Monday, January 26, 2015

A tweet that caused pain

Perhaps you saw the notice on Facebook on Friday.

The “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United Methodist Church, Bill Mefford, posted a picture to Twitter mocking the pro-life marchers on the 40th anniversary of Woe v Wade. Mefford, who works for the Church’s lobby arm, the General Board of Church and Society, ridiculed the marchers by posting a picture of himself standing before them with a sign saying “I march for sandwiches.”

Many took umbrage with the picture. Mefford apologized and we go on.

But I wanted to take a minute here. I've met Mefford and found him to be a real down-to-earth concerned loving person. He has worked with the homeless. He has worked with immigrants. He has worked in areas that some of us haven't worked.

And there is no doubt he stands for the rights of women.

He was just wrong.

As someone wrote the other day, a great proportion of the pro-life marchers are young people. They are volunteers, unpaid and untrained. Mefford, on the other hand, is a grown man, one whose actual job is to represent Christians in the public square. How is it, then, that if we compare Mefford and the young marchers, the adolescents are the ones who come out looking like adults?

Abortion in this country is, or should be, a serious subject, still. How is it that in the culture wars this has become such a joke to some, especially the Director of Civil and Human Rights, of which it would seem to me to be such a basic human right, that of life itself?

I've come a long way toward the left on many subjects by looking and listening and learning, but on this one subject, I can't move.

I encourage serious discussion on all subjects that we find separate us. Mefford apparently does not. Of that an apology will not dissuade.

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