Liberal Majority in 2026 - Part 2

Civil (Human) Rights

The struggle for civil rights, or human rights when applied to other nations, is not over by any means. It will not end until we have removed every last bit of discrimination from our laws. Conservatives have managed to set the terms of discussion here but claiming we liberals are in search of group rights. We can either be a bunch of groups easily divided while searching for women's rights, minority rights, gay rights, workers' rights, disabled rights and so on. It is too easy to divide us against each other that way.

What do we want? We want the same human rights that those who have money and/or power demand for themselves. We want society to lower the barriers meant to keep "different" people out. Women want to be able to co-exist with men in the workplace without being seen as sex objects. Women want control over their reproductive systems. Women and not men carry fetuses within their bodies so they want the final say about whether or not to carry one. Some women are completely opposed to abortion and will carry any fetus to term as best they can regardless of the circumstances. Others believe that abortion is a viable alternative. Therefore, it remains available as a choice.

People of all ethnicities want to be judged for who they are and not for the color of their skin. No one wants to live in fear and few people want to inspire it in others. When police pull over individuals of certain ethnicities because of stereotypes involving crime, they are violating an individual's right to be treated like a fellow human being. The actual genetic differences among the various ethnicities are less than the differences that make us male or female. Therefore, this liberal only recognizes one race and that is the human race.

The things that make ethnicities truly different from one another are things to celebrate. We have different traditions passed down from our ancestors including music styles, clothing and food. The great thing about having so many ethnicities in one nation is that we should never lack a reason to celebrate. The other aspects of ethnicity tend to be invented because we humans tend to be scared of anyone who is different.

Any time a liberal talks about human rights for homosexual people, we hear a lot of hemming and hawing. The conservative will start rambling about not caring what goes on behind closed doors but he doesn't want to see it. You can tell the conservative is trying to suppress lurid sexual images that he fears. Unfortunately, the conservative does have a point but not the one he or she is trying to make. There are very few heterosexual couples who wouldn't gross me out with drunken make out sessions out in front of everyone. Someone I knew used to call that "I'm going off to war and may die tomorrow" kissing. Maybe that's the only circumstance under which I could put up with that.

Human rights for homosexual people need not include such public behavior especially while they are forbidden to go off to war and serve their country. No, the inalienable rights that homosexuals have had taken away are rights that heterosexuals take for granted. As someone who has had more than his share of hospital time and frightening surgeries, I can hardly begin to tell you how important it was to have my wife with me as much as possible. Our marital status gives her a free pass through a lot of hospital doors. Why should a human being have to go through such experiences alone just because he or she has fallen in love with someone of the same sex?

It's not just hospital visitation rights that we might overlook. At every job where I've had a desk, a picture of my wife has occupied the most prominent position. In the military, such a picture of someone the same sex could lead to discharge. Nobody asked but a simple comforting item with no sexual connotation could lead to a dishonorable discharge.

We liberals cannot be satisfied until we've taught our fellow citizens to accept homosexuality as something normal. Every time I see advertisements for Las Vegas, I think of hypocrisy. Homosexual couples are not allowed to marry and the instability of their relationships is cited as a reason. In those Las Vegas ads, married heterosexuals are told that it's ok to cheat because no one will find out. This sort of thing is considered on the fringes of normal. Heterosexual couples have sexual relationships and break up all the time. Why are homosexual couples penalized for being normal?

Worst of all, heterosexual couples can marry and the entire community will help support their union. Homosexual couples usually only have each other yet they can be amazing examples of faithfulness. Could it be that conservatives fear that gay marriages will prove less prone to divorce than straight marriages? There must be some way to educate our fellow citizens so that they understand that some of their fellow human beings just happen to be homosexual.

Once upon a time, there was this great social contract. According to it, a good worker could depend on his employer for a lifetime of work. Wages and working conditions were negotiated between the workers' union and the employer. Yes, there were bad times but the contracts accounted for this. During the cyclical layoffs, unemployment insurance and union benefits help the worker and his family get by. After a working lifetime, the employee could retire in relative comfort with a guaranteed pension and Social Security.

The social contract broke down not when the jobs could be done overseas but when the replacement jobs lacked union protection. Suddenly, the workers had to worry that their bosses would fire them. In many states, no reason has to be given. Instead of a union offering them continued benefits, the workers are lucky to pay twice as much or more for limited time COBRA health insurance.

Wages have stagnated at best keeping up with inflation. Working conditions have deteriorated and benefits have disappeared in many cases. Unions have disappeared as well and new ones failed to emerge. Since the National Labor Relations Board has failed to protect workers, union organizers have lost their jobs. It didn't take long for workers to get the message. They had become modern serfs except that serfs could not be bought and sold. When a company sells part of its business, the workers go right along with it. The great social contract must be restored.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was born with a birth defect and have been handicapped all my life. The handicap was pretty serious but a lifetime of adjustments and small concessions by others rendered it invisible. This left me in the awkward position of being just "normal" enough to hear all the tasteless jokes about the good parking spots. From the moment I first heard about the stereotypical person who milks a tiny handicap for all it is worth, I vowed to never ask for a single concession that wasn't desperately needed.

Unfortunately, there was another disability first discovered early in 2000 and this was much more serious. I cannot pass myself off as "normal" for more than very short lengths of time. My pride deflated as symptom after symptom added itself to the already complicated life we all lead. It was only then that I saw all the barriers that keep disabled people from leading lives as normal as their ilnesses allowed.

For example, stress aggravates all of my symptoms. If I get worked up enough about anything, I lose my ability to speak coherently. Having various organizations trying to collect on my student loans is something that stresses me too much nearly every day. I like to think of myself as an honorable person who pays his debts even if they aren't paid on time and I hope to pay off my student loans eventually.

How can they expect to get money from me now? We barely get by on my wife's wages and my disability checks. (One disability check was from private insurance offered by my former employer and the other is Social Security Disability. The private disability check was greatly reduced once I qualified for Social Security.) Without the generosity of my parents, we would have no place to live. When the student loans people call, I tell them that I'm still sick. In fact, I'm going to have more neurosurgery done and then I might start to get better. They just tell me that I've used up all my sick time.

A truly compassionate government would freeze student loans for people under Social Security Disability. After all, it's not easy to get and it is the government's seal demonstrating that my illness is serious. The government knows that I cannot work yet the very best I can hope for is that the loans will continue to gather interest and compound. The worst case is something that no one is willing to discuss with me.

This is just one of the barriers keeping me from living as a human being. Another is the extremely tight laws regulating pain medication. I'm in a lot of pain a lot of the time but my pain specialist has helped me control it most of the time. Unfortunately, they would not give me the freedom I need to control my pain during a recent hospital trip so I suffered. I was in a place where people go for severe pain relief and I hurt more than I do at home without dozens of doctors and nurses about.

We need to convince the voters that the pain suffered by so many is more important that the so-called "War on Drugs." All the hoops I need to jump through to get my medication didn't stop a certain conservative from feeding his addiction to painkillers. Our drug policy's ideals should be similar to the ideal criminal justice system that would prefer to let ten guilty people go before taking the risk of punishing one innocent person.

It will take time to convince the voting majority that they should vote for human rights but I believe it can be done. I'm a patient person so I won't throw a fit if even a Democratic Congress fails to reach these goals after the 2006 elections. What I want is for the American public to be educated well enough to elect a working liberal majority by 2026. If it happens sooner, all the better but 20 years is a nice number to remember. We went from Goldwater's defeat to Reagan in less than 20 years so we should be able to reverse the damage.