Equality

So, in light of the many recent controversies that have been plaguing my home country, I thought I'd get back at my blog and post some explanations. It's been a while since my last post and for that, I apologize. I started this blog so that people who care about what I'm doing and what I'm up to can stay informed. I think that to many people who have known me since my youth might be surprised with my views on the world and much of those views are explained on this blog. Facebook allows me to support certain views without going into detail; this site allows me to go into more details without invading your virtual bubble on the good ole Facebook. As I see it, I have not change so much as I have grown. I have remained the same Raymond Bentson, farm kid from Washington who's always inquisitive, curious and outgoing. I've grown because I want to understand the world around me, I haven't changed to be controversial or to put others down. If I come across that way from time to time, please know that it's not my intention. I have changed my views because I've investigated with serious scrutiny and non-bias assessment of the facts and sources of my available facts. I've challenged my deepest beliefs so that I can avoid doing myself the injustice of lying to myself due to the influences of my family and community. With that being said, the following is my understanding of equality in terms of the recent Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage.

This issue has been called the biggest step in the fight for civil rights in the US in modern times and for good reason. As I have discussed in my previous blog post entitled "labels", the fact that we label anyone by their sexuality is about as useful as labeling someone by their race. Race and sexuality are both constructs developed by societies and cultures. Sexuality, however, is about as individualized as you can get. Sexual orientation is much more complicated than gay, straight or bi. Each individual person has their own, unique sexual orientation therefore making this labeling factor a false-dichotomy (or trichotomy if you will). I should mention too that race isn't even biological at all, while ethnicity is much more relevant when discussing groups of people. I make this comparison while discussing civil rights in order to give an example: the right for gays and lesbians to get married is simply as legitimate as to allow African Americans the same education opportunities as white Americans. We have all understood for a long time the importance of the latter part of the comparison but now we have to consider that the rights for homosexuals have been infringed upon in a similar way. I'm straight as much as I'm white, which is to say that that's how I am culturally accepted and recognized but it's not as simple as that; but since our modern society only cares about those labels then that's how I'm viewed therefore giving me more rights and freedoms solely because I fit into the right box. My sexual orientation is very specific, just as everyone else. My race shouldn't matter in the slightest but my ethnicity can be taken into account in order to explain my appearance, social behavior, speech and various other considerations.

To discriminate due to these two factors is clearly ludicrous because it is essentially discrimination based on predetermined societal prejudice which has come to be after centuries of an extremely limited understanding of our own existence. Race and sexuality can be explained by modern science which hasn't always been the case. If you want to understand what race or sexuality is then it is best to seriously study it and not form opinions based of hearsay or pondering. Critical analysis of biological and psychological/sociological studies are a good place to start. Forming opinions based on faulty logic is dangerous. For example: to say that the legalization of homosexual marriage will lead to bestiality, pedophilia and polygamy is not rational because bestiality and pedophilia are non-consensual and polygamy is a separate institution that has, for the majority of human history, been considered normal.

Just to summarize my point, I will say that by refusing to acknowledge that people of different races and sexual orientations are equally as unique as you are and therefore deserve the same rights as you enjoy means that you are either ill-educated or uneducated on these topics. It can be studied in the vast field of anthropology which includes biological anthropology, sociology, psychology and human sexuality. I base my knowledge of this topic on my understandings of these fields which I've studied in various colleges. I will be the first to admit when I'm wrong about any of these statements but everything that I have said in this post are pretty basic and it surprises me how many people don't understand these points. What I want, above all, is to live in a world of peace, prosperity, equality and justice; and racial and homosexual discrimination stand in direct opposition to that. So, I hope it is clear that this declaration of victory for civil rights is not just the most recent Facebook fad, it's legitimately a huge step in our society against the societal discrimination of a group of people who are illegitimately categorized in a way that takes rights away from them.