This is something that our own SCOTUS seems to have forgotten. There's an interesting case going on right now where The Church of Satan (which is really just a bunch of atheists who need to an organizing body in order to have their lack of faith recognized as a "faith" for legal purposes; I realize that's a bit of an oversimplification, but close enough) is using the Hobby Lobby ruling to object - on religious grounds - to the dissemination of "scientific" information of questionable veracity to women seeking abortion. The Satanist hold "scientific accuracy" as a "closely held religious belief," and therefore they opine that certain of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws therefore impinge on their religious liberty. We'll see where that goes in terms of making people go, "Oh... Shit..." on Hobby Lobby. I'm mostly waiting for the backlash from the Christian Right when a Muslim organization tries to use Hobby Lobby to defend a tenet of Islam. Justice Ginsburg wrote about this eloquently in her dissent.
There's a lot of potential unintended consequences here.
FROM A STRICT LEGAL PERSPECTIVE, Jack & I are basically in the same boat: we were both charged with a felony but plead it down to a misdemeanor. My crime? I ripped a parking meter out of the ground in college. I was very drunk. But parking meters cost more than the threshold for a felony vandalism charge, so I was charged with a felony. I said the right stuff about being sorry and it got knocked down to a misdemeanor charge. Of course, if there are those who feel that this should also preclude me from service to USAT, I can respect that. But I believe that - on a strict moral basis if not a legal one - there's a big difference between what I did and what Jack did.
My basic summary of this whole thing is:
- Jack Weiss is a piece of shit who beat his wife.
FULL STOP
- Jack Weiss is someone who has done great service in support of the sport of triathlon in his work for USAT.
FULL STOP
Somehow, we need to balance those things, and I think it's everyone's right to weigh them differently. But I do think both need to be acknowledged when it comes to how we handle this going forward.
I think the best course is for Jack to resign because when something like this happens, it impacts the ability of the board to function effectively. Does Jack still have the trust of the majority of his fellow board members? I don't know. But I think that Jack remaining on the board is probably more of a negative than a positive, and I think that as someone who - by all accounts, including my own limited one - cares about this sport a lot, he ought to step down. USAT ought to thank him for his many, many years of service. And they should ask him to do one last service to the organization and resign.
Any code changes are going to have inevitable unintended consequences, and no changes should be rushed into because of Jack. If anything, changes should be made specifically WITHOUT consideration of Jack, because that's likely to further bias what's written.
A "legal" based change - like, "you cannot be on the board if you've been charged with a felony" - is probably the best option, but even that is fraught with unintended consequences. Per Dan's example that outraged a lot of folks, including me until I thought about it a lot more, adultery is a felony crime in the state of Massachusetts (no convictions since '83, but still. It's a felony on the books). So unless we want to try to make a list of all the "really bad felonies" that would preclude service. Any "simple" solution is going to have way too much flexibility that's going to be way more problematic - long term - than even Jack being on the board until he can be replaced by a simple vote.
And any "morality" based change runs into all the problems that accompany any such opinion-based clause. I don't know that USAT wants to open the pandora's box of "well, I know it when I see it..." (Potter Stewart on pornography). At least in large part because "I know it when I see it" has come to mean, "I know it when I can pay a lawyer enough to convince a bunch of people that they all see what I see." Again, I see that as way worse than Jack digging in and staying on the board for two more years.
If you want some evidence about just how problematic seemingly simple words and phrases can be, listen to this:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/
"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp