Dear majority, please stop telling me you stand with me

Two years ago Umair Haque wrote:

I hear it a dozen times a day. “Don’t worry!” say the kind and good people. “We’ll stand with you when the registries/camps/oppression come!”
What a noble sentiment. It is supposed to reassure people like me  —  a disabled brown guy. And yet. It doesn’t. Why not?
Let’s do some quick moral accounting, so we can see whether this grand declaration of solidarity carries any water.
Every single minority of any kind can tell you stories. Not just one, but many. Of being ridiculed, tormented, heckled, harassed, bullied, demeaned. From the very day that they entered the classroom, the playground, the boardroom, the office, the bus, the train, the cafe, the restaurant.

Haque does not resort to the easy condemnations progressives deploy — you’re evil because you’re white, able-bodied, privileged — but because as a member of the mainstream, the CW, the Conventional Wisdom tacitly allows you to discriminate without fearing any consequences; and you haven’t thought about it. You didn’t know you were doing it.

Well, you were, it was wrong, stop it. Haque continues:

Every single person — whether they are a woman, a person of color, a disabled person, gay, whatever — can tell you about countless incidents of abuse, big and small. There is not a single minority in this country that hasn’t experienced it.
Now. Where have you been, the good and kind majority, when all this was going on? There are three possibilities — and only three. You turned a blind eye. You egged it on. Or you were part of it. The incidents happened, right? So by definition, you did nothing to stop them, prevent them, mitigate them, ameliorate them.
You didn’t step in then. The millions of thens. And now you tell me that you will finally step in? Am I to believe this with a straight face?

Unfortunately, in the case of derogatory remarks, slights, or other discriminatory treatment, the mainstream responds to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? Umair Haque adds:

The sentiment that “I will stand with you!” is just that. A sentiment. It is not a reality. You haven’t done it so far. So why would you start now? … But how good have you really been? As I said, you’ve failed to stand with me, us, a million times before, every single day of your life. ...
We got here precisely through the way of your negligence, and no other way. Through all these little dehumanizations. The grade school bully that cries “kike!” is not so different from a Trump. You stood by and watched then. Maybe you laughed. That is how we got here.
So how do we heal? We heal not by avoiding the truth, running away from the painful reality of our mistakes. But by facing them. ... I don’t want your kind sentiments. I don’t want to hear that you will stand with me when we both know you haven’t so far. I want something truer and harder. The admission, the acknowledgement that you did not, could not, would not, when you should have.

Does America's largest minority still have a "spoiled identity?"

This morning, Lisa Rose wrote,

“The federal definition of a hate crime includes any offense that "attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person."”
This selection is highlighted. Note that disability is excluded in her cite of federal law.

Later in her article Ms. Rose adds an uncited remark: “Additionally, any offense committed against an individual because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is also a hate crime.”

For practical purposes, America's disabled, and particularly those with birth defects, have been left out of the civil rights revolution.

The Disability Rights Washington website does not list any of the terms for cleft palate (though it does list cerebral palsy).

We are America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA. But we seem to have a "spoiled identity" (as seen below) in ways that other identities do not. Late night shows such as Stephen Colbert's regularly feature racial minorities, but I do not ever recall seeing a disabled person there.

From our blog post of July 6, 2014:

In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:

The dwarf, the disfigured, the blind man, the homosexual, the ex-mental patient and the member of a racial or religious minority all share one characteristic: they are all socially "abnormal", and therefore in danger of being considered less than human. Whether ordinary people react by rejection, by over-hearty acceptance or by plain embarrassment, their main concern is with such an individual's deviance, not with the whole of his personality. "Stigma" is a study of situations where normal and abnormal meet, and of the ways in which a stigmatized person can develop a more positive social and personal identity. (Emphasis added)

An entry by Deborah Fallows in James Fallows' column three years ago illustrates this:

The real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人, or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who looked unusual and so different from the norm. (Emphasis added)

The rules of behavior in mainstream America tend to prevent such openly discriminatory behavior on the street. But as many of the previous posts on this weblog demonstrate, disability discrimination—a violation of our own professed values—is prevalent throughout our society. The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances": 

Goffman [says] “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2). [1] Observing that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman explains that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.”

Our society is becoming more identity-conscious, not less; to the detriment of universal justice.

“Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

A person with a cleft palate (PWACP) reports that at the college they attended there four people with cleft palate. Only the one with facial characteristics of cleft palate was treated as disabled.
Margo Victoria Bok and others in the BC Disability Caucus Facebook page:

“Government needs to act on making educational environments far more supportive for those in both k to 12 and post secondary A big part of that needs to be insisting that organizations address the prejudice and discrimination that is far too commonplace. People need to learn that we aren't less able than the nondisabled. Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

“Yes, very true. I like the way she put it because the disabled are so seriously marginalized. Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many. So, it's especially tough for the disabled to find environments that are inclusive, supportive and accepting.”

