Grace Independent

Sometimes we forget how things happen. As time passes and people die, we lose the ones who lived through a moment in time that can correct our sometime revisionist ideas of the past.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court issued its ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education concerning desegregation in schools. In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered US Army Troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the order and protect “the Little Rock Nine.”

It was not until 1964 that congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

In 1918 both houses approved the 14th amendment that redefined citizenship, removing references to slaves and expanding it to include persons of either sex. In 1920, enough states had ratified the amendment to make it a part of our constitution.

The bill of rights and constitution of this country are designed to protect human rights. The US has become a leader in promoting international human rights and yet, has not become a signed member of the International Human Rights Treaty. But, as we have been discussing, if you are knowingly already violating it why would you sign it? I mean that is basic common sense.

Anyway…

The point being that in our progress towards civil and human rights in this country it has never been left to a matter of popular vote. In fact, like in the 60s, the judicial review and change in our laws to try and enhance the presence of justice in our society was anything but popular.

Part of the role of the government is the creation of community law. The judicial branch is supposed to back up and look at the big picture beyond immediate political needs and try to keep the laws and direction of the country in line with the stated goals of :

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

There was no Bill of Rights originally because the founding fathers looked at the phrase “we the people” and said “well, that covers everyone.” It was not until the complexities of society began to unfold with a class system that “we the people” needed to be more specifically defined. But that…was the original mistake that we are still trying to recover from.

How do you define who is a “person of the United States?” Particularly when you note that the term citizen is used later and specifically in regards to roles, “we the people” stands as its own phrase with its own definition.

We would not have any form of civil rights in this country had it been put to popular ballot. Each time an amendment is passed individual states have to ratify it with 35 of 50 states approving for it to become a part of our institution, and then it applies to everyone. That is a part of our checks and balances.

The whole human rights thing is kind of going in reverse. Mostly, I think, because our federal branch of government has lost the sense of its role and is behaving like all this is a popularity contest. In reverse of how things should be, individual states and cities are adopting the International Human Rights Treaty and placing laws and regulations on their books concerning them. This is not put on a ballot. These laws are passed by governing bodies because it has to do with the overwhelming sense of ethical direction of a community. It is not a subject that has a lot of lobbying or campaigning because it exists in the realm of justice, to which our governments are supposed to act as a check and balance to the will of the people to make sure that they don’t get out of control; in the same way that the will of the people needs to balance out the will of the government through ratifying amendments.

Washington DC, the city proper, is an odd little place. Enough said about that, but it has, on its city rules, laws and regulations …in Chapter 25…a definition of Human Rights and the protections of…

Gay marriage passed in DC and was supposed to go to city ballot and the city came back and said “Ahhhhh…no-can-do….there will be no balloted vote on whether or not to allow same-sex marriage because to do so would be in violation of our city laws and regulations that protect Human Rights. It would be a direct violation to offer up for public approval the question of whether or not a certain group of people can participate in a privilege that is offered to others and governed by the laws of this city. Sorry…no ballot…the measure stands because it is an issue of Human Rights.”

Makes you think, huh?

What would happen in this country if we stopped fighting for all these separate little rights for separate little groups and instead, went for the reality – that we have no national Human Rights Law on our books. We are not a signatory of the International Human Rights Treaty and we need to be. Otherwise we will keep fighting for table scraps and as soon as one portion of the population is fed, another one will pop up and say “what about me?”

The issues are not about gay marriage or immigration rights or poverty issues or the death penalty…those are symptoms of a much greater ill, that issue is that this country is willfully choosing to ignore the basic Human Rights of all. As long as we keep trying to quilt together a just society we will never be warm.

Cause you can argue with anything small and specific using religion or politics or money when you are trying to block something from happening because semantics can be a powerful thing…but what poltics, what religion, what amount of money would be strong enough to support a denial of someone’s humanity?

No matter how jaded or ignorant someone is, there is a strong core of connection that exists between us based on our humanity. It is why even the worst racist, homophobic, fascist bigot in an instance of unthinking altruism will reach out and pull a screaming black queen out of the path of a train. Our humanity is hard wired into us. No matter what we pile up on it as our “beliefs,” we cannot escape that awareness of the life next to us. If we manage to suppress it, it eats us alive inside.

The more we segregate our efforts the less we will move towards supporting this part of all of our natures and allowing it to develop into what guides us morally and ethically on a personal, community, state and national level.

In Rhode Island, the governor vetoed a bill in which same-sex partners cannot claim the body of their deceased partner for burial. The case came out of a partnership that had lasted 17 years and one of the partners became ill and died and the hospital refused to release the body to his partner for burial. In the same breath, Carcieri said that he was open to the idea of domestic partnership laws…anything but marriage and it would give domestic partners almost but not all the rights that married people have in the eyes of the law.

I would like to know what type of person could deny, to the surviving partner, the right to bury their loved one according to the loved one’s wishes. And then justify the denial by saying that it protects the sanctity of marriage. Our beliefs can make us behave in inhuman ways. Which is why altruistic moments always come as shocking sneak attacks, because that is called our humanity breaking through despite (sometimes) our best efforts to block it because blocking it can make the world seem an easier place to be. Beliefs will fool you into thinking there is a hard and fast answer.

There isn’t.

But there are hard and fast truths. We all live. We all die. We all deserve to live a life that is free of fear and want, that allows for us to strive to be our best, that allows for us to love and be loved and to participate fully in the communities we live in.

“We the people” is a kind of perfect statement. We just need to erase that list that people started penciling in about who the people were – we don’t need to add to the list, we need to stop doing that – it is self defeating. What needs to happen is to increase awareness that the term “people” applies to everyone, in the plural – no need for any other definition. It is one of the few things in life that is really that simple.



Caution: The following is a brief video issued by Amnesty International that contains content that may be upsetting to some. The original video was broadcast as a television commercial.

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