When should the law bend to a higher moral authority?

Was it in the 1960s when blacks were beaten and arrested for sitting at an all-white lunch counter when that was against the law? Is it now, when Attorney General Sessions and other Republicans call for defunding cities that provide sanctuary to the undocumented and those fleeing death squads, drug dealers and hunger?

Both the Old and New Testament speak to how strangers should be welcomed, how God would want us to treat “the least among us.” True Christians know that it’s not to turn them away or pass them by.

We should never bow down to the enforcement of laws that have no humanity. Laws guilt on the sand of mindless cruelty like sending away children who know no other home, or offering them the Sofie’s choice of staying on the condition their parents and non-citizens sibling be deported.

The Republican agenda of cleansing America of those without papers may be legal, but is morally reprehensible.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … send these, the homeless and the tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

June Perry

Alpena