. The Center for Bioethical Reform has started the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), using the same logic behind the decision to open Emmett Till’s casket. In fact, they specifically cite Till’s open-casket funeral and its after-effects as a justification for GAP.
The GAP mission involves going to college campuses and putting up pictures of aborted children behind tables where students can get information about abortion. GAP volunteers talk to students about the racist origins of Planned Parenthood and the disproportionate effect abortion has had on the black community. As a result, there is a new civil rights movement forming in America. It focuses on the senseless murder of children much younger and even more helpless than Emmett Till.
LETTER 32
Men without Spines
Zach,
What you wrote me about how your life has been changing in the past month is truly phenomenal. It seems that God has been doing momentous things this summer. Congratulations on being ready to start your senior year in college with a new sense of your mission to defend the Truth in a hostile environment. Today I’m going to write you on that subject.
It is difficult for me to imagine many of today’s young men as grandfathers. It is especially difficult when I think of the last time I saw my grandfather alive. It was one afternoon during the summer of ’77 when we were in Birmingham, Alabama. We had all planned to go to the mall to shop for the entire afternoon. But that was before my grandfather fell and hit an iron furnace, badly cutting the back of his left hand. I can still see him standing in the doorway waving goodbye as we left without him. His right hand was clutching the walker he had used for almost as long as I knew him.
My grandfather used that walker because there was a piece of shrapnel lodged somewhere in his lower back. It was there because a hand grenade had gone off near him when he was fighting in France during World War I. He was only nineteen years old when it happened.
He used to tell us war stories—including the time he lied about his age in order to join the U.S. Army fighting against Pancho Villa somewhere down in Texas. That was some time around 1916. He was actually old enough to fight legally in the First World War. He spent his nineteenth birthday in a foxhole in France getting trench foot. It was shortly thereafter that he came out of that same foxhole and got a piece of a hand grenade lodged in his back.
The difference between men in my grandfather’s generation and young men today can be roughly summarized as follows: Men in my grandfather’s generation were willing to lie to get into a fight, even if it meant they might lose their lives. Men in today’s generation are willing to lie to avoid a fight, even when their lives are not remotely in jeopardy.
I see this contrast every summer when I come out to Colorado to teach at Summit Ministries. The young women are always fired up and ready to advance the truth in our often contentious cultural wars. But many of the young men will latch on to any Bible verse and twist its meaning until they can justify doing absolutely nothing. That assumes, of course, that you consider playing video games to be doing nothing. The only battles in which some of these males engage are fought by pointing a joystick at a television screen. (I know they don’t call them “joysticks” any more but I think you understand my point.)
When young Christian males challenge my sometimes aggressive tactics in the campus cultural wars, they tend to rely on the same handful of Bible verses:1. Matthew 5:39. In this oft-quoted verse, Jesus tells us to turn and offer the other cheek after someone strikes us.
2. Luke 6:29 and Matthew 5:40. In these parallel verses, Jesus tells us to give someone our cloak when he asks for it. In fact, Jesus tells us we should also give the person our tunic—literally, the shirt off our back—and if someone sues us for our shirt, we should hand over our coat as well.
3. Romans 12:18. In this verse, Paul tells us that we should, whenever possible, live in peace with all people.
These verses are often specifically brought up by young Christian men who object to Christian involvement in litigation. I respond to the first objection by suggesting that turning the other cheek is the appropriate Christian response to personal insults. I concur fully with young men who say we should not respond to personal insults.
But it certainly does not follow that Christians should never take a stand for Jesus. If we never stand up for Jesus, no one is ever likely to slap our faces or insult us in any way. Clearly, those who use this verse to justify total passivity are stretching the verse beyond all recognition.
I respond to the second objection—the shirt-off-our-back objection—by asking this fundamental question: We have a right to give away our own tunic, but does that mean we also have a right to give away somebody else’s?
The question is a fair one in this context because the point of litigation is so often to assert the rights of college Christian groups. For example, a few years ago the Student Government Association at Georgia Tech told a Christian group’s leaders that they could not be funded from student activity fees—which members of the group had paid along with all other students—because they are a religious group and only secular groups could receive funding. Therefore, Christians were paying to support all of the secular groups but not getting any money themselves. The problem was that the United States Supreme Court had ruled (six years earlier!) that this was illegal.
