Postcards From The 8

Dear Catholic Undergraduate,

I really appreciate your willingness to engage with me civilly when I stopped by your apartment to Get Out The Vote. Of course it was clear I supported Obama, and you made it clear you were going to vote the Republican ticket. When I asked you why, your first response indicated you did not want to get taxed when you make a lot of money. (How presumptuous to think you will make more than $250,000 in the next four years!) When I asked about the implications for social injustice (because I assumed all college-educated people under 25 were socially liberal, even if fiscally conservative), and the probability of enhanced assault to civil rights, particularly gay rights, your response was what in retrospect must be common: that what people do at home is their business, but “maybe because I’m Catholic” you did not endorse same-sex marriages. At that point, I wanted to shout at you “Because you have never known hardship! Because you have never had to worry that you would be accepted. Because you will never know what it’s like to be refused permission to share—legally and spiritually—your love, health, and wealth with a partner.” The privilege you live you take for granted every single day. And it’s the lack of thought about that privilege that disappoints and irks me most.

I saw the same kind of presumptuousness in some of your peers on election day. Serving as an election official, I was happy to see so many first-time voters, but this happiness was lessened by my astonishment at what I perceived to be political affiliations based on socialization rather than independent thought. I was astounded by the number of youth—and particularly the number of young women—who were registered Republicans. As my colleague, who used to work at the Emma Goldman Clinic (a local health care clinic that was the first in Iowa to provide abortions) said, “Well, I hope these girls never have an unplanned pregnancy.”

I wish you and other privileged youth would think harder about who they support and what that means. As University students, you are especially privileged—you have opportunities, resources and information available to you that many people don’t have. Your generation, like mine, assumes a college education of its middle and upper classes. Yet the assumptions you were born into and with which you go through life remain unquestioned, and seem to have dulled your empathetic skills. We live in a state where 94.6% of the population is white, 15% are older than 65, and only 21% of those who stay here have college degrees. Prop 8 only made the news after it passed. Here in the center of the country, you and some of your peers are perfect examples of complacent white privilege. Life is relatively easy and carefree for you, so why bother caring about people you’ve never met and how they may feel being denied the rights you have taken for granted your whole life?

I urge you to examine yourself, your beliefs, and how your actions—speech, purchases, votes—contribute to or detract from the well-being and progress of humankind everywhere. If you, Undergraduate Catholic, really do subscribe to Christianity as you claim (as do many of your peers), then meditate again on what Jesus explicitly said when asked to explain the most important commandment:

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (NIV, Mark 12:28-31).

The Golden Rule derives from this commandment. Take it into your heart and act on it. Do you really do unto others as you would have them do unto you?