Elian Gonzalez: Victim, Hero, or Just a Little Boy?

Elian Gonzalez: Victim, Hero, or Just a Little Boy?
by Bud Malmsten

Malmsten's Maxim on Controversy:

"Every side of every controversy includes some truth held by that side which must be explained away because it is inconvenient in the present discussion."

Congratulations to The American Partisan for its outstanding coverage last week of all sides of the argument over Elian Gonzalez. This is what TAP is all about: "believe in something, take a stand, and defend it." And did we get it! Passionate expressions of both sides of a very difficult issue.

This controversy comes in an unusually clean package. There are two sides with virtually no middle ground. On side says: send the boy back to Cuba! The other: keep the boy here!

Dad used to tell anyone who would listen, "There are three sides to every question; your side, the other guy’s side, and the right side." One reason it is so hard to find the right side this time, is that no matter where we go with the discussion, we turn up something we deeply dislike -- and this discussion gets complicated.

Each of these two simple sides includes a wide spectrum of supporting arguments from serious to cynical. And these two simple sides draw on deep philosophical presuppositions.

The "keep the boy here" people love to mention the social/political/moral chasm between life in these United States and life in the island prison called Cuba.

The "send the boy back" people can't seem to stop talking about the sanctity of the nuclear family unit and the absolute importance of the parent/child relationship.

The humor in all this comes into focus when we begin to notice who it is that is so passionately arguing this case. Everybody has switched sides! The "keep him here" speeches are being made by traditional family values proponents. The "send him back" voices are new to this family first stuff.

Then there is the complication that turns this into an extension of the old Cold War between the United States and Cuba.

What troubles me is the nagging question, "Where are the Evangelical Christian voices in this?" Strangely silent. We are the group who have stood rock solid in the battle for the family. When anything has come up that could remotely lead to the government taking a child away from his or her parents, we have fought for the family at every conceivable level. Until now.

Could this silence be why the conservatives have so consistently come down on the wrong side?

We have been able to sort out some important details since the arrival of the two grandmothers late last week; info unavailable to the writers who so thoroughly discussed Elian's fate earlier in TAP.

This six year old boy has already experienced more than his share of trauma:

1.) First his mom and dad separated, and he went to live with Mom and Grandma, spending weekends with Dad.

2.) Then Mom had a big argument with Grandma, so she left Grandma's apartment and moved in with her ex-con boyfriend, and Elian began to spend more time with Dad.

3.) Ex-con Boyfriend acquired a seventeen foot aluminum boat with a fifty HP engine, and offered -- for a mere $2,000.00 each -- to take family and friends to the United States. It was necessary to keep this trip secret from Mom's family and from Dad, so Elian was not able to say "adios" to them.

4.) After one failed departure attempt (observed by Cuban Coast Guard, turned back, engine failure), thirteen or fourteen people crowded into this water craft for a ninety mile trip across the ocean.

5.) We do not know how long the boat floated, but we know it went down somewhere off the Florida coast, and Elian was one of three survivors, having lost his mother, perhaps even watching her drown.

And now, what should have been a no brainer, has become an international competition.

Have we forgotten everything we know about the development of the human psyche? If we fail to return this boy to his family in Cuba, we will be responsible for adding to his already too horrible experience.

I ask again, Where are the Evangelical Christian voices in this? Strangely silent.

We are very uncomfortable because this time President Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno, is absolutely right. We are not accustomed to being on the wrong side of the truth.

Not that we have <I>never</I> been there. Consider the abortion issue in the early 1970's. If Evangelical Christians had said then what we so loudly proclaim today, the Supreme Court could not have treated opposition to abortion as a "sectarian, Roman Catholic dogma." It would not have been decided on the basis of the separation of church and state, but rather on the more important basis of the relative strength of the two individuals involved in any abortion. Who is attacking whom? And which of the two is the more innocent? And which of the two -- if either -- deserves capital punishment?

Are we going to do it again? That is, are we going to remain silent when our voices could encourage the right decisions? NO!

Let the word go out to the whole world that we value freedom so much that we will not force even one six year old boy to be a pawn in our game of one-upsmanship. We would rather let that boy grow up within the circle of his remaining immediate family, than to win some game about which he couldn't care less.