When I saw Liberty University’s production of Kin, I left the theater sobbing. The show focuses on the trial of Carrie Buck, a true story of the young woman who was presumed “feeble-minded” and legally sterilized so that “her kind” would not continue. The case of Buck v. Bell was decided in 1927 in the American court system. The Nazis used that case to defend their eugenics experiments on the Jewish people.
In Liberty’s production, the audience sits surrounding the stage in the Black Box theater. They act as the judge and jury as they watch two men argue over whether Carrie’s sterilization would be useful to society as a whole. All the while, Carrie sits silently in the middle of the stage, a victim of a legal system that sees her as less than human. In the talkback, Liberty law professor Phillip D. Kline reflected on how this case demonstrates the wickedness that is possible when the highest form of law is only a country’s constitution, rather than the eternal law of God. In Jeff Barker’s Kin, we see the consequences of a law devoid of love.
The majority of the second act focuses on the trial, where two educated and smooth-talking lawyers argue either for Carrie’s sterilization or for her continued retention at the Colony, a home for the “feeble-minded” that Carrie was forced into when she had an unplanned pregnancy. I felt helpless as I watched these two men debate which dehumanizing future Carrie should be forced into: whether she was to be sterilized, never to have children again, or whether she was to remained locked-up in the Colony.
The thought that she should have neither fate, that she should be allowed to be free and to have children, was never brought forward for consideration.
And that’s where this story was so frustrating. Throughout the show, Carrie is consistently treated as though she is an object to be used. She is raped by a young man, her child is taken away from her, she is locked up in the Colony like her mother, and she has to sit silently as two men decided her future. Although she was in favor of the sterilization outcome because it would allow her to see her child again, not even that opinion was taken into consideration.
Instead, we hear “reasoned” arguments.
Carrie’s sterilization would benefit society because she wouldn’t be able to birth another feeble-minded child.
Carrie’s freedom wouldn’t benefit society at all, so she should just stay locked-up.
But her time at the Colony costs taxpayer money; it makes more sense to let her be sterilized and free to work.
But if she cannot find work, she will become a prostitute and spread syphilis to our men.
These arguments treat Carrie not as a human with intrinsic rights, but as a problem to be dealt with in the least burdensome way.
As Professor Kline explained, this is what happens when the law does not depend on the law of God. The law of God does not allow the exploitation of the weak. It does not allow the dehumanization of the image-bearers of God. It does not allow reason to rule over love. In fact, the law of God demands that love must rule over all things.
Carrie understands this. She is willing to sacrifice the possibility of a future family so that she can see her baby again. She is motivated purely by love for another.
The lawyers, on the other hand, are motivated by a desire to create a “perfect” society by extinguishing the weak. They do not see Christ in the least of these. In the weak, they see problems to be solved rather than people to be loved.
Carrie is voiceless for most of the trial, a pawn that the pro-eugenics movement can use for their benefit. But at the end of the play, Carrie is brought to the stand and permitted to speak. Even in this moment, Carrie’s words are judged not as an expression of her humanity, but as a useful tool to be exploited. She answers a couple of questions to the satisfaction of her questioners, but when she brings up the name of her rapist, she is taken from the stand. When her words are no longer useful, they are dismissed and she is silenced.
In the courtroom of the United States, where the constitution is the final law-giver, Carrie was silenced, dehumanized, and maimed. But in the courtroom of God, where love is the rule of law, Carrie is freed, respected, and restored. Most importantly, she is loved.
Let us strive to make our own courts more like the court of God.
