Land of the free and Home of the Brave?
06:05, Saturday, May 5, 2007 ..
Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking and more importantly if they are thinking. This week, and especially this morning I’m wondering about our federal legislature folks. This week they passed “a bill of historic measures” to protect we wee folks out here in the heartland of America. They call it a hate crimes bill; of course our administrative branch has eyed it with a veto stamp; setting up a rally for a civil rights debate going into the upcoming political season. For that reasoning I wish it were in late august rather than here and now, pushing the debate into the primaries and making civil rights for everyone a key platform for whichever candidates should receive nominations to the national elections.
But, back to my original point: I don’t know why everyone wants a hate crime piece of legislation. Does it take anymore malice to kill a gay man, or a black person, or a lesbian, or woman, or a Korean person than to kill anyone else? Does it not take a certain vile envy for life to commit a crime against another and cause them irreparable damage for the remainder of their life, or to hasten the departure of that person’s life? Aren’t all crimes based in malice? Have you ever heard of a loving murder? How about a tender loving rape? All crimes are committed with the intent of causing harm of a person or group of people. I don’t want more legislation for crimes that are already punishable; I want the criminals caught and punished.
The real hate crimes are those imposed on me by my own government. They continue to pass legislation wherein I am considered less human because of who I love and have sex with. The real hate occurs in how some people speak of my kind of people with such venom and gall that they might as well spit at me as to talk about homosexuals. That respect of life and person is where our national debate needs to go and focus.
The true hate mongers that go about unregulated are our politicians, many of our religious leaders, and other people that see themselves of influence and affluence not the murderers and robbers. Unfortunately, these are the people who write the legislation and never seem to temper their own versatile livery…
… and here I sit writing again wishing I could offer Scott and my family the protections I should be able to afford in the wake of my demise. Yet, I can only hope to find a way around the bureaucratic quagmire our country’s leadership has set up as an obstacle course for true love in this, what I grew up being told was a country I could be anything and do anything I could dream of. My only dream any longer is to have the same rights, freedoms, and privileges my parents and grandparents grew up with. To eliminate all the micro-restrictions they call laws that are today chocking the land of the free and the frightening those who were brave enough to call it home from generations gone by.
Dare we be Brave enough and Free enough to love those in our life? Dare we be Brave enough and Free enough to not legislate who our contemporaries love in their life? Dare we be Brave and Free again?