Martha Nussbaum in Reason 2004:

On the other side, our society also has been thinking a lot about how to protect citizens from shame. One can see this in particular in recent public debates about citizens with disabilities, where much attention is given to how both employment and education can be non-stigmatizing. One of my questions is whether it is coherent to favor a restoration of shaming in criminal punishment, while seeking to protect all citizens from shame. I hold that there is no surface inconsistency in such a position, but that there is a deeper inconsistency, because an interest in shame in punishment is ultimately inconsistent with respect for the equal dignity of all citizens. (Emphasis added)

As one PWACP says, we aren't anti-social. Society is anti-us.

We need a new narrative. "Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many." A common experience can occur when we attend a party. Someone starts asking supposedly friendly questions, but the subtext is negative. They are rhetorical questions. People start edging away, but nobody in the social group objects, even though it is clear that the one person present who is different is being put on the hot seat. "Prejudice and discrimination ... is far too commonplace." The subtext is, "what's a misfit doing at a party?" It's a double standard. The mainstream wouldn't stand by and do nothing if a derogatory environment was being created for a racial minority.

The reciprocity principle expressed in the first post in this blog:

Reciprocity principle: If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

When families don’t support a member with a disability

A family which adopts an African American would be expected to stand up for her in the case of racism or other discriminatory treatment. If they responded to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? — They would obviously be in the wrong. They would be failing to honor family responsibility. They would be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Such a family, having a minority member, would be itself racist because it had the same prejudicial attitudes and behaviors as the mainstream society.

The situation is parallel for a family when one of its children is born with cerebral palsy, cleft palate, or other disability. The family would be expected to stand up for her in the case of derogatory remarks, slights, or other discriminatory treatment. If they responded to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? — They would obviously be in the wrong. They would be failing to honor family responsibility. They would be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Here’s an instance: The family of a Person With A Cleft Palate (a PWACP) unfortunately has a nearly perfect record of avoiding its responsibility with regard to their daughter’s cleft palate.

To start with, the family refuses to discuss any issue having to do with cleft palate. When someone calls her "pendeja" on the bus, she knows better than to mention it. When the State driver’s license photographer says "cheese, whiskey, harelip," she knows better than to mention it. When a resident who wasn’t even born when she moved into her building calls the manager on her while she’s waiting for a family member to arrive, she knows better than to mention it.

When the family keeps her out of the loop, that’s disability discrimination.

Her email "sent" list contains many items to siblings or her children where she attempts to get feedback on the most important factor in their sister’s or mother’s life, and the response is a disapproving silence.

That’s disability discrimination. Worse, this precludes taking the first step to resolve the problem: bringing the problem up. The attitude is, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser?

But as a PWACP she’s not allowed to defend herself from these implied accusations. She’s not even allowed to bring them up.

For many people with disabilities, particularly those with birth defects, mainstream social behavior expects them to be humble and apologetic, not to make a big deal about marginalizing and disenfranchising attitudes and treatment, not to rock the boat. If the stigmatized disabled yield to social pressure, they perpetuate habitual mainstream discrimination and civil rights violation.

If they resist, if they object, if they speak out, society isolates them as antisocial, as troublemakers. That’s the birth defect Catch-22. A responsible, supportive family helps.

But all too often their families see disabled members with the same cold, hostile attitude as prevailing society.

The role of behavior in sexual assault and disability assault

There are parallels between #MeToo and disability discrimination. In both cases the abuse of a targeted minority is in many ways an effect of mainstream social behavior.

In both cases things which people _know_ happened are unhappened by habitual social pretense. You saw a respectable man swipe his hand down a woman’s crotch, but it would be in bad taste to make an issue of it. 

Someone subjects the only disabled person at the party to intrusive, derogatory questions, and the group pretends that this is just friendly interest. 

The person with the disability is publicly humiliated, effectively reduced to a pariah and an outcast right in front of everybody, but the attitude is that this is normal social action. 

“The community” legitimizes the civil rights violation which has occurred by countenancing it. If the person who has just been abused calls the indifferent partygoers out on what they just did, she is treated as a bad sport. 

It all works, for objectified women, or marginalized members of America’s largest minority,(1) because of _behavior_. Our social standards enable shabby treatment of those who don’t matter very much.

Thousands of cases of covering up what people know about, of casual social acceptance, hid from us the fact that large numbers of women were experiencing sexual assault right under our noses. 

