Tag Archives: Morality

Tax Day!

9 Apr

HELLO! HUMAN RIGHTS (Image by Andres Musta used under CC 2.0 via)

 

As Tax Day approaches in the United States and here in Germany, everyone will have an opinion as to which entities deserve public funding, and which are impractical, immoral, or evil. It is perhaps easier for me to remember that taxes not only support disabled people. Through health care, medical research, social work, education, and the justice system, they keep many alive. And they also help lessen the everyday physical pain experienced by some of us.

Even banal subsidies can make a substantial difference. As a German resident classified with a “Grade 50” disability, my ticket for all public transportation in the Berlin metropolitan area is subsidized so that I pay a fraction of the normal fee. This discount offsets the extra costs I regularly incur by needing to use taxis or a car rental for distances most other 35-year-olds would either walk or bike. By relieving me of this financial burden, I can have as much money saved as a pedestrian does to spend on food, clothes, rent, movies, music, houseplants, hair curlers, napkin rings, bubble gum, sealing wax, bath toys, or presents for my loved ones. Alternatively, it saves me the extra time I would have to spend walking and then recovering from the pain of walking – time which I can use to be more productive, which helps me qualify as a taxpayer capable of paying it forward to others in need of subsidies.

I have been called a freeloader. A disabled friend was told she should realize “what we have to do for you” – “we” being the non-disabled taxpayers. Many political theorists argue that the extra costs faced by disabled citizens should only be offset by privately run charities funded by donations from those who actively choose to be so morally upright. Others go so far as to advocate Social Darwinism, which would be a death sentence for many disabled people.

The intricate relationship between government and tax structures have occupied economists, political scientists, academics, philosophers, monarchs, and politicians since the legend of Robin Hood, and I have no intention of tackling it in its entirety here. But amidst the myriad points and counterpoints, one truth remains clear to me: A society that agrees to ease some of the burdens disproportionately placed upon disabled people is agreeing to ensure the existence of disabled people. And by doing so as the general public in a mandate to itself—instead of leaving it to the “good will” of a few individuals—this society tells disabled people they should be no more grateful to be alive than anyone else should. That message is crucial. While we all have varying abilities that shift in value throughout time and space, equality means that no one is altogether more important than anyone else. We must believe this if we want to claim to believe in human rights.

 

 

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When Saying “I Don’t Judge” Is Judgmental

4 Aug

Beautiful and Softly(Image by Thomas Hawk used under Creative Commons license via)

 

“I’ve learned not to judge other people.” In the debate on marriage equality, many former opponents have softened their opinions with this all-too-common phrase. While a little progress and diplomacy in any debate is better than none, this should hardly be considered an acceptable assessment of same-sex marriage. Because whenever we say, “I don’t judge,” we’re implying that we think there is something morally ambiguous to judge about the situation.

We say “I don’t judge” when we observe pain or dishonesty and are hard pressed to think of a way it could have been prevented. We say it when we observe someone lose control and we know that everyone loses control sometimes. We say it when at least two sides are sparring and both have made major mistakes. It’s dishonest to pretend that we don’t have opinions about the decisions and actions we witness, because we all do. But ultimately saying, “I don’t judge” means my opinion is incomplete because I can’t say for sure what I would do in that situation. And when the act in question falls short of intentionally cruel behavior, it is often the appropriate thing to say.

It’s appropriate when we hear about a neighbor’s divorce (“I don’t know the details of the marriage, so I can’t judge”), when we hear that someone took a job that compromised their morals (“I can’t say what I would do if I were that strapped for cash”), when we see people with parenting methods that differ from our own (“That child isn’t my child, and I don’t know what I would do if she were”). We say it not to ignore the harm it may have wrought, but in order to remain humble, to avoid hypocrisy, and to remember that different circumstances prevent the human experience from being truly universal.

But we do not and should not say it regarding lifestyles that raise no moral questions. We don’t say, “She’s dating a foreigner, but I don’t judge,” or “They adopted a child, but I don’t judge.” If anyone said of my partner, “He married a woman with dwarfism, but I don’t judge,” that person would be implying there is something shameful or irresponsible about me and my condition.

A little over a hundred years ago, doctors were saying just that. A Virginia medical manual in 1878 advocated criminalizing marriages between average-sized men and women with dwarfism, insisting that such an act was on par with “murder.”

Modern readers hopefully find nothing morally ambiguous about two consenting adults falling in love and deciding to commit to one another. Regarding interracial or same-sex or international or medically “mixed” marriages, the only people who should invite our judgment are those who impugn these relationships with the statement, “I don’t judge.” It’s an oxymoron, not unlike a “Please” slathered sarcasm. And it would be swell to see it less and less in political discussions on civil rights.

 

 

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