When approached about asserting the constitutional rights of the Christian group, the group’s leader refused to even consider litigation. So, in effect, he gave away the rights of every other person in the group. In fact, it’s worse than that. He gave away the rights of every member of every other Christian group on campus, too. Did Jesus really want him to give away the rights of other people—basic constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion that were earned by other people fighting wars in service to our country? I certainly don’t think so, and I doubt my grandfather would think so either.
Before
you give your answer, consider this: If all secular groups are funded and no Christian groups are funded, then doesn’t that mean that only the secular worldview is advanced with student fees? Doesn’t that mean that souls will be lost because of Christian apathy? Is it really possible to square this with the Great Commission?
I respond to the final objection—from Romans 12:18—by reminding people that Paul told us we should live in peace with others whenever possible. But sometimes that just isn’t possible. Prior to every lawsuit I am ever involved in, a letter is sent to the offending party explaining the exact nature of the perceived legal transgression. This is done in private so that the offending party is spared the prospect of humiliation. They have an opportunity to back out before being embarrassed in any way—either in the court of public opinion or in a court of law.
But the heart of the offending party is often hardened by the mere suggestion that they may be doing wrong. In fact, sometimes they respond with hostility, daring Christian lawyers to proceed with litigation—and so they do.
A large part of the problem comes from the law of qualified immunity. Under qualified immunity, government officials who are put in charge of enforcing government regulations are given protection from paying personal damages in the event of litigation. This would seem to make intuitive sense. If it became too easy to sue government officials and make them personally pay damages, no one would want to take on the role of public servant. But qualified immunity is only supposed to apply when a government official is acting in “reasonable reliance” on the law. In other words, if the official violated the law but was a) in fact unaware of it and also b) reasonably unaware of it, then the official cannot be sued.
The key to assessing reasonableness is determining whether the average, ordinary person would have been aware of the legal violation. If the average person would not have been aware that they were violating the law, then why punish the officials who violated it? Society has no interest in deterring reasonable conduct—only unreasonable conduct. The problem, of course, is that people will often try to “play dumb” and pretend they were unaware of wrong-doing. Enter Jonathan Lopez.
I first heard of Jonathan Lopez when he was a nineteen-year-old student at Los Angeles Community College (LACC). Some time during the fall semester of 2009, he was asked to give an informative speech on a topic of his own choosing. He chose to give his speech on the impact God has had on his life. That’s when the trouble began.
Jonathan’s professor, John Matteson, was fine with the speech until Lopez read a Bible verse dealing with marriage—specifically, affirming the traditional definition of marriage. When Jonathan read that verse, Professor Matteson jumped up out of his chair and called Lopez a “fascist bastard.” When the startled students turned toward Matteson, he simply asked them whether anyone had been offended by what Jonathan had said. When no one reported being offended, Matteson became very angry and dismissed the entire class.
The walk from the podium back to his seat in the rear of the class must have been a long one for Jonathan Lopez. But he had to make it because he needed to gather his belongings before heading to his next class. When he leaned down to pick up his book bag he noticed that it was unzipped. Professor Matteson had slipped a piece of paper into the bag. On that piece of paper was only one sentence: “Ask God what your grade is.”
Jonathan did the right thing in response to Professor Matteson’s mocking refusal to grade his speech. He went to see an LACC administrator about resolving the issue so he could get credit for the speech and, hopefully, pass the class. But his meeting with the administrator was not successful. The speech remained ungraded, and the situation remained unresolved.
That is when Jonathan decided to call my good friends at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). They immediately took the case and wrote a letter to the president of LACC. It was a clear, concise letter explaining that Jonathan Lopez had been punished for simply exercising his rights to the free exercise of religion under the United States Constitution. Remember that Matteson never told Lopez he could not quote a verse from the Bible. He was being punished for allegedly offending students, which is a violation of the LACC speech code.