Exactly the same situation obtains with the millions who have disabilities. The difference is that it’s not a thing. There’s no #UsToo.

(1) America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA:

http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/diverse.htm

http://www.adainfo.org/sites/default/files/Leadership-Network/Modules-1-5/5a-America-largMinorityFINAL.pdf

The mother of a disabled woman reveals the pervasive disrespect for the largest minority

Frank Verpaelst of the Federation of Disabled Bloggers on Facebook:

“I sit here fuming in my chair after having read a recent message from a disabled friend, telling me a story of how her mother mused out loud “How can an able-bodied woman love a disabled man who has very short legs and no arms? He’s not a real man! How does she do it?””

Would her mother have said a racial minority was not a real man? Probably not, because we’ve had a civil rights revolution. But there’s unconscious acceptance of a double standard: it’s ok to express a slur about a disabled person in a way that disparaging a person of color is not. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t mention the disabled. Many feel that the idea that disabled people have the same rights as people of color would be racist, although Martin Luther King knew better, proclaiming, Injustice anywhere endangers justice everywhere.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws applies to disabled people or it is meaningless.

Many people with disabilities have loving and supportive families who help them deal with a world which is often biased and unfriendly. Sadly, in this case the mother of a disabled woman exemplifies what is too often the reality of family discrimination. That’s what expressing a negative attitude about a disabled person to one’s disabled daughter conveys.

If "Money is speech," much of our taxes is unconstitutional compelled speech

The disabled are America’ largest minority. Yet the law does not treat this minority as it does those minorities that matter, by placing it in a protected class and affording adverse circumstances with heightened scrutiny.

If, as the law of the land holds, money is speech, we disabled are often paying through our taxes for a system which, so far as I have been able to learn, has never had a landmark disability civil rights court case comparable to the racial minority rights case, Brown vs. Board of Education. The racial rights case was badly needed, but ours is overdue.

Previous posts document silencing, shunning, tolerated efforts to demean and degrade, medical discrimination, and double standards across the board. We have exactly the same rights as the other minorities do, but by the compelled speech of our legally mandated taxes, we are forced to support a system which treats us as second class citizens.

Below is a copy of an article on tax money as compelled political speech;

To our Court: Our taxes constitute un-Constitutional compelled speech

“Money is speech.”
Under this unsupportable rule-by-judges dogma, because of tax mandated by law:
I am “speaking” Trump, though I and eleven million of my fellow Americans voted for someone else (three million more for email Benghazi Hillary, eight million for the green or Sanders contingents).

I am “speaking” concentration camps for poor innocent children separated from their parents, although even the Nazis never did that.

I am “speaking” deficit-financed tax cuts for the one percent, which will oppress our children with catastrophic trillion dollar debts.

I am “speaking” not “government of the people, by the people, for the people” — the first Republican President’s mantra — but government of the heartless rich, by the filthy rich, for the treasonous rich.

I am “speaking” not “all are created equal,” but rich white preppies born to wealth, privilege, and court clerkships shall be protected by the Senate Judicial Committee, by Mitch McConnell, and the FBI — all supported by The People’s tax dollars — not only from consequences of sexual assault for which thousands of lower class adolescent males are now languishing in adult detention facilities, but even from having their mocking abuse of young women brought to the _attention_ of the American people.

Wherefore:

That portion of my public taxes which “speaks” what I oppose with all my heart shall under NO circumstances represent what the Founders decried as “taxation without representation.”

Those taxes which constitute un-Constitutional compelled speech shall be sequestered. Neither I nor any other citizen of the land of the free shall be compelled to pay taxes for a cause which shocks the conscience.

It’s a free country.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

In previous posts this blog has noted that the disabled have been left out of the civil rights revolution in America, that the disabled are this nation’s largest minority, and that under the reciprocity principle, If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

As seen below, the UN has begun addressing these issues.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Prevention of discrimination

The Article 8 of Convention stresses the awareness raising to foster respect for the rights and dignity against discrimination:

1. To raise awareness throughout society, including at the family level, regarding persons with disabilities, and to foster respect for the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities.
2. To combat stereotypes, prejudices and harmful practices relating to persons with disabilities, including those based on sex and age, in all areas of life.
3. To promote awareness of the capacities and contributions of persons with disabilities.
4. Initiating and maintaining effective public awareness campaigns designed: (i) to nurture receptiveness to the rights of persons with disabilities. (ii) to promote positive perceptions and greater social awareness towards persons with disabilities. (iii) to promote recognition of the skills, merits and abilities of persons with disabilities, and of their contributions to workplaceand the labour market.
5. Encouraging all organs of the mass media to portray persons with disabilities in a manner consistent with the purpose of the present Convention.
6. Promoting awareness-training programmes regarding persons with disabilities and the rights of persons with disabilities.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law. The Convention has served as the major catalyst in the global movement from viewing persons with disabilities as objects of charity, medical treatment and social protection towards viewing them as full and equal members of society, with human rights. It is also the only UN human rights instrument with an explicit sustainable development dimension. The Convention was the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century.^[1]

