Today, as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump’s birthright citizenship case, I joined the ACLU and other advocates to make clear the moral stakes of this legal case.
Trump’s crusade to undermine birthright citizenship and deny children of basic rights is yet another example of his warped, wannabe God complex. Like the emperors of another era, he rejects the inalienable rights of all people and believes he gets to determine who’s a citizen of the United States and who benefits from the laws of this country.
Since the inclusion of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause in the Constitution in 1868, the United States has operated under the premise that every baby has an equal right to belong and engage in the ‘pursuit of happiness.’ The 14th amendment protects babies from a caste-like system based on the race, ethnicity, country of origin, or immigration status of their parents.
Now, Trump is relying on the arguments of a long-dead Confederate to say that Congress didn’t mean to grant birthright citizenship to all babies. If the Supreme Court chooses to overturn birthright citizenship after 158 years, then we would have to climb the front of this building and erase its claim of ‘Equal Protection Under Law.’ We might as well replace it with gold letters that simply say, ‘Trump’s Court,’ because the Supreme Court would forever after be the emperor’s court, the king’s court, the injustice court.
Clergy like myself must call it what it is: To end birthright citizenship now would be a sin against God and a sin against humanity. And no sin is more serious than a sin against children.
Isaiah 10 tells us woe be unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights, making women and children their prey. In Matthew 18:6, Jesus offers a severe warning: Woe to those who offend children. It would better that they tie a millstone around their neck and be thrown into the sea. If the Court were to side with Trump in this case, it would be tying a millstone around our necks and placing America under the judgement of God.
It is morally sick – demented even – and certainly racist for people who were not even the first inhibitors of this land – whose foreparents stole land from indigenous people – to claim they deserve to be in and someone else should be out based on their race or country of origin. None of these people are Apache or Cherokee or Tuscaroran, like my people from Eastern North Carolina. Don’t try to tell the people who’ve worked the soil of this land and spilled blood to expand its democracy about ‘blood and soil.’ If our corrupt, immoral leaders had it their way, half of them wouldn’t have become citizens two, three, or four generations back.
