Elian Gonzalez's meeting last week in Miami Beach with his visiting Cuban grandmothers produced a surprise defection: Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, a Miami eminence in her own right besides being a pal of attorney general Janet Reno, decided after hosting the meeting at her home that Elian should stay in America, and not be sent back to his father in Cuba, as Reno and the Clinton Justice Department insist.
"It became clear to me the grandmothers were not free to be grandmothers. They were under duress," O'Laughlin told reporters. "After serious prayer and reflection, I feel that to send the child back to a land steeped in fear would not let him grow to be the man he could be if he grew to manhood in freedom." As if to confirm the soundness of O'Laughlin's judgment, Fidel Castro's minions immediately launched a propaganda assault against her, saying that Elian's "loving and heroic" grannies had been the victim of "lies, tricks, betrayals, humiliations, and an unhuman and despotic treatment" at the hands of the Dominican nun.
Reno was unswayed by O'Laughlin's change of heart. And appallingly, the once-solid Republican congressional support for Elian's right to stay in the United States has begun to erode. GOP members seem to have been more affected by credulous press fawning over the grandmothers' Castro-scripted U.S. visit than by O'Laughlin's courageous witness.
But the most disgraceful performance came from Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters of California, who denounced O'Laughlin: "I am bewildered," Waters said. "Never in my wildest imagination would I think that a nun who was supposed to be a neutral party would undermine that neutrality." Yes, conscience must be a bewildering thing to the likes of Waters.