Long before I got to this article, I knew that the Supreme Court had published its ruling on Abortion, and that it was as draconian and out of sync with American society as it is possible to imagine. Justice Thomas (Holy Cross, Class of 72) seldom publishes an opinion but his opinion says that other aspects of life -- contraception, same sex marriage, and anything covered by the concept of privacy -- are now open for re-evaluation. Because if Roe goes, and it is in fact now gone, the modern legal concept of privacy is dead.
I knew all this because my inbox was staggering under the weight of requests, actually demands for my signature; and, probably, demands for $5 or 10 or whatever amount I could send whomever was asking for that signature.
I don't normally sign petitions, and probably won't start doing so again. When Clarence Thomas and I were wandering around Worcester, our daily travels would begin by visiting the campus center to check our mail, and maybe get a cup of coffee. The lobby of the campus center during those years (September 1969 - June 1973) was filled daily with student organizations collecting signatures for worthy causes. Most of them wanted to stop racism, cure poverty, end the war in Vietnam and end sexism. I generally signed most of them, as did all students of good mind and heart. We were imitating the Chaplain in the Animals' number Sky Pilot, being "good holy men" by attesting to values we were doing nothing credible to achieve or promote.
Signing petitions doesn't do much of anything, except get lunatics and fanatics on election slates and allow fools, charlatans and other oddities of the left and right a vehicle to make every corner our own American Speakers' corner.
At this point, life is fairly simple. If you want to preserve the rights of women to manage their own bodies and health, if you want to preserve the right to privacy, if you want to preserve equal rights for gay marriage, if you want to preserve the right to be screwed up and gnarly, then you have one choice going forward. The Republicans have won their 50 years of struggle for a third awakening of religious zealots and various fellow travelers. It's going to take a lot to re-establish the rights of women to manage their own health; it's going to take a lot to preserve the rights to gay marriage, to inter-racial marriage, to contraception and on and on and on. Battles we all thought won, fragile victory or not, through Roe and the modern concept of privacy.
It's simple. Vote Democratic. Send money to Democratic campaigns. And do so every election cycle until a more moderate court can re-visit these issues and a more realistic set of legislators are sitting in the halls of Congress.
If you want to distribute, sign and endorse petitioning efforts, great. But if you don't vote straight D long enough to get veto proof and filibuster proof majorities in the Congress, you're going to have the same meaningless impact of those petitions that the future Justice Thomas and First Sergeant and peripatetic thinker Mike Farrell signed almost 60 years ago on Worcester mornings from September to June.
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