(UPDATED 09/25/2023)
READ THIS FIRST! DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SEND ME A FRIEND REQUEST?
Going to put this here as a pinned post. Why? Because I get a lot of friend requests and I wonder (when I look at their pages) if they really read my "about" page. Particularly when they come here and want to argue.
If you don't want to see posts about the following, you might want to rethink that friend request unless you can play nice with others and not be a jerk or troll to people on my page.
RELIGION
I believe in God. I am a person of faith. But I'm not a conservative Evangelical. I grew up Southern Baptist and even used to work for the organization at a national level, but would most likely not be very welcome in many of them now because I also believe in a woman's right to choose and the right to life, liberty, and happiness of my LGBTQIA+ friends and folks.
I also no longer believe the Bible is an infallible document. I believe we should strive to be more like Jesus by the examples we have, whether infallible or not, and less like the American Nationalist Church of Both God and Country Inextricably Tied Together.
I don't believe I was ever called to be a Nationalist, but instead a follower of Christ without a home or country. I believe the idea that patriotism and Christianity (or any religion) should be linked is so far afield from what the founding fathers (or Jesus, for that matter) wanted and specified that both they and most religious icons would be appalled at the very idea.
Don't get me wrong. I love my country. But I also love it enough to call it out when it's wrong and not believe that it's above reproach or even the best system ever created. I believe that doesn't make me some kind of traitor (unless you adhere to a modern sort of McCarthyism).
In other words, I have my own personal religious beliefs, but I also believe that I don't have the right to have my country govern you by my beliefs. Nor do you have the right to have my country govern me by yours.
Except when they intersect.
You know, like when it comes to human rights and such. Not killing each other. Not denying life, liberty, and happiness, or the right to trials, the right to vote and have reasonable access to voting, the right to not be shot in the street by angry men with guns, or strung up without trial for looking at a white woman admiringly. You know, those things in the Constitution, Declaration, Bill of Rights, and other amendments.
I believe that when my POV or your POV disagrees with those kinds of human rights issues, we back off and default to those certain inalienable rights instead of what we believe my God or your God had to say about any of it.
POLITICS
I believe that as we grow as a country to accept human rights and build equity to access the system equally, we need to embrace the spirit of the amendment process and change the laws so they grow with us. The founding fathers pointed us toward the future with the ability to amend the Constitution. Every step we refuse to go forward is inexorably a step backward as the rest of the world moves on.
I believe Trump was and still is a con man. I also believe too many other Republicans fear his power base, so they keep quiet even though they believe the same thing too rather than risk losing a house in the Senate or House. Cowards. I also believe that the things followers of Trump revealed about the so-called "salt of the earth" people tell us that we only THINK we've become better people as a nation. Way too many of us still live in a mindset set and solidified around the period of the Civil War.
I've seen way too many people espouse (not in these words but these ideals) that Black and Brown and Gay people are fine as long as they don't become too public with their culture and identity and as long as they play by white, straight rules instead of expecting "the Christian nation" to accommodate them as the people they already intrinsically are or seek to repair any systemic mechanics that put them at an economic, political, social, cultural, legal, etc. disadvantage.
I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I tend to agree more with Democrat ideals now, but I'm no member of either party. I still wish we could have one big pool to vote from, rather than a single candidate from primarily two well-funded parties.
I personally hold these truths to be self-evident that all people (black, white, brown, gay, straight, trans, poly, religious, non-religious, etc.) are endowed with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe the minute you try to trample on the rights of anyone because their identity doesn’t align with your group's viewpoint or because they were born into the wrong economic bracket or are from “one of those neighborhoods”, well, you and I are going to have a disagreement, and I'll double down in being an ally to those whose rights you're gunning for.
I believe in the right to bear arms, but I also believe in gun control. I believe the argument for what constitutes reasonable gun control should be out of the hands of anyone funded by gun manufacturers.
I believe there is something intrinsically flawed with our system when a black man can be justifiably shot for running away, but a white man will be chased and tackled instead if he does the same. I believe that unless Black Lives Matter, it's ridiculous to try to sell the idea that All Lives Matter any more than it's justifiable to argue that the Civil War was about whether the state's right to use slavery as a basis for the economy was a more important issue than the national need regarding the right for a slave to not be a slave at all. Just like the current argument that a state's right to ban abortion should be a more important state need than the national need for a ruling on whether or not a woman has bodily autonomy to make her own choices.
IN CONCLUSION
I think that may have covered it all. If you believe opposite me, that's fine. You have the freedom to believe as you choose, even to embrace delusions. But if any of these things make you want to rethink "friending" me here on social media, that's okay. No hard feelings. I'd rather us deal with that now than it becomes hard feelings later. Cool? Good.
However, if you are cool with all that, or even disagree with it but can be cool with me believing it anyway and not be a jerk here on my page, then go ahead. Click the button. Let's be friends. You're welcome here.
