My Christian friends here consider themselves socially liberal. However, they exclude in this issues that they consider religious issues. These religious issues (gay marriage and abortion, for example) are very much ones that I would include as social issues. As it turns out a lot of these differences in opinions are simply a matter of twisting words. I consider it a vote "for the women's right to choose" whereas others consider it a vote "for abortion, for murder." I think of marriage as "legal rights granted to two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together" while others see it as "a union between a man and a women under God." It is all nit-picky definitions. I am not going to go extensively into my views and reasons now as it is emotionally wearing for me. Who can look at my two friends who are completely in love, and tell them they should not/cannot be together? or that it is a sin to love someone?
As far as foreign policies go, I have always been on the fence. Obviously genocides and oppression are never okay. But on less severe issues, I feel like a government is often reflective of a culture. Can we ever really tell a people to change a culture we do not understand?
Words are so important to any politician. They can make or break a campaign. The words "Yes We Can" have made all the difference for Borack Obama. And I'm not going to lie, they are extremely inspirational. Although he was not my first choice, nor my second for the democratic nomination, his speaking skills are phenomenal. This (apart from his politics) is one of the reasons I detest President George W. Bush. I believe a president should be a great speaker (even if it is just presenting speeches written for them). I personally want a President who can express himself eloquently, and much better than I can.
Despite the ambiguity of words, and being challenged on the beliefs I currently stand alone in, I have learned how passionately I feel about issues and people. To the point of tears. It is not easy to be alone. But if we don't have strength, what do we have?
2 comments:
Think of religion like race. the dominant group takes its privileges for granted and sees the subordinated group as inferior. The dominant group oppresses the subordinated group, denying it goods, services, and life itself.
I believe religious groups believe in "religious freedom" only to the extent that they are not the dominant religious group in a society. However, they still believe they are the only "true believers", and when they do achieve dominance in a society, they will oppress all other people of faith or no faith.
In any religious mono culture, the religious authorities seek to suppress and often overtly oppress all others.
And they all say they believe in peace and love! For themselves and those who believe like them. But not coexistence, if they can be the ones in charge.
What is the deep down opinion of Christians towards Jews, Jews towards Muslims, Christians toward Muslims (hence they form an alliance, but either would crush the other if given a chance), Muslims toward Christians..... and on and on.... because the only "righteous" people are the people who share my "true religion". Even among Christians, the Catholics, main stream protestants, Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and so on, believe each other are heretics.
And all of them believe that those who do not believe are inferior beings.
They even make you define yourself by what you are not: "a"-theist, "non"-believer, "non"-religious, a person of "no" faith tradition.
It is tiring, sad, and true that those who hold strong religious beliefs want to deny us the option to live according to our values, ethics and principles. They seek to impose theirs upon us.
Just know that you are not really alone. There are many out there like us who truly believe in a pluralist society - a society that can accommodate many different lifestyles and beliefs. Our basic values are peace, justice, and our responsibility to all human kind to care for each other and respect our differences while rejoicing in the common humanity which connects us all.
I was going to disagree with a good bit of what paulk says, but I don't think this is the medium for it. :) (And at any rate, I don't know you, Paul, so I won't pretend I know where you're coming from... I'm guessing you're speaking quite truthfully from your experience with religious people)
Anyway, susascrubs, I was going to say I think we're actually dealing with more than people twisting words. With abortion, for example, your two sides are looking at the world through very different social constructs (and yes, they are both looking through social constructs) that each quite logically lead to assigning nearly opposite meanings to the same action.
I think that despite the fact that we often assume "the other side" is just twisting words to try and manipulate the dialogue, it's usually simply the practical (and rational) result of differing worldviews. I think the stakes are much higher than they appear, which is why we find that doing diversity is so difficult. People appear to use different terms to describe the same thing because they don't actually see it as the same thing.
As far as "can we ever really tell a people to change a culture we do not understand?" I have been racking my brain over this one for the last few weeks working on my project for the summer and I just don't know where the lines are. It's maybe one of the harder questions we face today as global citizens - and I think it actually ties back into the issues we face in the paragraph above, because the US is certainly not a single culture, either...
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