Harvey Weinstein: An Ash Wednesday Coda
As I was wrapping up my homily last evening, standing in the
aisle at Christ Church, Rock Spring Parish, speaking on the symbolism of, “You
are dust , and to dust you shall return,” and that moment of creation in
Genesis 2 when God breathes into a handful of dust, animating the first human, and
as we are told in Genesis 1, “ So God created humankind in his image, in the
image of God he created them; male and female he created them;” I commented on how
from the beginning of time, we are created equal, male and female.
Then, I felt the need to depart from my prepared remarks.
Harvey Weinstein, I said. As I heard the verdict announced in his New York
trial, and how this was a “monumental step forward” for our society in addressing
how men, especially men in power positions, mistreat, abuse and assault women,
I was initially relieved to hear that he had been charged on two counts, but
that then I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. How could it be in the
year 2020, one hundred years after the 19th Amendment and Women’s
Suffrage, 2000 years after Jesus, and three or more thousand years after so much
of the Biblical tradition advocates for women that we hail an incremental
moment in the cause for women in America and the world, how can it be that we
see this as “monumental” when it ought to be simply the right judgment on
behalf of women who at this very moment are being abused, assaulted, placed in
cages at our southern border, and suffering further degradation in our country’s
prisons.
We are told, by Weinstein’s lawyer, that he is “in disbelief”
in the verdict. Disbelief. While thousands of women are in disbelief that they
have not been accorded justice in their own cases. That rape kits sit on
shelves in police departments across the land not being tested. That women are
asked and even encouraged to sign waivers not to prosecute rape and abuse charges
by those empowered to protect them and enforce the laws.
I found myself shaking as I disclosed my disbelief that we
are still in such an abysmal place in defending the rights of women that we
have the temerity to see this one judgment against this one powerful man as “a
monumental step forward.” Until there is justice and a sense of equality for
women both here and around the world, we are in no way making monumental steps
forward as human beings. We clearly have a long way to go. A long long way to
go. It just needed to be said before we could move forward in the confession of
our individual and corporate societal sins last evening. And today. And every
day going forward.
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