I will never understand the unwillingness of people to live and let live. Why is it that people feel the need to preach to others about how they should live? Gay marriage, for instance. I understand that there are those who believe it is wrong. I even understand why some people think that it’s wrong. However, what I do not understand is why those who believe it is wrong feel as though they have the right to make that decision for others. Why they feel that they have the right to take it away because it is what they believe. Many will say that it is because the Bible or the church says that marriage is only recognizable when it is between a man and a woman. They will cite religion. And how can you argue with God?
Why is it that religion seems a fair argument for anything? Wars have been started over religion. Women are oppressed in the name of religion. People have been tortured and children have been killed because they worshipped a different god than the person holding the sword or swastika. (How sad that a thing whose origin is derived from luck, good, and well-being was turned into something to represent such a hateful movement.) But the thing that surprises me the most is that anyone believes that is what God would want. Who would want to live in a world where the only god that exists is one that is so selfish? Or intolerant?
The complete intolerance and discrimination of Proposition 8 in California’s 2008 election is beyond that of any that I have seen since, well, since Proposition 22 back in 2000. There is no other way to see this than as discrimination. It is discrimination akin to that of separate water fountains and Jim Crow. And while concentration camps may not be a real part of our future, all it took for them to be built and filled was for good people to sit by and do nothing.
We live in a world where discrimination still happens. Racial profiling exists whether or not anyone will admit it. People still say they were “Jewed”. Women running for the second highest office in the land are still sexualized and called M.I.L.F.s. Women running for the highest office in the land are said to be “too emotional”. It is time to stop turning a blind eye, time to stop pointing fingers of blame, and time to start living as a cohesive country, if not world.
We are all connected. Hate towards one is hate towards all.
