No Exceptions, Not Even Trump

I want to talk about a thing.

I want to talk about the First Principle of Unitarian Universalism: the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

And I want to talk about what happens to that principle when the name Donald Trump enters the room. [Yep, folks….I’m really going there!]

Because for many of us, perhaps for most of us, that's where the principle begins to strain.

Some of us have said it out loud. Others have only thought it. But the thought is the same:

Surely there must be an exception.

Surely this is the person who forfeited it.

If that thought has crossed your mind, you are not shallow, immoral, or un UU. You are human. You are reacting. You are responding to fear, grief, anger, exhaustion, and sometimes trauma.

But the question isn’t whether those feelings are understandable. Of course they are.

The question is whether the First Principle survives them.

 

Let’s slow down and look more carefully at the word we rush past.

Inherent.

The word comes from the Latin inhaerere. [I promise this won’t turn into Latin 101.] It means to stick to, to cling, to be fastened to, to be inseparable from. In other words, inherent worth is not something placed on us later. It is not layered over us by society, religion, success, or morals.

It clings to us.

It's attached at the deepest level of our being. Before achievement, before failure, before harm done or harm received.

I sometimes imagine it like the waxy vernix still clinging to a baby's skin right out of the womb.

Before we have language. Before we have memory. Before we have any capacity to deserve or not deserve anything at all.

Worth is already there, adhering to us, inseparable, refusing to be shaken loose.

This is why the word inherent matters so much.

If worth can be peeled away by cruelty, by abuse of power, then it was never inherent. It was conditional.

And conditional worth has a long, ugly history.

Conditional worth is what said enslaved people were ⅗ human. Conditional worth is what said Indigenous lives were expendable. Unitarian Universalism came about, in part, as a refusal of that.

So when we say “every person,” we're not speaking aspirationally. We're making a claim about reality.

And that claim either applies universally—or it collapses and rings hollow.

Inherent does not mean commonly expressed. Inherent does not mean earned. Inherent does not mean maintained through good behavior.

Inherent means intrinsic, inalienable, non revocable.

And that can be a very uncomfortable truth to sit with.

 Before I keep going, I need to tell you something personal. Not because my story is the center of anything, but because it's the lens through which I learned, painfully and slowly, what it means to hold someone accountable without discarding their humanity.

Years and years ago, I was groomed by an older man.

I was convinced to run away from home, far from anyone who knew me well enough to notice what was changing. At first, the harm came as a trickle. A comment here. A restriction there. A subtle rewriting of reality that I didn’t yet have words for. This began when I was just shy of 17. 

And then we got married.

And when we did, the floodgates opened.

Occasional became constant. What had been hidden behind persuasion became abuse. I spent 2 more years of my life with a man who emotionally and sexually abused me everyday. There was one instance where he “pretended” to drown me. As a joke.

I want to be clear: I am not sharing this for shock value. And I am not sharing it to compare personal harm to political harm as if they were the same. I'm sharing it because when abuse has a face, a human name, it changes how words like dignity and worth land.

For those of us who have lived under fear and abuse, the instinct to say this person has lost their dignity can feel necessary for survival.

So if Donald Trump feels like the exception to the First Principle for you, I want you to know: I understand where that comes from. And it's from that place that I want to keep going.

When harm has a face, it is very tempting to say that face no longer deserves dignity.

That instinct isn't evil. But it's dangerous.

 

Worth isn't approval. Affirming someone’s inherent worth is not the same as approving of their actions. Worth is ontological. Accountability is ethical. We don't deny someone’s humanity in order to oppose them. 

We oppose them because they are human and therefore responsible.

If we decide that dignity should be earned through moral performance, then dignity becomes a reward system and justice becomes a weapon. Because once someone is less than human, anything becomes permissible. History doesn't show us that dehumanization keeps us safe. History shows us that it teaches us how to justify harm. When we call someone a monster, an animal, pure evil, beyond dignity, we may feel righteous — but we're practicing the very skill that injustice requires.

The First Principle exists precisely because humans are capable of terrible things. If dignity were only for the good, we wouldn't need to name it.

 

Accountability requires humanity.

We do not hold storms morally accountable. We do not prosecute earthquakes.

We hold people accountable.

To say he has dignity is to say:

• He can choose.

• He can be judged.

• He can be constrained.

• He can be held to account under law.

Dignity is not the opposite of accountability. It is the foundation.

 

Imagine a rabid dog. A rabid dog is dangerous. It can bite. The dog didn't wake up one morning and choose rabies. Something happened to it beyond its control. Dignity is not a reward. It's something that remains even when a someone has been profoundly shaped by forces beyond themselves.

And another thing: affirming inherent worth doesn't require forgiveness. It doesn't require reconciliation. It doesn't require trust. Or silence. 

The First Principle asks us to refuse dehumanization, not to abandon wisdom or justice.

 

This is the part that's probably hardest to hear.

Affirming Trump’s inherent worth isn't really about Trump at all. It is about who we are becoming. The First Principle isn't a statement about deserving. It's a spiritual discipline. Who do we refuse to see as human? Where is the line drawn for revoking dignity? What kind of world are we forming? 

Anger can be holy. Anger can be the energy that fuels lasting change. But hatred eats away at the vessel that carries it.

The work is not to feel less. The work is to say: I oppose you with everything I have. And I will not deny your humanity in order to do so.

That is harder. And that is what UUism asks of us.

 

This isn't some club for the morally enlightened. It's a horizon we move toward by refusing to cast anyone beyond the faintest hope, even if or when they never change.

If the First Principle only applies when it's easy, it's nothing but an ornament.

If it applies when it costs us something...well, that's substance.

Donald Trump is not the exception to the First Principle. He's the test of whether or not we truly believe it.