Thursday’s thumbs State’s Baptists take stand on abuse

It’s Thursday and another chance to fire off a few up or down thumbs about some of news developments in our neck of the woods and elsewhere:

BAPTISTS GET SERIOUS

Kudos to the Arkansas Baptist State Convention delegates — referred to as messengers — for voting this week to form a sexual-abuse task force to better protect children from predators. That sounds like it might be a simple, no-brainer kind of vote, but how to handle sex abuse allegations has divided the Southern Baptist Convention. The Arkansas Baptists this week unanimously backed a resolution by Fort Smith’s Grand Avenue Baptist Church Pastor Brad Lewter in favor of a task force to ensure policies and procedures of the convention “are above reproach in handling sexual abuse allegations.” The task force will in 2022 recommend best practices for the convention to follow. “We should be able to look into the best practices and policies to protect those who are vulnerable, to protect those who have been victimized,” Lewter said. When abuse victims step forward, Baptists must be “prepared to do what’s best for them, not only in the eyes of the law but, most importantly, in the eyes of our Lord,” he said. Handling the issue is complicated for the convention, which recognizes the autonomy of each local church as opposed to some other churches’ top-down hierarchy.

CHOOSING AN ELECTION

The Fayetteville City Council took a terrific stand for representative government Tuesday by choosing to call a Feb. 8 election to determine who will replace Matthew Petty as one of the two Ward 2 council members. The council could have appointed someone to the position, but wisely concluded that the three years remaining on Petty’s term is too long to ignore the wishes of Ward 2 voters. Several people indicated their willingness to serve if appointed, so hopefully that’s an indication the voters will have a multitude of candidates from which to pick come Feb. 8.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

“Great things are on the horizon” is what the large projection on the stage of the Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting said. Just above the phrase was the image of a fighter jet. One can hardly fault the business community for feeling giddy about the news, announced last spring, that Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith was selected by the Pentagon as the international training hub for its Foreign Military Sales program. The program is expected to attract hundreds of families and their spending to the area. Key to that program will be the presence of pilots and ground crews from Singapore to train on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jets. This commitment by the Pentagon will be a boon to the Fort Smith area for years to come.

JUDICIAL ABUSE

In south Arkansas, former Judge Joseph Boeckmann Jr. says “judicial immunity” should shield him from lawsuits over allegations he used his power while on the bench to coerce men, including minors, into sexual acts. It’s an argument we’ll probably hear more about until the Supreme Court chimes in. But we hope the courts will find that the former district judge’s legal strategy should be disallowed. He was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and witness tampering related to investigations into claims he forced men as young as 16 to pose nude for him as a form of community service. Boeckmann’s lawyers argue broad judicial immunity covers the community service orders of the court. Such immunity is important to the good-faith operations of the state’s court systems, but if a judge imposes community service as a way to satisfy his own desires by abusing those appearing before him, is there any good faith in that? If that kind of immunity is permitted, it will do lasting damage to the state’s entire judicial system. Missing from that legal argument is any justice at all. No judge should be afforded protection that covers behaviors that would be illegal and immoral if any other Arkansan engaged in them.