Limits Of Religious Freedom, How Do We Know Who Is Good?, And How Many Wheelchairs Do Airlines Lose Or Break A Month?

The title doesn't necessarily reflect the aim of the authors of these three stories, but it does reflect what I took from them.


1.  Limits of Religious Freedom.   This is as good a description of how I view freedom of religion's boundaries.

From Washington Post article on South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg,  running for president.  The article also offers a way to pronounce his name offered by his husband.

“Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others,” he said. “One of the problems with RFRA* was it authorized harming others so long as you remembered to use your religion as an excuse.”

*Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015

Of course, this still leaves lots of room for debate on what 'harming others' entails.

The article also discusses Buttigieg's own religious faith (it's not uninformed) and his bid to get the religious left more active in the next round of elections.


2.  Judging People In The Era Of Non-Stop Headline News

This next one is about James Comey and it raises interesting questions about who becomes a hero and who doesn't in our modern age.  It seems - she doesn't say this, but it's my takeaway - we often judge people nowadays by one action rather than the totality of their lives.  (And you can also question why we're judging other people rather than working on ourselves.)

From the Bulwark:  Why Do We Love To Hate James Comey?

"Comey has six children, all with the same woman. He has been married to his wife since roughly the Pliocene epoch and in his spare time they serve as emergency foster parents for homeless kids. No, really. He explained to NPR that, as foster parents, they often get more love out of these relationships than they put into them, even. “Little boy who came to us born a month premature in a homeless shelter to a drug-addicted mother and born in very very difficult circumstances so we got him right out of the hospital,” Comey said of one of his many foster children. That baby boy was later adopted, but, as NPR reports, the Comeys still watch him a couple times a week. “[W]e’ve stayed very close,” Comey said. “We’ll look after him his whole life.”
As I said: A good man. A fine human being.
But good people can still be annoying as fuck and James Comey is proof of this."

3.  The importance of diversity in the legislature.  From the LA Times:

"The largest U.S. airlines damaged or lost a daily average of 26 wheelchairs and scooters used by disabled passengers in December, according to a report championed by a lawmaker who lost both legs while serving in Iraq.
From Dec. 4 to Dec. 31, the 12 largest carriers damaged or lost 701 passengers’ wheelchairs and scooters, according to the first report of its kind from the U.S."

It took a wheelchair bound Senator - Tammy Duckworth of Illinois who lost her mobility in a helicopter crash in Iraq - to require the FAA to report such losses.

It took a disabled US Senator to get attention paid to this problem.  I don't know how many people bring their wheelchairs to the airport each day.  I know there's usually five to ten waiting for passengers when I get off planes, so the total number of wheelchairs might be huge and 26 per day isn't that high a percentage.  But it's HUGE for the person who needs the chair.  Can you imagine being dependent on your wheelchair to get around and find out when you got off the plane, yours had been lost or damaged?


Enjoy your weekend!