CNN released one of their short blurbs today regarding some news story, and it jumped out at me. It said that many countries in the world were accepting questions regarding sexual identity as an X rather than M, male, vs. F, female, that it was the decision of the individual or passport holder to determine how he or she wished to be designated or not.
It also went on to say that the United States was not so accepting of this practice. My response was “well, duh!” and then to ask, “but, why?” Why is the United States not so accepting? Are we less traveled? Less educated? Why, for example, is it anyone’s business in the United States and elsewhere how or why someone wishes to be recognized as male or female or trans or whatever?
Last week, I closed my article with a comment that maybe people who considered themselves both Christian and white Supremacist do not read or understand the words written in red. A friend did not understand that comment because she, like many in our beautiful area of Texas, is from a wonderful 1850s German American Texas family and has been raised Catholic.
I, raised a Baptist, was referring to the St. James or American Standard Bibles which frequently print the words of Jesus Christ in red. Regardless, my questions still remain the same. How can anyone who believes in God and in the teachings of Christ be so judgmental? (Applies to me, too!) How can they believe in white supremacy? That was the premise of last week’s article, and I guess the focus of my life. I consider myself so selfrighteous because I am so opposed to narrow-mindedness. I frequently say I am totally bigoted against bigotry! Oh well! Lot of good it does!
I believe in science, and I believe in God. Science is observation, the critical attempts to explain and to achieve understanding of our world. I also know that I DO NOT KNOW, but I also do not try and confine God to a book of +/- 1775 pages (New American Standard Bible) written by men. Ah me!
Several years ago, I was lectured by a San Saban who was denying climate change, that the world was just in another cycle like the one that allowed the dinosaurs to roam the earth for millions of years. I listened to his treatise but thought it short-sighted. We, like the dinosaurs, are the current dominant creatures. We are having a serious effect on the earth because we too roam the earth with our bottles, cigarette butts, concrete plants, over population, ad infinitum.
What the gentleman did not know is that the Northern Hemisphere was in another cooling period in the 1850s, a pre-glacial incursion. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and its accompanying air pollution, that cooling disappeared and now we have warming oceans, more hurricanes, droughts, and many species extinctions. Hopefully, we may self-correct, but I am not hopeful. Did you know the most detrimental polluter of our air quality is concrete plants? I didn’t. I thought it would be feed lots. Wrong!... But feed lots are still BAD too! Says me, the daughter of cattle raisers.
I ask again, who has the right to mind other peoples beliefs or denigrate them because they do not coincide with our own (whoops, guilty!), to determine what someone’s sexual orientation is, what to believe about climate change, to consider themselves better than another individual because of skin color or country of national origin, and so on and so forth?
Our country, the wonderful United States of America, is based on a constitution that honors the common good, whatever that is. Not so in authoritarian countries. Doubt Vladimir worries about the common good! Probably too concerned with his palatial estates or hacking U.S. elections.
Many in the world define the common good as Greta Thunberg, Swedish Activist does…working for the world good… to stop climate change and global warming. I personally may not actually suffer the “slings” of intense climate change but my children and grandchildren (and yours) may! Let’s say a prayer that humankind gets it right! Let’s say a prayer that the earlier comment about the U.S. not being too accepting of other viewpoints and ideas will change, as well. No to white Supremacy! No to narrow-mindedness! No to self-righteousness!