{"id":25060,"date":"2014-10-16T20:11:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T00:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=25060"},"modified":"2014-10-16T20:11:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T00:11:13","slug":"you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/","title":{"rendered":"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The CEO of a local business is upset because the city has subpoenaed transcripts of a bunch of public speeches he gave earlier this year.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, it\u2019s kind of weird that the CEO is upset and that he\u2019s claiming victimhood over this. These were public speeches in public settings \u2014 speeches that he had, at the time, public-ized. The CEO had crafted these words with the intent and desire to have them heard and read and disseminated as widely as possible. So it seems odd, now, for him to turn around and claim that the city is somehow violating his privacy or his right to \u2026 something<\/em> or other, by attempting to read those speeches now.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just weird that he is acting as though the city had subpoenaed his medical records, or his browser history, or his private diary.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, isn\u2019t there something kind of creepy about the city just going around, willy nilly, deciding to subpoena private citizens for no apparent reason? Even if the particular materials being sought here \u2014 public speeches \u2014 don\u2019t make this particular case seem intrusive, doesn\u2019t this still seem like an abuse of power? Or, at least, doesn\u2019t it seem like it might be similar to something that one could imagine turning into a form of something that\u2019s close to what might become something like an abuse of power?<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s Bad, isn\u2019t it? It seems<\/em> bad if you look at it like that. We don\u2019t like to think that the city can just go around arbitrarily issuing subpoenas for no reason.<\/p>\n

Turns out, though, that the city does<\/em> have a reason for subpoenaing these public speeches from this CEO. The city is defending itself in a lawsuit \u2014 a lawsuit filed against the city by \u2026 wait for it<\/em> \u2026 that very same CEO.<\/p>\n

Oh. So, in other words, this is discovery<\/em> \u2014 the routine legal business that occurs whenever two parties go to court. The CEO\u2019s speeches are part of the facts of the matter in question. In defending itself against the CEO\u2019s lawsuit, the city has a right to access to those facts. Those facts \u2014 and those speeches \u2014 are what this lawsuit is about.<\/p>\n

OK, but still \u2026 why<\/em> is this CEO suing the city? Whatever the particulars of his lawsuit, he\u2019s got to be the Good Guy in this, right? He\u2019s literally fighting City Hall. Doesn\u2019t that automatically make him the hero in this story? That\u2019s how the trope works, after all \u2014 when a private citizen stands up to fight City Hall, City Hall is never the Good Guy in the story.<\/p>\n

\"CityHall\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But this is real life, not a Hollywood movie. In real life, City Hall isn\u2019t always the big, corrupt oppressor abusing its power to crush the little guy. Sometimes it is! But in real life, City Hall is also, you know, the government<\/em> \u2014 doing the job of the government in a democracy by standing up for the little guys.<\/p>\n

And in that capacity \u2014 when City Hall is acting in its proper role as the Good Guy \u2014 cities get sued. A lot. They spend a lot of time in court fighting lawsuits filed by slumlords, tax cheats, wage thieves, racketeers, polluters, and all manner of other powerful, wealthy scofflaws who have deeper pockets than the taxpayers and who would rather tie the\u00a0city\u00a0up in court than comply with the laws that apply to everyone else.<\/p>\n

So no, fighting City Hall doesn\u2019t automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn\u2019t automatically make you the Bad Guy, either.<\/p>\n

Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case?<\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s what happened. The city council passed a law protecting minorities from getting fired just for being minorities. Specifically, the city\u2019s new law protects LGBT people from employment discrimination.<\/p>\n

The CEO doesn\u2019t like this law. What\u2019s more, he thinks most<\/em> people in the city don\u2019t like it either. It\u2019s quite possible he\u2019s right about that. After all, laws protecting minorities from being treated unfairly wouldn\u2019t ever come up in the first place unless it weren\u2019t the case that a big chunk of the majority population was inclined to treat them unfairly. It\u2019s often the case that a majority of the majority doesn\u2019t like it when the law keeps them from taking advantage of a small minority.<\/p>\n

But the CEO was so sure that a majority of the people of the city saw things his way that he launched a petition drive to force a ballot initiative that would allow the people of the city, by direct vote, to overrule their elected council and repeal the anti-discrimination law.<\/p>\n

I will now pause to allow you to decide for yourself whether or not this CEO is the Good Guy in this story.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not ultimately relevant. It doesn\u2019t matter if you think the city\u2019s anti-discrimination statute is just or unjust, or whether you think the CEO\u2019s ballot initiative to overturn it was just or unjust. Because that\u2019s not what the CEO\u2019s lawsuit is about.<\/p>\n

The CEO filed his lawsuit after his petition drive failed. He didn\u2019t manage to collect enough valid signatures to get his repeal initiative on the ballot.<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0CEO argues that he collected a whole bunch of valid signatures that were unfairly disqualified by election officials. If you count those, he says, then he\u2019s got enough to\u00a0get his repeal initiative. So he\u2019s suing.<\/p>\n

