This past week, the City Council and Mayor of Jacksonville passed an HRO bill, protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination. While it saddens me that such protections are needed, I am happy that Jacksonville has this bill on books! To me, it shows us that we are willing to show hated the door, and be a progressive city. You can read more about it here:
I just fired off a letter to the editor of our newspaper. Looking back at it, it's a little disjointed, but hopefully will see print. I am sharing it here...
"I want to say THANK YOU to
the City Council and the Mayor for passing the HRO. It's about time
that Jacksonville showed itself to be a city of morality and progress by
not allowing hate and discrimination to continue.
To
those who oppose it, shame on you! How can you support hate? Before you
answer with some sort of religious balderdash, remember that we all
learned in Sunday School some form of "Love you neighbor as yourself." I
suspect all religions teach something similar. Religion is a choice we
make. Being LGBTQ is not.
I
often wonder, what would happen if, instead of wasting our time on
hating one another over how we're born, or over things that don't affect
us personally, we channeled that energy into helping each other,
regardless of any identifiers. What would happen if instead of spending
money fighting equality for all, we spent that money on feeding the
homeless? Or on improving our schools? I guess I'm naive in thinking
that we're meant to get along and help each other in the world. I just
know I'd rather live a life of compassion instead of hate."
I hope that the day is soon coming where no one in this country, or even in the world, needs such protections. Let's be honest, unless someone is an active part of your life, what they do, feel, etc... has little to impact on you. For example: if I chose to pack up and move to Canada, that would have an impact on my parents, nephew, brother, and even on my niece & sister-in-law. I live with my parents and help out around here, so they would see the largest impact. I see my nephew and brother each week, so they would be impacted. My niece and sister-in-law live in NC, so the impact would be less, but still felt. Whereas, maybe you like reading my blog, but you don't like certain posts, so you drop it. Not that big a deal, is it? Or, maybe I see you once in a blue moon at a comic show, so again - not a big deal.
I do my best not to judge others, or to allow judgements affect how I deal with people. So many people do things that I don't approve of, but it's not my place to sit in judgement. What they're doing really doesn't affect my life, so why bother getting upset over it? Where I do judge is when people choose to be hate-full! Hatred and discrimination are choices. They hurt people. I don't approve of that. I'm sure we can't stop that from happening completely, but it would be nice if people learned to mind their business a little bit more.
Oh well, I'm rambling on. I hope my readers have gotten something out of this post.
Take Care! Be good to one another!
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