There's a lot of noise going around about equal rights and tolerance lately. Let me just state here, for the record, I am a firm believer in Equal Rights. The US Constitution states that all men are created equal. I know there are those that say "Well, back then, that only meant white males, so we can't follow that!" These are the same people who insist that it be Chair Person, Mail Person, Fire Person, Police Person, Hu Person, Wo Person, etc. regardless of what gender may be filling the role. My response is, I don't believe it should be intended strictly to mean white males. After all, so many other passages of the Constitution have been reworded to be more "Politically Correct". The wording is "all men are created equal". In the general terms, this refers to everyone regardless of race, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
Because of this, I believe in Equal Rights for Gays, Women, Blacks, Browns, Whites, Straights, Christian, Muslim, everyone. I don't believe any one group is better or worse than any other.
Tolerance is required for there to be equality. We should all strive to be tolerant of those not like us. Unfortunately, there are those whose tenets won't allow this to happen. Some religions even go so far as to tell their faithful they must kill non believers in order to be saved. Okay, it's their right to believe it, but if someone kills me simply because I don't believe the same as them, I'm gonna be mad! I have the right to be alive, after all.
Back to my point. There is a major upheaval in this country right now based on political and religious beliefs. In many cases, the two overlap. This country was founded on the notion that we should be free from persecution for religious beliefs. Let Muslims believe what they want. Let Christians believe what they want. Let Wiccans believe what they want. As long as everyone realizes they need to be tolerant of others, we can live together in peace. When we try to force our beliefs on others, that's not equality. That's not tolerance. That's just plain WRONG.
2 comments:
It all comes down to harmony. "Tolerate" implies "put up with." I think it should be more harmonious. We can agree to disagree, and be kind to each other. We (humans) have more in common than we may initially realize, if only we would take the time to get to really know one another.
I agree, harmony would be wonderful. Tolerance, however, would be nice too. We're so far away from that at this point, harmony is almost inconceivable.
We can certainly disagree with each other and be civil about it. We can be kind to each other. In reading comments from, for example, the political groups. Both sides are so busy pointing fingers and calling each other names, tolerance is far distant and harmony is.... inconceivable.
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