The text was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006,^[2] and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. Following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on 3 May 2008.^[3] As of April 2018, it has 161 signatories and 177 parties, which includes 172 states and the European Union(which ratified it on 23 December 2010 to the extent responsibilities of the member states were transferred to the European Union).^[4] In December 2012, a vote in the United States Senate fell six votes short of the two-thirds majority required for ratification.^[5] The Convention is monitored by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_Persons_with_Disabilities

Neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized

From at least as far back as Bush v. Gore, which substituted the Court selecting a Republican over the democratic vote for Gore, extremist rightism has been resorting to methods which are neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

A recent example: The occupant of the White House recently excoriated his own justice department:

Trump tweet: “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of  two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......”

As David Graham said,

"Trump’s tweet is so blunt one is almost tempted to look for deeper meaning. He’s saying the U.S. Department of Justice should be most concerned not with enforcement of laws but with aiding the Republican Party. Plenty of politicians are corrupt, but few announce it proudly from their Twitter accounts."

Here is a POTUS openly advocating the partisan use of the criminal justice system to aid his party, and in so doing, subverting the rule of law and violating the Oath of Office, in which he swore to defend the Constitution. This is neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

Yesterday the New York Times published an article in which a member of the White House staff reported that they and many of their colleagues are acting to protect the country from erratic, impulsive, and irrational acts by their master. David Frum and others have accused them of fomenting a constitutional crisis or a "coup against Trump," saying that they should use the formal means of the 25th Amendment or impeachment to protect the nation.

But it has been apparent for months that neither the House, nor the Senate, nor the Vice President will perform their constitutional duties to protect their country from this toxic presidency so long as they are getting activist judges and tax cuts for billionaires. The rule by minority and by unelected judges which they are now ramming down our throats will foment a calamitous backlash which will be neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

The extra-constitutional undermining of the current pretender to the throne is what happens when the House, the Senate, the Vice President, and the nominal chief executive all abdicate their constitutional duties. The inevitable has begun to happen. Neither democratic, nor orderly, nor civilized.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

The purpose of this blog, from a 2013 post

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 2

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

Then they would ... thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately. - A "sin-eater," described in Master and Commander: (vide infra)

She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say. Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1 

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

From the first article in this series, hopefully it is beginning to be apparent what the purposes of the series are.

One purpose is to give a report from inside on one of the fronts in the battle against prejudicial discrimination.

Another purpose is a sociological perspective. Social identity is what makes ordinary human life work. For a person to have what Erving Goffman called a "spoiled identity" may be to "reduce his life chances."
 
  A third purpose is to argue that all prejudice is the same prejudice and all discrimination is the same discrimination. The enormous harm of prejudicial discrimination throughout the ages is the history of man's inhumanity to man. Prejudice is too monstrous to be a tool for any honorable purpose.

  A fourth purpose is to argue that such middle-class values as the idea of a common humanity; the idea of a connection with the past and the future and of a responsibility to our ancestors and our descendants; the idea of civility and of respect, so far as possible, for all people regardless of what group they are thought to belong to; the belief in uplift; and the idea that political freedom comes when "we the people," all of us with one spirit work together for the public good--to argue that these were favorable to the stigmatized. The contrary values of the sixties, in particular the tendency to frame solutions in terms of group identity, have been harmful to those with a spoiled identity.
 
  A fifth purpose is to draw attention to a pervasive double standard in discrimination. For example, the term "harelip" is as ugly and defamatory as the n-word, yet even when it clearly is being used to marginalize and disenfranchise those with cleft lips and palates, as in the phrase "if it harelips the governor," progressives stand calmly silent.
 
  A sixth purpose is to argue that "harelip" is the symbolic birth defect, the one which William Shakespeare and Mark Twain cite, and that those so stigmatized have a corresponding classic symbolic role, the scapegoat, the "sin eater,"* as Patrick O'Brien says in Master and Commander: in Wikipedia, "one who is blamed for misfortunes, often as a way of distracting attention from the real causes." [Ed. Note: The current Wikipedia no longer says this. It does say: 

The biblical Jesus has been interpreted as a universal archetype for sin-eaters, offering his life to purify all of humanity of their sins.

