Who’s the Owner?
By James M. Kushiner, Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James
It is difficult for me to imagine my reaction to this if I were a descendant of Wesley Miles, born in May 1853 in Kentucky.
There in black in white in a handwritten log of births in Kentucky I see his name, “Wesley.” Place of birth, “Beechfork.” Then, a surprise: A column heading, “Name of Father or Owner of Child,” under which it lists “Sarah Miles.” Then, under the next column heading “Maiden Name of Mother” there is a blank. No mother?
But I notice that there are many blanks in the mother’s column on that page, and the listing for every unwritten mother’s child is unlike the other children: None of their children (including Wesley) have a last name assigned to them, and each one lacking a last name is also black (B). In other words, all black children listed on this page have first names only, no fathers, no mothers, and are registered as owned by someone else.
Can I relate to a society in which each baby of a certain class is the property of someone unrelated biologically, the baby’s birth mother is unrecognized, and the baby’s biological father is made inconsequential? In other words, a society in which a human child is a commodity that can be owned, sold, or transferred to someone else? The child has no right or claim to be raised by his biological parents.
Of course, this all sounds outrageous and is fuel for post-modern outrage if referring to black slave children in 1853. But if it refers to an aborted baby or to a “donor-conceived” baby given birth in 2017 by a surrogate mother for hire for ownership by a couple who want a child but cannot procreate one from their own bodies, why, that’s progress.
In the former case, we denounce that culture for slavery; in the latter we defend the right to privacy when it comes to the creation of (and disposal) of human flesh to suit our personal “needs.” This is cultural blindness rooted in sin and in the refusal to admit our guilt in divorcing sex from marriage and familial responsibilities.
Each age has its Sin that it is comfortable denouncing Ours, for the moment, is Racism and Sexual Judgmentalism. It is not terribly difficult to denounce a racist or a homophobe. Simply denounce someone and they’re guilty until sensitivity re-trained and put on probation. (Forget being proven innocent.)
You dare not question the Sexual Revolution. As with all subversive revolutions, the new order requires the brutal destruction of its opponents. Bolsheviks killed Whites, Christians, and the Romanovs, the French Terrorists guillotined clergy and nobility, Mao butchered his millions for cultural purposes. And the Sexual Revolution must exterminate the one opponent that will not lay down its arms: the baby.
Andrew Ferguson in “Flowers in Their Hair” (The Weekly Standard, August 21/28, 2017) reports on the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love (which it was not):
“…thanks to the newly discovered birth control pill, the hippies in the Haight had managed to achieve levels of sexual incontinence that were simply staggering.”
The “Haight-Ashbury Song Book” contained “The Intercourse Song,” with its concluding verse:
But if by chance through circumstance
you miss a pill or three
and you contract the worst disease
the one called pregnancy
They’re on your side, they now provide
abortions legally!
Oh tidings of comfort and joy….
How many of those who applaud the toppling of Lee, the removal of Jefferson and Columbus, or the renaming of New York (the Duke of York was a slave trader), also support abortion on demand? Or does their passion for justice reach out to unborn children who also are considered mere private property to be disposed of by their owners, human beings who are not even given a name? Or do they support the funding of Planned Parenthood, ironically in the very neighborhoods in which the descendants of such slaves as Wesley Miles might now live? Isn’t that outrageous?
Only in Christ are either black or white set free, and only in Christ are the descendants of both slaves and slave traders born again and reconciled, brothers and sisters of the true Lord and Master of All. Happily, we serve Him.
Reprinted with permission.