On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day last year, I had the opportunity to visit the neighborhood where he was born and raised and gazed upon his childhood home and the original Ebenezer Baptist Church. I'm glad I did this because as it turned out it would be the only MLK, Jr. Day I would spend in Atlanta.
Given the morality MLK, Jr. contributed to America and how it would cost him his life, he has become a near universally admired figure in this country. Naturally there is the temptation to invoke his name. Sometimes such an invocation is justified. But at other times it is not.
It surely wasn't when Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers invoked Dr. King last November when refusing to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Rodgers told Pat McAfee, “As an aside, the great MLK said, you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.”
Somehow I doubt Rodgers has ever read Letters From Birmingham Jail. To be precise, King writes:
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
But let us assume for the sake of argument that Rodgers genuinely believes vaccine requirements are unjust. If Rodgers sees fit to disobey then he must be prepared to pay the price:
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Rodgers has not taken this stance openly claiming he has been immunized let alone lovingly. Nor can I imagine Rodgers would be prepared to accept any kind of penalty.
More to the point, objecting to vaccines is not akin to being deprived of the right to vote, the right to peaceful assembly the right to public accommodation because of one's skin color. Vaccine measures apply to all members of the community. When one considers that Dr. King lived in an America which was afflicted by polio, I cannot imagine him objecting to public health requirements concerning immunization.
Unfortunately, such points are lost on Rodgers and the anti-vaxxers who stormed a Burger King in Brooklyn wearing MLK, Jr. t-shirts which resulted in five arrests. Assuming charges are forthcoming it would be interesting to see if any of them plead guilty. If they don't then that definitively proves that anti-vaxxers no nothing of Dr. King.
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