Martin O'Malley and the Politics of Moral Duty
from John Nichols at The Nation:
Martin O'Malley Attempts a Politics of Moral Duty
___Martin O'Malley embraces elements of a Catholic social justice ethic that will be highlighted as Pope Francis tours the United States this year. The governor is often at his best when he speaks of a duty to address poverty and inequality, and of the need to respect the dignity of work with living-wage pay and workplace fairness. As governor, he acted on these values by, for instance, making Maryland the first state in the nation to require government contractors to pay their employees a living wage and arguing passionately and practically for raising the state's minimum wage to $10,10 an hour.
That does not mean that O'Malley marches in lockstep with the church; he is pro-choice and he has been a leading advocate of marriage equality; when Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O'Brien urged the governor to oppose marriage equality, O'Malley replied, "I do not presume, nor would I ever presume as governor, to question or infringe upon your freedom to define, to preach about, and to administer the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. But on the public issue of granting equal civil marital rights to same-sex couples, you and I disagree." O'Malley signed the law and then defended it when opponents sought unsuccessfully to overturn the measure with a statewide referendum.
On issues such as repealing the death penalty, supporting the rights of workers to organize and working to eradicate poverty, O'Malley has taken bold stands that he argues are grounded both in common sense and common morality. He signed a 2013 measure barring prosecutors from seeking death penalty judgements in Maryland and then commuted the sentences of the four prisoners remaining on Maryland's death row to life imprisonment.
O'Malley did not deny the serious practical and political challenges that had arisen as thousands of children from Central America crossed into the United States in the spring and summer of 2014. He recognized that there were a lot of issues to be resolved with regard to the particular circumstances of the children—and with regard to broader need to reform the nation's ill-defined and frequently dysfunctional approach to immigration policy...
With his argument that the reality of why immigrants flee their own lands must be taken into consideration, O'Malley broke with prominent members of both parties to demand that the response to the plight of the children be a humane and knowing one. "We are not a country that should send children away and send them back to certain death," O'Malley told reporters at a National Governors Association meeting in Nashville. "I believe that we should be guided by the greatest power we have as a people, and that is the power of our principles. Through all of our great world religions, we are told that hospitality to strangers is an essential human dignity."
read more: http://m.thenation.com/blog/208697-martin-omalley-attempts-politics-moral-duty
O'Malley in prayer circle outside Simmons Memorial Baptist
https://twitter.com/PeterCrispino/status/593173747487629313/photo/1
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