If a government action is wrong, it doesn't matter that it was 'lawful'

July 1, 9:02 AMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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The Stonewall Inn in 1969, where patrons and locals
did the righteous thing by fighting back against a
"lawful" police raid. (Creative Commons)

In a new comment to a column I wrote in May, "Uranium - 235" says the rough treatment that an Arizona preacher took during a stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint was justified because "[a] cop telling you to get out of your car *IS* a lawful order." And a commentator for a prominent socially conservative organization takes President Obama to task for celebrating the anniversary of gay resistance to a "lawful" raid in 1969. Such sentiments always leaves me scratching my head, because to decent people, whether a shocking government action is "lawful" is a relatively minor concern.

The word "lawful" seems to matter to a lot of people. Was a government act in compliance with the law? Does the law require you to do what a police officer says?

But "lawful" isn't synonymous with "righteous" or "good" or "reasonable."All it means is that the government in your neck of the woods followed its own procedures for authorizing its agents to do something. That something may be good and necessary, or it may be evil and arbitrary. "Lawful" is all about filing  the right paperwork.

But the idea of "lawful gets glorified by people like Cliff Kincaid, who wrote a piece on the Website of the socially conservative Accuracy in Media criticizing President Obama for celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Kincaid makes much of the fact that, when the gay men and lesbians who fought back that day against yet another police raid on the Stonewall Inn, "[w]hat they did was attack the police when officers conducted a lawful raid."

Well, yes. Serving alcohol to known homosexuals was unlawful at the time. That gave the police plenty of ground for lawful raids that -- today -- we recognize as discriminatory and evil.

The incident that inspired "Uranium - 235" to comment falls into the same category. It took place at a roadblock set up miles from the border, at which Border Patrol agents stop and question people without suspicion of any wrongdoing, and ordered Pastor Steven Anderson from his car. It was all very lawful -- the government went through the formalities needed to authorize its agents to behave this way -- but many of us find the whole scenario utterly revolting.

Depending on where and when you are, "lawful" can mean being ordered to the back of the bus because of your skin color, or having your property confiscated by the government without compensation (as in Zimbabwe today) or seeing your religion banned (both Germany and Russia have done this in recent years). "Lawful" is just about procedure.

Psychologists have put a lot of hard work over the years into mapping our moral development as we grow from childhood, into adolescence and then into adulthood. Part of becoming an adult is getting beyond the idea that the law is the ultimate arbiter of what is right and wrong. Adolescents think the law if the last word; adults understand that the law is always open to evaluation, and that good laws that respect individual rights should be obeyed, but bad laws that violate our rights should be opposed and defied.

So the emphasis put on "lawfulness" by Cliff Kincaid and "Uranium - 235" aren't signs of their good citizenship, but of their immaturity.

To say that an objectionable action is "lawful" is to enhance the wrongness, because it means the evil is systemic, not just a transgression committed by a rogue agent. If the brutalization of an innocent traveler or the targeting of sexual minorities is "lawful," the proper response is not to submit, but to resist more forcefully, because the enemy is the law itself.

email J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com