Monday 18 June 2018

Bible Say's Caging Kids Is Okay: Romans 13

I don't really know much about the American Government's decision to separate children from parents who are accused of illegally crossing over the American border but seeing who is heading the Government, it's obviously awful.
Even Trumps wife, Melania, has spoken out against it as reports emerge of children being held in cages at a warehouse in Texas after being separated from their parents. One cage had 20 children inside.
The chorus of criticism has been quickly rising and even the UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, called the policy 'unconscionable' as the Government put the number of separations at 2,000 since April when the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced a new 'zero-tolerance policy' to prosecute every migrant who crosses the border illegally.
Reporters who have toured the facilities where families are separated by border patrol officers describe hundreds of children wrenched away from their parents and waiting in cages with concrete floors and foil blankets.
Jeff Sessions has defended the administration’s policy by reaching for the Bible and quoted the same passage that was also used to justify slavery which you would have thought would tip him off that he was on rocky ground.
'I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order' Sessions said, 'Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful'.
Later, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea: 'It is very biblical to enforce the law'.
So tearing families apart and putting kids in a cage is perfectly justified in the Trump administration as it was in 1850 when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act which allowed escaped slaves to be forcibly returned to their owners.
While nothing the idiot Trump does should surprise us, the image of kids being dragged away from their parents and held in cages and using the Bible to justify it should be a lurch towards authoritarianism that anyone with a moral compass should be up in arms about.
That said, the American right-wing religious nuts who support Trump are not known for their ability to judge what is right and wrong, the amazingly awful gun laws they uphold are a case in point of that so why would they care about the uncivilised, inhumane and cruel way the children of immigrants entering and living in the USA are being treated.

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