National and social issues decided
By Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, June 16, 2001
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In approving the recommendations of its National and Social Issues committee, the Louisville General Assembly created two new task forces and approved a policy statement on domestic violence.
Per capita to fund task forces
The proposal to create a task force to study “the disenfranchisement of people of color in the United State’s electoral system” was approved without discussion or objection. Included was a three-year task force budget of more than $36,000 from the denomination’s per capita funds.
The assembly also quickly approved creation of a task force to study the issue of reparations for African Americans, Native Americans, and Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and others who have experienced unjust treatment. The task force was budgeted to receive more than $53,000 of per capita funds over the next three years.
No mention was made of whether proposed reparations would also come from the denomination’s per capita budget.
Domestic violence
The assembly approved a domestic violence policy statement that opens with the story of a 52-year-old woman who had been sexually abused since childhood and who took her own life because “She questioned how much longer she could hold on to faith in a God she tried to call ‘Father.'”
After approving the policy statement, commissioners considered a series of recommendations for implementing the new policy. Despite being advised by Marianne Wolf, chair of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, that two of the provisions they were considering were in direct conflict with G-6.0204, concerning confidentiality, 88 percent of the commissioners voted to approve the recommendations.
Vieques
Finally, the day after President George W. Bush ordered that the Navy cease using a bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, commissioners disapproved an overture supporting continued use of the facility “until a suitable alternative site can be found.”
A substitute motion incorporating the main provisions of the overture was offered by a commissioner who had served in the Navy during the Korean War. “Just as we would not send seminarians out to churches without giving them a baptism of fire in local churches, so we should not send our servicemen out without live-fire training,” he argued in vain.