11.5.08

Today I am bemused.

Not in the humorous or satirical way I had intended to start this blog. I feel disheartened and empty, unsure of where so many individuals’ intentions come from.

What a strange agreement we reach with one another by entering a society. This game of procedurally gaining and giving up rights is bewildering to say the least. On this day African Americans gained the right the right to feel like citizens in their own country, while gay and lesbian Americans lost the right to marry their partners, lovers, and soul mates. Teenage girls retained their ability to decide the fate of their pregnancies on their own, and sex workers remained outlaws on our streets*. I can’t make any sense of it. Is this really the spirit of our agreement? The function of our government?

For me, the strange part about this conundrum is that as tempting as it is may be to say that our democracy is only in place to preserve and not take away fundamental human rights, this isn’t true either. If we are to live communally there are rights that that we must give up. In my mind, no individual should have the right to steal from, or injure another person even if they have the necessary power or cunning to do so. No one citizen or company should have the right to create/abuse a monopoly of any kind even if they have the financial means to make this possible. And, even though this isn’t the case in our country, I don’t believe people should have the right to own guns to protect themselves from such crimes although these weapons do provide their owners with a sense of security that it seems they should be entitled to.

On the flip side, there is of course that classic laundry list of rights that no individual should ever have to give up: heathcare, education, individual freedom of thought and speech, sexuality, religion, the list goes on and on.

So where does that leave us?

I am undeniably tempted to wrap up this entry up in some neat little package. I’m tempted to make some statement about not having the right to single out groups, and that all rights, be they compromised or upheld, must apply to everyone equally. (yeah, had to get that in there) But overall, my hope is that we can simply start to see this agreement more clearly. That we understand the weight of these decisions, and of the great responsibility we have to one another in our districts, in our cities, in our states and in our country.

We are in each others hands, and today I feel we have failed one another. I hope that if we remember the spirit of this society and the power of our actions we can rectify these wrong doings in the future.



* (albeit they’ll continue to have small resources provided to them in their lives of criminal activity)