Dissent is patriotic

America has won its freedom in stages. We are entering another stage in the evolution of true equality. In the beginning, American settlers hated the Native Americans. Then they hated the black man. After the civil war, and the Emancipation Proclamation, America fought to keep the black man "in his place." But they rose above, and won their rights.

After that it was the women's turn to fight for their rights. It was every mother, sister, and wife out to own property and take their lives and futures into their own hands.

Then it was the Irish immigrant, those that had faced violence and famine and come to seek a new life in a new country. The Irish immigrant was treated as an animal, and only after years of struggle, they clawed their way out of the slums, leaving room for the next wave of ethnic immigrants, the Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, and the Russians. That was just the 1900s. In the 1980's it was the Cubans.

America has always had to try to place someone at the bottom. America has always had to bunch a group of people together and try to hold them down, all the while screaming that we are so democratic...so fair. We fight wars for freedoms across oceans, while our own people, our own countrymen and countrywomen are beaten and denied rights because of the majority's ignorance. This is not a fight over sexual preference. This is history repeating itself yet again.

The killing of Matthew Shepherd was widely publicized, but how publicized are the daily attacks of homosexuals? It happens more than people like to admit. As the black man was lynched, as the women's suffrage protesters were force-fed when they went on hunger strikes, and as many before them can attest, this will be no small fight. The fight for equality is never easy. Hopefully it will not be as violent.

On a hot day in July in 1776, the rights of every American citizen were clearly outlined, with no regard to thier sexual preference. It is the Bible that carries the weight in this debate, and the separation of church and state was instituted to assure that things like this should not take place. We can make no man live by the god of another. No woman, either.

It is not my god that teaches hatred. It is not my god that keeps loving families apart. And it is not my country that institutes laws favoring some citizens from others. Too many have fought and suffered on this bloodstained path to equality. It has been a paltry couple hundred years for us all to try to get used to these freedoms. There are still many battles to be fought.


/rant.