This year, the holiday is also being observed today, Friday, in order to give some people a day off from work.
Connected to the day is the Declaration of Independence, which touts equality and notes that we have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When the Declaration of Independence was written 250 years ago, equality was reserved for white, landowning, heterosexual, Christian males. Great strides have been made to extend equality to everyone else. As we know, equality just for some is not equality. In recent times, even if not everything has gone our way, we have seen many pro-equality court rulings and laws and we won’t let any regressive actions or court decisions deter us.
More people are coming out of the closet, and more allies are coming out in support of equality. More people are free to marry, and now we have more polyamorous and polygamous people speaking up for their rights.
But we’re still on our journey. Equality, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness are, in many places in the US, and at the national government level, still denied to LGBTQ+ people in some ways. Even more so, these rights are denied to the polyamorous and the consanguinamorous. The US still struggles with racism.
Let’s keep moving forward so that an adult, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender, is free to pursue love, sex, kink, residence and marriage with any and all consenting adults, and not be denied liberty, employment, housing, or anything else.
This isn't just a philosophical thing or a principle. There are people, good people, who are hurt by ongoing discrimination, prejudice, and ignorance. There are people just being themselves, hurting nobody, and people who are in loving, healthy relationships who are being denied their rights, who have to hide who they are or their love for each other, who constantly endure people proclaiming that the love they share is sick or disgusting or makes them worthy of being subjected to abuse or even death. There are teenagers who have simply behaved as normal teenagers with each other and haven't hurt anybody (including each other or themselves) who are being lied to and told that nobody else is like them and they are depraved. That's no way to have to live, it certainly isn't liberty, and it squashes the pursuit of happiness.
They need to know they are not alone, and there's nothing wrong with them.
We need independence from hate and ignorance. So let's keep evolving America, and encourage other countries to do the same.
Connected to the day is the Declaration of Independence, which touts equality and notes that we have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When the Declaration of Independence was written 250 years ago, equality was reserved for white, landowning, heterosexual, Christian males. Great strides have been made to extend equality to everyone else. As we know, equality just for some is not equality. In recent times, even if not everything has gone our way, we have seen many pro-equality court rulings and laws and we won’t let any regressive actions or court decisions deter us.
More people are coming out of the closet, and more allies are coming out in support of equality. More people are free to marry, and now we have more polyamorous and polygamous people speaking up for their rights.
But we’re still on our journey. Equality, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness are, in many places in the US, and at the national government level, still denied to LGBTQ+ people in some ways. Even more so, these rights are denied to the polyamorous and the consanguinamorous. The US still struggles with racism.
Let’s keep moving forward so that an adult, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender, is free to pursue love, sex, kink, residence and marriage with any and all consenting adults, and not be denied liberty, employment, housing, or anything else.
This isn't just a philosophical thing or a principle. There are people, good people, who are hurt by ongoing discrimination, prejudice, and ignorance. There are people just being themselves, hurting nobody, and people who are in loving, healthy relationships who are being denied their rights, who have to hide who they are or their love for each other, who constantly endure people proclaiming that the love they share is sick or disgusting or makes them worthy of being subjected to abuse or even death. There are teenagers who have simply behaved as normal teenagers with each other and haven't hurt anybody (including each other or themselves) who are being lied to and told that nobody else is like them and they are depraved. That's no way to have to live, it certainly isn't liberty, and it squashes the pursuit of happiness.
They need to know they are not alone, and there's nothing wrong with them.
We need independence from hate and ignorance. So let's keep evolving America, and encourage other countries to do the same.
![Non-Monogamy Diagram [I:FV]](http://www.obsidianfields.com/lj/nonmonogamy2.5.1.gif){kind=link}
I wholeheartedly join Keith's call and congratulate all Americans and their friends in other countries on this holiday, which we celebrate as the beginning of a long journey towards true human equality and true freedom of thought, speech, and lifestyle for all people on our planet.
ReplyDeleteGenuine freedom is not anarchy and selfishness (personal, national, or racial), but a conscious need to harmonize the interests of each individual with those of others within the framework of a common living space in a narrow or broad sense of the term.
America has achieved a great deal regarding tolerance for people of different colors, different beliefs and different sexual orientations, but there is still a lot to be done to eliminate emotional and physical violence on racial, national, or sexual grounds. This is a task that will take decades, if not generations, to complete, but I am confident that we will eventually see the work that was started 250 years ago reach a logical conclusion that the Founding Fathers of the United States could never have imagined.
But I won't be original if I say that achieving observance for the natural human rights to sexual self-identification and the choice of a sexual partner will be much more challenging than any national task that has already been solved. This is because it touches on the most intimate psychological and physiological aspects of each individual's life and is a necessary condition for experiencing satisfaction and happiness.
Domestic and human's internal intolerance to sexual orientation and to the choice of sexual lifestyle (polyamory, consanguinamory, etc.) is our worst enemy, our demon, which we must fight every minute tlll the end of our lives. This is the only way we can squeeze out of ourselves, drop by drop, "a slave" of our own prejudices and the fear of being different.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King, I have a dream that my little grandchildren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by thеir sexual orientation or their sexual partners but by the content of their character.