Don't Sit When You See The Whites of Their Eyes

The mad dad of Lexington, David Parker, doesn't seem to get the nature of civil disobedience. At his pretrial hearing yesterday in Concord, he and his lawyer tried the old not-guilty-because-it-was-a-good-cause ruse.

I am embarrassed for him. In the spirit of Emerson and other Transcendentalists from those very towns, he should take his lumps. Protesters have paid the fine, probation or other trivial penalty for such sit-ins for centuries. I hope he bones up on cause and effect and on action and responsibility before his trial on August 2nd.

Of course, he's guilty prima facie and in law. He wanted to make his (very control-freak silly) point and chose to occupy a public building for hours after closing to do so. He engineered his arrest for trespassing. Pay the man and go about your business, Davy.

According to the report on the hearing in the Boston Globe, Parker's lawyer claimed, ''...there are issues relative to necessity, justification, and the exercise of civil disobedience in this case that override whether he was technically trespassing or not." The lawyer is Jeffrey Denner Denner O'Malley, Boston.

Coverage in both the Globe and the Boston Herald, noted parents on both sides appearing at the court. A couple were for Parker and perhaps a dozen opposed him. The groups had delightful suburban names – Lexington Parents for Respect and Lexington CARES (Community Action for Responsible Education and Safety). Those are ever so much more genteel than Queers Can't Tell Us What to Do, and We're Not All Crazies Here. Although these latter seem more precise for this issue.

I would hope that the hardheaded Mr. Parker, backed by the intractable Brian Camenker of the Article 8 Alliance, does not cut a deal on this petty charge. I for one would love to hear his explain how the school system is obliged to give every concerned parent say-so over any scheduled or spontaneous discussion in his kid's classroom on subjects tangential to his specifications.

If there was ever an argument for home schooling, this is it. This guy wants absolute control over any aspect of same-sex relation mentions, precisely as he defines the term. If he expounds publicly on his reasoning, it could become a classic in logic classes.