Questions of Defiance

My dry spell continues, blotted out now and then by the joy of final exams for the semester. Tonight I crawled from the foxhole, having endured and turned back the assault that was my more worrisome exam, and sit here pondering what to inflict on my poor readership today, and in the future as I attempt to start ramping myself up to two articles a week.

This is a hint, guys. I want to crack open each of your skulls and write on the ideas that flow forth. Or you can let me know, if you really consider your skulls that important. Anyway.

While meandering about the world of news I stepped across this article, thanks to the input of a certain Matt Freund out there. Now, I'm not Slashdot or kuro5hin; I generally like it when people RTFA rather than letting me spell it out for them, but I figure I'll at least cliffnote it: basically, the Catholic Church is seeking an exemption from state law in California which requires employers who provide their workers with drug plans to include coverage for contraceptives. Obviously the Catholic Church isn't exactly prone to loving this sort of thing.

Now, this is more than a clear-cut case of chuch and state, employee and worker. I am seeing in this something bigger indeed, and more fundamental to society: the perception of, and reaction to, the unjust law. The Roman Catholic Church considers this law to be Evil, of course, but their stance on it is almost as brazen as some of the RIAA/MPAA's recent demand that they be made exempt from antitrust legislation - they're simply saying that it shouldn't apply to them. Now, normally I would dismiss this sort of thing as mere selfish kookery, along the lines of people claiming some sort of obligation not to pay taxes, but the political atmosphere of late has changed somewhat, and it leaves me wondering.

Much of the western world, particularly the United States, has a sort of semi-institutionalized history of defiance against authority in one way, shape, or form. Countries founded in revolution kinda end up like that (though, compared to the US, France takes it to the level of a magnificent art form). As a broader culture, most of us are brought up to value our freedom rather strongly, and the concept of voicing one's defiance or opposition to what one considers unjust is still at least nominally accepted these days. In my own not-so-humble and certainly correct opinion, a feature of the past several years in the United States has been the passing of egregriously unjust - either in the "unconstitutional" or "just damn wrong" sense - laws. Normally the question of whether one should tell the government to shove off is either really cut-and-dried, or regarding minor enough things to be important, but the issue has grown greatly.

The basic question I'm wondering about is the idea of when one "can" or "should" do this sort of thing. Not in quite so brazen a sense as asking, Can we make this law not apply to me? I personally find the Catholic request about California labour laws to be reprehensible, and Washington's request to other countries regarding the International Criminal Court is simply evil - although on the other hand I find stuff like this to be somewhat amusing - but there are going to be circumstances in which things go far enough that people should just say, "This law is illegitimate and shall not be recognized." There's obvious cases of when that would happen - imagine what would happen if the First Amendment was formally repealed, rather than the de facto repeal that it has suffered under since Bush's installment, or (god forbid) what would happen if someone tried repealing the Second. The "this is way too far!" categories are probably self-evident to most people.

What's the minimum, though? There's laws I find disagreeable, such as most of the blue laws on the books, but when should things get to the point where you choose consciously not to obey a law? And, should you see a law as unjust enough to warrant defiance, are you within your rights in some larger term to do that? On top of those two, in what way do you defy that law? Even as there's a continuum between "best law ever" and "law that must be rejected," there's a continuum between "follow this law to the letter" and "burn down the national capital in a fit of revolutionary rage."

The notion exists in our culture that there comes a point where laws deserve to be struck down not just in the courts by in society as a whole, that they are outrageous enough not to warrant the slightest bit of recognition. But where do - or should - you draw that line?

Let's hear it, anyway: where would you draw the line? How would that line be drawn?

Posted by zibblsnrt at December 5, 2003 06:06 PM

---