Excerpt from the chapter Are We Friends?

---

This excerpt focuses on my criticism of the petition for certification of law on Facebook and my understanding of the role Facebook came to play in the broader controversy. For years, in my mind, I defended my decision to use Facebook because I viewed it as inseparable from what I said. This passage reflects an evolution in my perspective.

It is necessary to address my use of Facebook, as it became the central focus. Not because Facebook was the most important part of what happened, but because, in many ways, it became the most visible symbol of it—the piece that others could latch onto most easily. 

It was my decision to use Facebook as one of the mediums to express my concerns about the petition for certification of law in Doss. I take responsibility for that choice. I believe there was a “Facebook tax” on the perception of my words—a feeling that Facebook is an undignified forum for a judge.

For years, I thought I had to choose between defending what I said and regretting the vehicle I used to say it. Not because I believed Facebook was ideal, but because letting go of that defense felt like letting go of myself.

Talk about my use of Facebook to criticize the petition for certification of law in Doss became so loud, so visible, and so persistent that it shifted my mind from the question of what I said to the question of who I was and what I stood for. It was a burden that became part of my identity. 

But then I realized that I do not have to justify my choice of Facebook in order for my words to have meaning or for the reasons I spoke to be just. Facebook was a choice I made in the moment, shaped by who I was, and under circumstances I felt were urgent.

While Facebook undoubtedly affected the consequences, it does not define the merits of my criticism or the truth of who I am.

I do understand that, as a judge, the use of Facebook created a perception issue. That perception, among other things, gave some a way to avoid the substance of my criticism. It reduced a serious critique to something much easier to condemn.

I remain certain of my principles, but I regret how events unfolded and how easily substance was displaced by optics. 

However, Facebook is not the lens through which everything else is judged. 

The deeper truth is that the substance of what I said is what mattered. The medium became consequential because others made it useful. But that does not make the medium the heart of the story, and it does not make my words answerable to it.

For more about Systematically Excluded, return to the homepage.