WHO IS ON THE CROSS TODAY?

Truman Nelson, The Truman Nelson Reader, edited by William J. Shafer (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts Press, 1989) ("I've almost made up my mind to cast my lot with the Negroes. They're the ones that are living an inch at a time. They're not worried about another ten cents a day but about how to get out from under the lash. They're moving, rebelling, running away from their bondage, flaunting their misery in the faces of the smug. We call factory workers hands. The Negroes have no hands, they are in chains. Our hands can fight, carry a gun, vote even if they want to. I've got more respect for the black people. Unfortunately it is written on the iron leaf of fate that progress comes only by revolutions, not gradually, and comes only in great convulsions and not from patient plodding. If you want  a spot to stand on, to move the earth, find the man who is being crucified, who is on the cross today." Id. at vii (Theodore Parker, to George Ripley, in The Passion by the Brook). Last week the United States Supreme Court, in separate 5-4 decisions (Associate Justice Kennedy being the swing vote), struck down the (pro-racial minority) Voting Right Act and the (the anti-gay and lesbian) Defense of Marriage Act. Also, this week the United States Senate passed an Immigration reform bill which is forecasted as unlikely to get through the House of Representatives. Who is on the cross today?).