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How much more can Americans embarrass ourselves on the world stage, fighting over ridiculous morality issues when the entire world has far more serious problems to solve? Europeans already, rightfully, shake their heads at our continual fighting over abortion when it is no issue in their countries. No fighting over it, no clinics blown up or firebombed over it, no healthcare workers shot over it, no wasted resources fighting over it. That's only one morality fight Americans wage against each other, non-stop.
Ever since the rise of the religious right in the U.S. in the 1980s, we've been making a spectacle of ourselves fighting over the morality of our neighbors. We hyper-focus on what gender they believe they are and if that is okay with us, who they sleep with and if that is okay with us, what their families look like and if that is okay with us, whether they can access birth control and if that is okay with us, whether or not they terminate their own pregnancies and if that is okay with us, and the list just goes on and on. For gawd's sake, prosecutors in this country are now charging minors who consensually text each other naked photos of themselves with the felony of child pornography! It's like we've lost our collective-minds. We just can't screw up enough lives with our over-reactive responses to anything deemed immoral. We deserve to be mocked.
At the same time, our standard of living has plummeted; the middle-class is essentially gone; we keep making more enemies around the globe who will be visiting their vengeance on our descendants (because, unlike Americans, they don't continually look ahead while ignoring their history, but remember the past); we imprison more of our citizens than does any other country in the World!; our criminal justice system is corrupt and broken across the entire country; we are less free than we were 40 years ago; while we bankroll our criminal justice system so it can more easily prey on us, our other government services are financially starved and rendered impotent, unable to adequately deliver basic services and provide us with important safety-nets; our consumer protections are a shadow of what they were 30 years ago so we are preyed upon and gouged by every private-sector industry; we are bankrupted over basic necessities like healthcare; our homeless populations are growing; our cities are crumbling around us; our air and water are poisoned; fracking is creating more earthquakes and using far more water than we can afford to lose; we are in the middle of a major water shortage in general for reasons other than fracking; climate change is creating havoc and worsening; Americans are so distraught that mass shootings by our own citizens against our own citizens are no longer an anomaly; and this list goes on and on, too.
Frankly, political right or left, too much energy and attention in this country goes to whom is doing what to who that we want to punish for. Too much attention and too many resources go into monitoring and attempting to control what other people do for morality reasons or for the public good or public health. Rightwingers want to dictate our morality. Leftwingers want to protect us from ourselves. Either way, it's reached the point of doctrinaire authoritarianism; and that authoritarianism is encouraged by the industries that benefit economically, making profit from our continual efforts to control fellow citizens. Every law and every public service campaign is enriching someone, but not the general public.
Put your arms out on each side of you. Where your hands touch another person is where your rights end. In other words, where our rights end is where our neighbors' rights begin. We do not have an inherent right to interfere with and dictate the morality of fellow citizens. The American Constitution was not designed to limit the rights of citizens, but it was designed to expand future rights. Legislating morality, denying services to, or imposing punishments of any kind on Americans for exercising self-determination is un-American. Anyone who engages in or even encourages those activities against their fellow citizens is not a good citizen in a representative democracy that values individual freedoms, self-determination, and equality.
If not actually preying on us or damaging us in some way, what our neighbor believes and does is none of our business! What is our business is ensuring we and our neighbors have an equitable shot at a satisfactory life that isn't riddled with insecurity and inequality. If our neighbors tell us they need something to meet that goal, instead of sitting in judgment, refusing them, or worse, punishing them for it, help them get it! If not for them, then do it for yourself and all the rest of us because it will make for a happier, healthier, less-expensive society. All of us must live in and pay for whatever society exists, so helping others achieve what they feel they need helps us too.
Isn't it time we demand our legislators use their brains, focusing their energies and our resources on what matters to everyone, which are the necessities of surviving in the contemporary world, and living an equitable and free life as citizens of a huge country with vast resources we could all share more equitably and responsibly if we made greed and intolerantly bothering and punishing our fellow citizens unacceptable? IMO, any legislator spending his or her time and our resources legislating morality needs to be replaced and pronto.
Constituents who clamor for legislators to spend their time and our resources attempting to limit, control, dictate to, criminalize, and/or discriminate against fellow citizens over what in their private lives is deemed immoral by some, need to be told clearly, loudly, and in no uncertain terms that they're harassing, persecuting, and attempting to violate the rights of their neighbors, and in these United States of America that is unacceptable, so if our shared legislators pander to them or join in willingly, those legislators will lose their jobs, kicked to the curb, period.
Maybe if we did that, instead of creating problems for targeted communities within our greater community, we could get real problems solved, improve our country and own quality of life, and at the same time, not be such a laughing stock on the world stage.
Last edited by pgrdr; 04-21-2016 at 04:25 PM..
Reason: Spelling/grammar corrections
The United States government issues travel warnings of various kinds about other countries for traveling Americans. Why shouldn't other countries do the same for their citizens?
It is absolutely NOT "foreign political pressure".
First off, is is a Travel Advice, not a warning.
And have you actually read it? Of course not.
Quote:
The US is an extremely diverse society and attitudes towards LGBT people differ hugely across the country. LGBT travellers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi. Before travelling please read our general travel advice for the LGBT community. You can find more detail on LGBT issues in the US on the website of the Human Rights Campaign.
To whom are you referring? Who is reaping what they sow?
I'm referring to our moron governor and legislators, who have sown fear and hate. Now the entire state is reaping fear and hate from those who would visit here, hold conventions, concerts, etc. here, and spend money here.
No, but it would show a political agenda if they issue this warning for North Carolina bathroom policy, but not when India banned homosexuality 2 years ago, for example.
No, but it would show a political agenda if they issue this warning for North Carolina bathroom policy, but not when India banned homosexuality 2 years ago, for example.
People in the UK know how unwelcoming other countries are. But when they think of the US, they think we have all these freedoms. So they need a statement about this new law that takes away rights for a certain group.
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Our government does the same
