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, 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 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 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.
I think that the Independence Day of the United States is also a celebration of all honest, thinking people in the whole world who share the ideals of true freedom, true equality, and unhindered movement towards individual happiness for each person.
ReplyDeleteNature (or God for those who are believers) has made it so that a Human cannot be truly happy if they are not sexually satisfied. Respect for the rights to freedom and equality is a necessary condition for ensuring happiness in the sexual and romantic sphere of our lives. They mean that we have the right to identify ourselves sexually and choose any partner(s) for a relationship only with one single restriction: sexual relations must be strictly voluntary, without any legal, physical or moral coercion. And if our natural and inalienable rights to happiness with our chosen partner (or partners) are not respected, then our rights to freedom and equality are not respected too.
Fanatics, stubborn egoists, idiots, and those who simply blindly follow the traditional attitudes of religion, government and society in the realm of sexual relations play mind games that are incredible in their guile and cunning in order to prove the failure of the principles of Full Marriage Equality. They do not shy away from falsifying facts, referring to supposedly "scientific" justifications, and have created an entire industry of persecution and harassment of people with non-traditional orientation, including consanguineous ones. And without batting an eye, they resort to violence, cruelty and inhumanity, justifying themselves and others with their alleged "rightness", sanctified by religious books, laws, unwritten rules and their own tastes. Alas, their victims are primarily children, teenagers, and young boys and girls who cannot stand up for themselves and are still unable to realize that their sexuality is not something that others should control.
The Declaration of Independence is not a theoretical document, but a guide to action. Therefore, it is not enough to be proud of the achievements of the United States in the realm of human rights and the laws and court rulings already adopted. We need to keep our eyes open to what is happening around us in real life, and every day, every minute, try to change something for the better in the way we can under the circumstances. And then we can say that we are following the spirit of the Founding Fathers who anticipated the goals of progress of all countries and nations.