This lawsuit, in other words, isn\u2019t about discrimination or anti-discrimination laws. It\u2019s about something far more technical, mundane and boring. It\u2019s about the electoral rules involving petition drives\u00a0\u2014 about things like the number of signatures collected, how the validity of those signatures is determined, and the legitimacy of the tactics used to collect them. Some of those laws can be technical and complicated, but the function of such laws is quite clear: to ensure that all signatures represent actual people who intended to lend their name to the effort.<\/p>\n

And that is why, in response to the CEO\u2019s lawsuit, the city\u2019s lawyers wound up subpoenaing the CEO\u2019s speeches.<\/p>\n

Not all<\/em> of his speeches, mind you. They\u2019re not interested in all of his speeches \u2014 just the ones related to the failed petition drive. Just a limited number of public speeches that were delivered publicly in support of the thoroughly public matter of an intrinsically public and political petition drive.<\/p>\n

You can understand why such speeches are relevant to the matter of this lawsuit. The CEO\u2019s descriptions of his petition in those speeches have a direct bearing on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the methods he was using to collect signatures. The content of those speeches is essential to the legal questions the CEO\u2019s lawsuit addresses. What instructions were given to those who were collecting signatures? Did those instructions comply with election law or not?<\/p>\n

So no matter what you think of the anti-discrimination statute, or of the CEO\u2019s position, or of the city\u2019s position, the necessity of examining his public statements offering instruction, direction and support for his\u00a0petition drive shouldn\u2019t seem weird or unseemly or inappropriate. That\u2019s the heart of the whole lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The subpoenas filed by the city\u2019s attorneys are utterly predictable, mundane, and unavoidable steps in the process the CEO himself began by filing his suit.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s any whiff here of anything unseemly or inappropriate, it\u2019s coming from the CEO\u2019s sudden perturbation over the prospect of close legal scrutiny of the tactics and rhetorics he employed in his petition drive. He\u2019s quite a bit more worried than we might expect someone to be if they were confident they had followed election law properly.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the wrinkle: I\u2019ve streamlined some of the description above to make the outlines of this case easier to describe and to understand.<\/p>\n

The actual lawsuit involves not just a single CEO, but several<\/em> CEOs of nonprofit corporations in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n

And those CEOs are also clergy, and the nonprofit corporations they oversee are Christian churches.<\/p>\n

Now, churches are not \u2014 legally \u2014 just exactly like every other business. And clergy are not legally just like every other CEO. Those legal differences are, in general, a very important thing.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t get why those differences substantially change anything in this case. I\u2019m not sure how or why those differences should make any difference.<\/p>\n

Nothing in this case involves either the establishment of religion or the city attempting to restrict the free exercise thereof, so this doesn\u2019t seem to raise any First Amendment issues.<\/p>\n

The separation of church and state is an enormously important principle in American, but I don\u2019t see what it would mean to invoke that principle here.<\/p>\n

The separation of church and state does not forbid\u00a0pastors and churches from participating in petition drives. Nor does it mean that pastors and churches are prohibited from filing a lawsuit against the city. But it also does not and cannot mean that when pastors or churches do file such lawsuits, they are magically exempt from the laws that govern such lawsuits or from the legal process and legal rules that the city and everyone else has to obey.<\/p>\n

So what am I missing here? These sermons have direct bearing on the facts being disputed in this lawsuit \u2014 a lawsuit initiated by the churches themselves, not by the city. Those sermons have direct bearing on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the methods used to collect signatures, which is the center of this entire legal dispute.<\/p>\n

If the city\u2019s subpoenas\u00a0involved\u00a0the speeches of a CEO in an otherwise identical lawsuit, no one would bat an eye at the obvious necessity of collecting and consulting such relevant material in the case.<\/p>\n

What is it about the fact that these public speeches were sermons<\/em> that significantly changes that?<\/p>\n

For more on this legal battle: Off the Kuff<\/a>; Marc Campos<\/a>; Texpatriate<\/a>; Snopes<\/a>; Pat Robertson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fighting City Hall doesn’t automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn’t automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here’s what happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,17,53,52,99,36],"class_list":["post-25060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-church-state","tag-equality","tag-gay-rights","tag-homosexuality","tag-persecuted-hegemons","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2014\/10\/CityHall.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/\",\"name\":\"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)","description":"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)","og_description":"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2014\/10\/CityHall.jpg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/","name":"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00","dateModified":"2014-10-17T00:11:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"Fighting City Hall doesn't automatically make you the Good Guy. But it doesn't automatically make you the Bad Guy, either. Which kind of story is this one? Which kind of lawsuit is this one? Is City Hall the Good Guy or the Bad Guy in this case? Well, here's what happened.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/10\/16\/you-can-fight-city-hall-but-if-you-take-them-to-court-they-get-lawyers-too\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"You can fight City Hall (but if you take them to court, they get lawyers, too)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}