When a practice is customary, and suddenly is forbidden, then the community, which did not choose to alter the custom itself, has been deprived.
Okay. Deprive them. The slave owners were deprived too. In a more real and tangible way than those of this particular "customary practice." The slave owners livelihood was put at risk. I sympathize more with their loss, a real financial one, than the loss of a benediction, an intangible loss of something that can be had anytime by anyone wants it somewhere in private. Yet, my sympathies to the slave owners do not extend to the slave owners' continued promulgation of a practice that is customary, but wrong.
What was really lost in this benedictive vacuum? Show me a handful of it. I can show you myself, a real person, who is relieved to not have another dose of Judea-Christianity dumped down my throat. Customary or not, I'm tired of it, I'm tired of people who feel it is their right to do it, constantly, in public, at public expense. I think they should dump the chaplains in the military and Congress. There is no basis for this position other than custom and customs change. |
