Stevie Wonder Boycotts Stand-Your-Ground States - Really?

So let me get this straight, Mr. Wonder. You consider states in which you are required by law to attempt to run away, thereby turning your back on a potentially dangerous assailant or in which you must actually wait until you are fired upon, struck or, preferably, shot first by an assailant before you are allowed to defend yourself somehow safer than states where, if you are attacked you don't have to run away or wait till you are shot when you are assaulted?  Who is safer under such a system, Stevie?  Certainly not the folk on the receiving end of assaults, robberies and what Rachel Jeantel (the girl on the phone with Trayvon Martin" calls "an ass whooping".

"Do not harm your attacker" seems to be the message the anti stand-your-ground folk like Stevie are trying to deliver to innocent folk everywhere. So are we not, therefore, teaching our children that it is better to be the attacker than to be the innocent victim - at least so far as your potential survival is concerned?  Are we not virtually guaranteeing the shaping of a society in which the aggressor is the protected person and in which the victim must submit to what Rachel Jeantel colorfully described as a deserved "ass whooping" or face jail time. Rachel Jeantel further claimed in a CNN interview that Mr. Zimmerman didn't understand that Travon "went back" only in order to administer a beating, not to murder George Zimmerman.  Travon's assault was, she explained to an aghast Piers Morgan, not as an attempt to kill Zimmerman, but, according to Jeantel, because Travon thought Zimmerman was gay and needed to be taught a lesson so that Zimmerman wouldn't attempt to molest Travon's family members.  If, as Jeantel maintains, George had simply taken his beating none of this would have happened.

Someone needs to keep that girl off television if they're going to ever maintain the "poor little innocent boy" image of Martin the politicos are using to stir things up. I am just as sorry this happened as anyone, but is this the case the left wants to hang its humanity on?  With the incredible rate of slaughter going on lately in Chicago, which has strict gun control and no stand-you-ground laws, one has to wonder as to the efficacy of this strategy. Recently a kid Travon's age was found behind a Chicago dumpster four days after gang members beat him to death for refusing to join a gang. Is this what happens to the innocent in a society that tells you that you may not arm yourself for self-defense and that you must run or submit to being shot or struck if you don't?

Who exactly are we defending by insisting on a mass repeal of stand-you-ground laws. I know in my home state, the rates of assaults, home invasions and burglaries dropped significantly when my state adopted the castle doctrine.  In my heavily armed neck of the woods it certainly did.  If someone levels a gun at you or raises a fist or club to strike you, your odds of survival go way down if you do not act fast and first. I fail to see how a person being attacked would find it better to be shot or struck in the back than to stop the attacker by any means at hand.

Or perhaps we should simply make a law that all would-be attackers must wear a t-shirt that says, "I'm not going to kill you, just administer an ass whooping" just to make sure we submit to our well-deserved beatings and don't try to shoot assailants or cause them unnecessary trauma.

Well, there are some 30 states in the US with "stand-your-ground" or "castle" laws.  That leaves Stevie just 20 states he can sing in. This is a free country.  Stevie can do that.  And even though Stevie has a nice voice and does some really good songs, I can boycott HIS music.

It's a free country.  I can do that.

For now.

Just sayin'

© 2013 by Tom King

Activists Beware - Boycotts are a Two-Edged Sword.

From an original comment posted on Nonprofit Quarterly:  by Tom King (c) 2012





Chik-Fil-A employee takes water to thirsty gay protesters.


• The above referenced NPQ article was headlined: Boycotts; They Still Got It! Chick-fil-A Reportedly to Stop Funding Anti-Gay Groups.  In the article, editor Ruth McCambridge reported that the boycott of "Chick-Fil-A" had been successful.  When I commented that maybe one shouldn't gloat over the success of these kinds of boycotts, since the result was that Chik-Fil-A cut off all funding to any political group and that other corporations were likely to follow their example - especially since, as I pointed out in a comment that boycotts are a two-edged sword.  Ruth wrote back complaining that she wasn't gloating, but that maybe she was in the headline, but she stood by "the process point" which seemed to be "Nanny nanny boo boo, we beat Chik-Fil-A."

I didn't mean to disparage the article when I used the term "gloating". The article was fairly balanced for NPQ, though the headline was not.  Nor did I wish to get into a debate over semantics, which is what this whole thing is about in the end.

As Rush Limbaugh opines on a regular basis, "The law is a teacher." The LGBT folk, in insisting that same-sex alliances, be not only legalized, but called "marriage", have recognized this principle. Let's face it, the reason for their insistence that it be called "marriage" and not some sort of "civil union" is because they hope to teach our society that same-sex relationships are no different from traditional marriages. For conservative Christians, it's an attempt to legitimize what they believe to be a "sin" by simply renaming it.

Not that there is not already plenty of that going on, just not that many sins get canonized into law. Suppose a law were to be passed that redefines robbery as something else, like, say, "redistribution of wealth". Suppose we decided to call lying something else, like say, "political speech". We've already lost the redefinition fight over "adultery" and "greed" (now called "true love" and "good business"). Seems a shame to plant our flag over gay "marriage", after letting the rest of it slide.

Ah, well, I suppose the whole thing is a lost cause. The Bible does say some pretty bleak things about the condition of the world at the end of time after all. The confusing thing is that while we've learned a lot as a culture in America about the Golden Rule, we seem hell-bent to legislate any other form of morality out of existence. It seems like everybody's got a favorite sin they'd like to get made legal. While I have no problem with people committing all manner of sins so long as they aren't committing them against me, it does bother me to be villified for believing something is wrong that I know to be wrong. We should be careful about that.

The pro-Eugenics crowd in the early part of the last century attempted to create laws that would alter long-held beliefs about who had the right to live and who did not. Legislating morality is always a dangerous business. One of the reasons I like the English language is that there are so many different words in it, that you can always find a precise term for everything. Co-opting an existing word for other purposes tends to muddy the language, which is, of course the point of calling a same-sex union a "marriage".

Shakespeare once wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Apparently, the LGBT lobby doesn't think so. Conservatives like me do.  Give LGBT couples the rights, but for heaven's sake, call it something else. The whole issue is a difference of opinion that should be debated openly. I hope it doesn't degenerate to dueling boycotts. This country is in tough enough financial shape without politics suppressing business.

Tom