August 20th: Separation of State and Stupid

The limits of ignorance and ridiculousness are boundless. In this week’s example of “You SO can’t do that,” we visit Newport, Tennessee, where we see a judge taking a totally new direction in regards to fair decision-making.

A man and a woman are getting a divorce, and in the process, need to decide whether their 7-month old son should share his father’s or mother’s last name. They take it to court and are met by Judge Lu Ann Ballew.

Here is where things get out of hand. When the judge is hearing the trial, it comes to light that the son’s name is Messiah. Subsequently, in her decision, the judge declared that not only must the baby change his last name, but also his first name. The boy had to change his name to Martin, because the name Messiah “is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ.”

The parents are, of course, livid. They didn't go to court to come up with new problems for their son, only to solve the last name debate. To be told that your name isn’t acceptable because you stole it from Jesus is, to say the least, a formative moment in an infant’s short life.

It would be easy to blast this woman for her inability to separate Church and State, which is an imperative part of the judicial system. The courts are meant to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the laws of whichever state in which they preside, and this most definitely falls outside the limits of those laws.

What is potentially more ignorant and disconcerting is the part of this that is totally arbitrary. The judge simply heard the name and got offended. She didn’t have any legal basis upon which to change this boy’s name. Her only defense was that, living in the county in which they did, the boy could have been subject to marginalization or bullying. First of all, wouldn’t that be interesting. “What did you do today, Jimmy?” “Oh, not much, Mom, just bullied Messiah.” On a more thoughtful level, though, this act of emotional response rather than calculated rationalization brings to light a scary idea. If the American people are to be living their lives according to the laws set forth by not only Congress but also the judicial system, we need to have some degree of faith (no pun intended) in those individuals to do what is right, despite their own personal issues with it. Nobody was going into this court room to hear what Lu Ann thought about things. They were there to see how Judge Ballew would rule in accordance with rationality and legal code.

This of course comes in the same week that a Louisiana Republican came forward and publicly stated that she didn't know that when she voted for religious school vouchers, that this didn't only include Christian schools. It has been a tough week to be, oh, I don’t know, rational in the United States.