Bayard Rustin - Civil Rights Leader: Re: Re: Re: A good role model

» Eric_Longley - Re: Re: Re: A good role model

imgeorg gives me the courtesy title of "Mr." I wish I could return the courtesy. imgeorg, are you a Mr., a Ms, a Mrs., or something else entirely? It is difficult to take a Quaker very seriously if (s)he does not go under her (or his) own name, but chooses instead to employ a pseudonym. Even during the dark days of persecution under Charles II, Quakers disdained to conceal their identities from the King's agents, even though by meeting in public they exposed themselves to arrest and other forms of persecution. I suppose that Ms. (or Reverend) imgeorg fears some kind of persecution much worse than anything Charles II could dish out in the seventeenth century, since (s)he is taking more precautions than seventeenth-century Friends did in order to conceal his (her?) identity. Ms (or Mr) imgeorg attributes to me the view that we don't "need" to "ignore" or "excuse" private vices. I am not sure if Herr (or Frau) imgeorg is by implication endorsing the opposite view, that we need to ignore or excuse the private vices of others. My position on vices is this: If someone says something on the Internet which I think is wrong, then I feel free to reply. Particularly is this so when anyone (especially a self-proclaimed minister of the gospel) uses the Internet to accuse others of crimes which they did not commit. Obviously, imgeorg feels free to use the medium of the Internet to criticize the alleged vices of others. Does (s)he claim that I have done anything more than (s)he has done? Also, where does (s)he draw the distinction between private and public vices? Martin Luther King committed adultery in private, or at least in what he thought was privacy. His wife forgave him, and he never perjured himself about his affairs, and he never tried to induce his mistresses to perjure themselves. This qualifies his vices as private. As to the public man: In public, King felt free to criticize the *public* vices of others. For example, in his well-known letter from the Birmingham jail, King responded to certain criticisms against himself and his movement which were made by self-proclaimed ministers of the gospel. The ministers who criticized King made no claim of privacy. Their vices (acceptance of racism) were public and open to public view, and King used a public forum to reply to the criticisms. Did King do something wrong by publicly rebuking professed ministers of the gospel who used their positions to promote wrong ideas?

-- posted by Eric_Longley