The ADF could have simply filed suit. But they wrote the letter first—thus remaining in compliance with the Apostle Paul’s instruction that we are supposed to live at peace with everyone whenever possible. But in this case, peace was not possible. The president of LACC reacted arrogantly by simply giving the ADF the phone number of the Office of the Attorney General of California. At the time of the incident, the California Attorney General was none other than Jerry Brown—a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage.
In other words, LACC simply flipped the ADF the middle finger. So ADF sued on behalf of Jonathan Lopez. His efforts paid off. A federal court granted an injunction and struck down the LACC speech code in a matter of weeks. But the case was far from over.
The LACC administration dug in its heels and appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals-the most liberal circuit in the United States. Zach, you will recall that this is the circuit which, among other things, has ruled against the use of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
It is unsurprising that the Ninth Circuit decided to overrule Jonathan’s free speech victory. If there is one surprising aspect of the appeal, it is that the judges were not angry with John Matteson for using the word “God” in his infamous “Ask God what your grade is” note to Mr. Lopez. After all, the Ninth Circuit wants to ban all other references to God in the classroom. I guess some uses of the word “God” are more equal than others.
Jonathan and the ADF appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court, which unfortunately refused to grant certiorari. But the ADF and other brave Christian plaintiffs continue to defend freedom of speech on campus by means of our legal system—and they are right to do so.
Remember that Jonathan tried everything in his power to resolve this conflict peacefully—in accordance with Romans 12:18. He went and spoke to the administration. He had lawyers write a well-reasoned letter. He only sued because he was, in effect, asked to do so by a college administration that rudely thumbed its nose at him. After he won a quick legal victory, it was the anti-Christian defenders of the speech code who revived the lawsuit on appeal.
You have to respect Jonathan Lopez for showing tremendous courage since the beginning of this saga when he was just a nineteen-year old student simply trying to give a speech of encouragement and hope (not Hope). Since then, he has been mocked, insulted, and ridiculed by people who have far greater authority and influence than he does. But I suspect that, in the final analysis, all of their names will be forgotten, and he will be remembered as an exceptional man in an unexceptional generation.
We can seldom control the manner in which we will be remembered. But we all must decide whether we will live lives that will be worth remembering. I’ll never forget my grandfather because he began taking on the forces of evil and living as a warrior when he was only a teenager. For the same reason, I’ll never forget the name of Jonathan Lopez. I hope you’ll remember him, just as I hope that one day you’ll be remembered for standing tall among a generation that is shrinking.
LETTER 33
How to Answer a False Accusation of Homophobia
Zach,
In case you haven’t already noticed, the tolerance of the “tolerant” generally doesn’t run very deep. Any intellectual opposition drives leftists to extremely hostile behavior. If you criticize them or even express disagreement with their beliefs, you can expect to encounter scorn, derision, and name-calling. So you need to be ready to deal with their attacks. Let’s take the common accusation of “homophobia” as an example.
The term “homophobia” is nothing if not judgmental. It is used in an attempt to portray opponents of the gay rights movement as somehow morally deficient. But it goes beyond that to imply that the opponent of gay rights is somehow mentally disturbed. That is quite an interesting d
evelopment, when one considers the history of conflict between the gay rights movement and the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
Although it may be difficult for you to imagine, the APA characterized homosexuality as a mental illness as recently as the early 1970s. But an organized political coalition within the APA managed to have homosexuality declassified as a mental illness. They got homosexuality removed from the comprehensive list of mental illnesses known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, and eventually they set about making opposition to homosexuality look like a mental illness.
Approximately twenty years after homosexuality was declassified from the DSM, the word “homophobia” began to creep into the national debate over gay rights issues. The term first came to the attention of many Americans in 1993 soon after Bill Clinton took office as our forty-second president, in the context of the debate over Clinton’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy allowing gays to serve in the military, although not openly.
It is conceivable that a person could oppose gays in the military out of some irrational fear of homosexuals. That is what the term “homophobia” originally meant—not just a fear of homosexuals but an irrational one. But that is no longer what the term means. It now no longer describes a fear at all, but rather any sort of opposition to the gay rights agenda. Let me give you an example.
Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand Page 13