 For the Disabled Archetype in myth, see the following post, This is the Son of Kings.]

 A seventh purpose is to draw attention to widespread prejudices, some with impressive scholarly pedigrees, which could contribute to the double standard mentioned above, which serve as the unspoken and unexamined rationale for targeting the stigmatized: "In a certain state it is indecent to go on living," the influential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. "To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society."
 
  An eighth purpose is to ask you to imagine the life of the stigmatized. Would a complete stranger attack you as soon as he sees you? Three such cases (out of many) are described in the first article, and as seen above no less a personage than Nietzsche argues that this is legitimate. What would be the cumulative effect, if you went through each day never knowing who would turn on you? If you came to realize that in many cases where for others the answer is "yes," for you it is "no," would you have the same hopes, the same aspirations, the same goals, the same confidence as you do now? Imagine an existence characterized by reduced life chances.
 
  A ninth purpose is to draw attention to the dual nature of identity. There is the identity we have by ascription, which Goffman describes as "spoiled." But other sociologists, such as John Murray Cuddihy, have argued that a feature of liberal modernity is that individuals have their character by achievement and not by ascription. Randall Kennedy, in "My Race Problem -- And Ours," [see Defining Liberalism: Randall Kennedy's 'My Race Problem—And Ours', My "Liberalism" Problem—And Ours] argued that "a brute fact does not dictate the proper human response to it." For the stigmatized, there are terrible consequences attendant on accepting the way many persons see them. A difficult choice is forced on them: To accept the "profound contempt" as their due; or to reject it at the possible cost of being accused of failing to know their place. As a friend once told me, when someone once asked him, "As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" he answered, "It gives me a valuable perspective." 

(*)From Master and Commander: "I have a curious case ..."

What is his name?
Cheslin: he has a hare lip. ...
Yet he has been of singular service to men and women, in his time.
In what way?
He was a sin-eater. ...
Will you tell me about him? ...
When a man died Cheslin would be sent for; there would be a piece of bread on the dead man's breast; he would eat it, taking the sins upon himself. Then they would push a silver piece into his hand and thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately.

Do people with disabilities exist so that the works of God should be revealed?

In reference to the previous post, which quotes the biblical John 9:2,

"And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?", it’s been pointed out that the following verse, John 9:3,

"Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him," suggests that disabled people exist to provide an example, as contrasted with people who exist in and of themselves.

That is a problem for civil rights advocates, who hold that all are born equal, and that the disadvantaged are not second class citizens whose purpose is to be useful to others.

John 9:3 does not fit the message of Jesus of Nazareth, that God is kind, generous, loving, and good; and that heaven cares when a sparrow falls.

The Jesus Seminar has concluded that some of the statements attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were probably not actually said by him; and that none of the statements in the gospel of John were things he said.

There are parts of scripture which are to be rejected, such as the passage from Leviticus below, which sets the rules for what Lincoln called "property in man," (slavery):

[Lev 25:44-46 KJV] 44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, [shall be] of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that [are] with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit [them for] a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

Likewise, John 9:3 does not give biblical authority to disability discrimination.

Did Oedipus harm his parents because he knew they rejected him?

A follow up to "This is the Son of Kings," an earlier post on Oedipus:

"Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet …" - Sir Francis Bacon

This is a blog about disability. The disability most targeted, most subject to denial, and most vulnerable to blaming the victim, is birth defect (John 9:2 “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born thus?” shows that this sort of thinking has existed for millennia.).

Two thousand years of mainstream literary criticism has accommodated Sophocles’ mystifying premise: Fate, Oracle, foreordained by the gods, in which Swollen Foot’s attempt to escape the injustice of “the way things are” is maligned as “hubris.”

Oedipus had the pride of royal blood. The central moral fact of Sophocles’ play, missed by two millennia of straight critics, is that the reason Swollen Foot does not know who he is, is that his own parents tried to kill him when he was a helpless baby.

The straightforward version of the plot, before Sophocles skipped over the possibility that it was about the fury of a disabled royal who effected retribution for attempted murder, is that Oedipus knew. His agency in the catastrophes which befell his “mother” and “father” arose from the righteous wrath of a prince against parents who denied him his heritage.

Bacon saw through Sophocles’ sleight of hand, describing Oedipus’ condition as “club feet,” unmistakably a birth defect, and not maiming, as some say Sophocles would have it.

A reasonable translation of "Oidipous Tyrannos," following Bacon’s interpretation, is "Clubfoot the Ruler." When a drama has a name of this form, as with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" or even "Beauty and the Beast," there is a certain hint as to how the plot will go.