As for the topic, I have heard this argument before. In fact, in my education and in groups on more times than I want to recall, the “What would you do if you were in Germany circa 1938?” is very familiar.

The basic elements boil down to some common things that would need to be defined.
What socio-economic level would you be from? Remember that the poor in Nazi-Germany had themselves pressed into service at the barrel of a gun and were constantly watched by each other for opportunities to rat out others to save their own families.

What race would you be from? The Jewish people were not the only ones looked upon as ‘unfit’ and were mainly used as scapegoats for the terrible poverty resulting from the loss and subsequent sanctions stemming from WWI.

… to be continued

It is just a matter of time that we face, in one way or the other, the same problem some people in modern Germany are facing. How was it possible? Did not anybody realised about what was going on with Hitler?

Or, what is far more worrying if it is seen backwards? shall we end up wondering how we allowed millions of people starving or dying because of deseases easily fixed if the medicine patents were not allowed in some extreme circumstances?

Should we quit if we are shareholders of the big pharma industries?

One of my friends says: If you do not act as you think, you sure will end up thinking as you act (which is, by the way, pretty intimidating, uh?

Thanks, Chris. Among other things, your post made me re-think the ease and lack of consideration with which we normally judge other people facing court trials or social rejection because of challenging some laws they consider deeply unfair…

Thank you for posting this. It seems some wish you would censor a critical part of who you are to make them feel more comfortable. I am glad you do not. Thank you for speaking your truth.

Also, thank you for being an ally to the gay community. Same-sex marriage is an equal rights issue; currently, there are 1,138 benefits the United States government provides to legally married couples, and hundreds more at the state-level. These include making medical decisions on behalf of a partner (or even simply visitation to a partner in the hospital); Social Security survivor benefits; numerous tax breaks, etc. No one deserves to be treated like a second-class citizen based on who they are.

As a law professor of mine used to say: “Remember, the ‘law’ is a series of inventions.” Indeed.

Absolutely. I teach in a low-income school where many kids have no insurance. When they’re sick, their parents have to choose between paying for groceries or getting meds/ dr. appts. H1N1 pandemic has hit the neighborhood – and hard.

I make political videos. I’ve made lots of them – over a hundred, certainly. I post them on YouTube. A couple of commenters mentioned the danger of losing subscribers or whatever – that’s always the risk when you state an opinion, I guess. But for me personally, speaking my mind led to appearances on CNN and in the L.A Times, a gig as a blogger at The Huffington Post and a number of paying gigs doing political videos. Huge net gains for authentically speaking my mind – because doing so is somewhat rare since a lot of people are afraid of doing that since they might offend some people.

Thanks for the post Chris. It’s indeed thought provoking. Who is “right” is often determined by history. It’s easy to say you would take a stand against something that is so clearly wrong viewed decades later when the majority of people and society agree it’s wrong. Much harder to do the same thing when you are in the minority and everyone around you believes they are supporting what’s right. Plus, it’s possible your principles and how you think about things would be completely different if you were born 50 or 100 (or several hundred) years earlier.

And since this post is about stating what you believe in and care about…. I’ve been happily married for nearly 15 years now. Nothing about that would be changed or degraded in any way by allowing gay couples to marry.