Says VCU students twisted his meaning; VCU stands by its story

Recordings of Marshall’s remarks posted on the Web

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, WTKR Norfolk, Virginia Commonwealth University, AP/[Newport News] Daily Press:

Virginia Del. Bob Marshall turned aside calls for his resignation Wednesday and attempted to distance himself from recorded remarks that have been construed as saying that a woman who has an abortion runs the risk of birth defects in later pregnancies as a punishment from God.

Addressing his colleagues in the Virginia General Assembly, Marshall called for a correction from journalism students at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications. Jeff South, an associate professor of journalism who oversees the school’s Capital News Service, said VCU stands by its report “as a fair and accurate account of the press conference that Del. Marshall held last Thursday.”

The school’s website and Marshall’s website both carried recordings and transcripts of Marshall’s remarks, delivered last week at a press conference organized against public funding for Planned Parenthood.

(more…)

Advocates equate ‘retarded’ with hate speech

Rahm Emanuel’s criticism of some liberal Democrats as “f — ing retarded” is “shining a spotlight on just how pervasive the R-word is in American conversation and how offensive it can be for millions of Americans,” reports Devin Dwyer on ABC News. Dwyer describes Emanuel’s comment as a “verbal indiscretion.”

Advocates say the furor over Emanuel’s remark demonstrates the need for a change in social sensitivities. An estimated 35 states have enacted or introduced legislation to remove the word “retardation” from government agencies and programs.

An excerpt:

Several advocates for the disabled noted that just as derogatory terms for African Americans, Jews and gays are often associated with periods of oppression and prejudice in the country’s history, the word ‘retarded’ can elicit an equally emotional and visceral response.

“It’s a reminder to [intellectually and developmentally disabled persons] of all the suffering they’ve experienced and all the ways they’ve been excluded from society,” said Peter Berns, CEO of the advocacy group, The Arc of the United States, who is attending [today's] meeting with Emanuel. “Every time they hear the word all these images flood back to them about how they’ve been laughed at, pointed at, made fun of, sterilized.”

‘Welcome the exceptional‘

The editors of Christianity Today call on congregations to remove the subtle attitudinal barriers that serve to exclude people with disabilities from communities of faith.

Negative attitudes can have wide-reaching and damaging effects, the editors write, citing as an example the estimated 90 percent abortion rate among pregnant women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. An excerpt:

It’s not as if churches do not try to extend compassion to people with disabilities. But we tend to think of the disabled as people we minister to, by offering worship and other opportunities to them. [The AAPD's Ginny] Thornburgh reminds us that “those of us with disabilities have enormous gifts and talents to bring to the church. We are not a project. We are on this earth for a unique reason.” Churches would be wise to remember that people with disabilities are like the rest of the congregation: They can contribute mightily to the work, witness, and leadership of the church and community.

… [A] sacred friendship often begins when a mother in the church gives birth to a child with a disability, and the church rallies around the family. That action says, “We will journey with you and this beloved child. We will not abandon you.”

As Thornburgh suggests, celebrating the birth of every child, regardless of prenatal test results, is the first act of friendship that can transform not only churches but also entire societies.

From the Chicago Tribune:

A growing number of Jewish children with developmental disabilities are preparing for their bar or bat mitzvahs with the help of synagogues and religious schools that are adapting curriculum for their needs.

The rite of passage allows these young people to take their places as full members of the Jewish community.

Religious leaders say the presence of a disability should not bar a person from participating in the mainstream of Jewish life. “We don’t say ‘no,’ we say ‘how,’” said one.

See related posts here.

(Chicago Tribune photo of Trevor Charney, 13, who has autism, during the celebration of his bar mitzvah.)

From the [UK] Telegraph, Los Angeles Times: The Envelope Blog, Associated Press:

Testifying in the criminal trial of two people who allegedly plotted to extort $25 million from him, actor John Travolta publicly acknowledged for the first time that his son had autism. Travolta is a member of the Church of Scientology, which does not recognize autism as a condition.

Jett Travolta died last January after a seizure while the family was vacationing in the Bahamas.

“He was autistic,” Travolta told the court. “He suffered from a seizure disorder.”

UPDATE: Magazine editor calls Travolta’s testimony a “jaw-dropping revelation”

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, writing in the Washington Post’s On Faith section, compares the president’s “insensitive” jest about the Special Olympics to comic Jackie Mason using the Yiddish ethnic slur “schvartze” in a joke to describe — who else? — the president. Mason hasn’t apologized.

(Story here: Comments about President Obama by Jackie Mason draw racism charges — New York Daily News)

Herzfeld cites the scholar Maimonides to conclude that both men are committing “a great sin.” An excerpt:

Maimonides is referring to people who regularly act in this manner, but the implication is clear: There is nothing funny about making make fun of someone else or using a nickname which the other person does not care for.

Elsewhere the Talmud says in a homiletic fashion that anyone who shames his fellow man in public is considered to have spilled blood. The rabbis explain that on some level it may be worse for the person who is embarrassed as opposed to murdered because he is now forced to live and relive his embarrassment over and over again.

…  let us all continue to make jokes, but not ones that hurt other people.

Herzfeld is the rabbi of the Ohev Sholom — the National Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

See also: Jackie Mason calls Obama the dark word — Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, the God Blog. An excerpt:

Yeah, and I have some friends who were raised white in the south and have Confederate sympathies. They still know better than to use the n-word.

(Photo of Jackie Mason from the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles)

From the New York Times:

Theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland, an associate professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, has died of lung cancer.

Eiesland wrote the 1994 book, “The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability.” She had a congenital bone condition and spinal scoliosis.

So why did she say she hoped that when she went to heaven she would still be disabled?

The reason, which seems clear enough to many disabled people, was that her identity and character were formed by the mental, physical and societal challenges of her disability. She felt that without her disability, she would “be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God.”

Colleagues described Eiesland as a leader of disability studies within the context of religion and Christianity.

(Emory University photo in the New York Times)