We Get Hate Mail - UPDATED

In our latest bus sighting, an anonymous comment came in to this blog’s sister Tumblr. The comment and response are here.

UPDATE: Jane has shared her reaction.

We Get Questions

I answered a bunch on Tumblr.

We're on Tumblr, Too

In case you don't already know, this blog has a sister blog on Tumblr. Sometimes, we answer submitted questions, like this one. Take a look and bookmark us, follow us, whatever works for you.

Equality, Life, Liberty, & Happiness

Today is Independence Day in the US, considered our country's birthday. 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, 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, we have seen the death of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for military service and we saw the burials of Prop H8 of at least part of DOMA, followed by many pro-equality court rulings ever since, now made even better with the Supreme Court ruling for the nationwide limited monogamous same-gender freedom to marry.

More people are coming out of the closet, and more allies are coming out in support of equality. More people are getting married, 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 LGBT people. Even more so, these rights are denied to the polyamorous and the consanguinamorous.

Let’s keep moving forward so that an adult, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender, is free to pursue love, sex, 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 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.

We Get Angry Letters

In a recent entry we pointed out that adults having their basic rights isn't child abuse. To that, we got an angry comment. Like and comment with expletives, we won't be printing it unedited, but we wanted you to see the reasoning being used.

You are full of s---!! Adults are children... and at different stages of life they become more children like. Adults abuse other Adults and manipulate for their own good and purpose when the abuser has been abused as a child. When an adults has had trauma in their childhood life they don't have a clear mind nor scene of what is being spoon feed to them from the abuser, because the abuser is so good in doing the abuse as an adult to many other weak and traumatize adults. For the abusers benefit.  

But if both adults are with out trauma in childhood life and knows as a child that they are different and think differently and still in the adult life feel the same way then it should be okay. But that way only.

The entry was about how adults having their rights isn't abusing children.

All adults were children before. Does this comment mean they are now, as adults, incapable of consenting to their relationships because they used to be children? Or does that only apply to people who were traumatized as children, or does it also apply to traumatized adults? How much is too much?

Abuse, including "grooming" a minor, is not what we're talking about here. And if an adult is incapable of consenting to relationships because of trauma or any other condition, that's something else as well. On the other hand, it is cruel to automatically say that anyone who has been traumatized in the past can't consent to a relationship now. In general, adults should be free to have the relationships to which they mutually agree. There is no good reason to deny such basic rights.