Human rights: morals not politics
“Why can’t you be friends with people from a different political party?” is what I heard and saw all over Tik Tok, more often than not coming from Republicans. The real answer is that I can be friends with those from a different party whether they are conservative, Republican, or even in a third party. However, I cannot be friends with someone who decides that human rights aren’t important because human rights aren’t a political view nor something to be debated.
In 2020, human rights became a leading hot topic in the US. With the Black Lives Matter movement resurging to the presidential election and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, human rights were dragged to the forecenter of politics and split down party lines.
But why? Why have human rights turned into something discussed and associated with politics? When did that happen?
I don’t know why and I don’t know when, but I do know that while I can have different political opinions than my friends, I cannot have different morals than them.
The founding fathers wrote, “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” As a country we have evolved from a society consisting of cis, straight, white, Christian men to one full of color and diversity. The Declaration of Independence should apply, no questions asked, to everyone; everyone in our society should be treated as equal no matter their race, sexuality, gender, class or background. However that is still not the case.
LGBTQ+ rights and equality, Black Lives Matter, equality for women, children locked in cages, families torn apart, native women missing, the right to control your own body, racism being a real problem in this country, and many more issues, all having nothing to do with politics. These are basic human rights, yet they are being treated as something like views on the economy, a true political opinion. These are things that shouldn’t ever have to be debated. These are things that should have a clear and obvious answer.
Anyone who does not support the LGBTQ+ community, who doesn’t believe in equal rights for everyone, who doesn’t care about the families and children at the border, who doesn’t acknowledge racism, who turns a blind eye to missing women, who chooses to ignore the rights of others being stripped away, who attempts to belittle Black Lives Matter, who supports President Trump, or who believes in controlling other people’s bodies cannot have my respect and cannot be my friend.
If you cannot respect the rights of me, my friends and family, those around, even a stranger on the other side of the country, then we can’t get along and you have lost any respect I would’ve had for you. It isn’t a difference of political opinion, it is a difference in morals.
Our country is extremely politically divided, with the division only growing with Trump’s presidency. I believe that division needs to be reduced in order to have a smoother-running government and country, however, not all things should be available to compromise. Human rights are not debatable, and yet they continue to be. Trump encouraged white supremacist groups, which is not condonable.
It really concerns me how conservatives will say things like “we can still be friends even if we don’t see eye to eye,” and other things like that. I can respect your different political views but I have to draw a line when you decide that treating a group of people poorly or putting a group of people at a disadvantage is ok. That behavior isn’t ok. We’re always told to treat people the way we want to be treated but clearly, some people are forgetting that.
I think that Trump has NOT had any respect for anybody, EVER. He calls BLM by the name of ANTIFA all the time, and thinks that they are the people causing all this violence across our country. That is NOT the truth. We MUST stand up to these people that are going to treat any person poorly. Whether somebody are male or female, white or black or another race, straight or gay, cis or trans, class, racial background, whether they have a disability or other health problem, or even their age, we should NEVER discriminate against them. The USA has treated non-white people poorly for almost the entire country’s history, and same thing with women. Obama is the only non-white person to be president of the US, and Kamala Harris will become the only non-white Vice President in the US history, and also the first woman to be either President or VP. Back then, women and non-white people weren’t allowed to vote until 1920, and they had to fight for these rights. We have NEVER had a woman for president, unlike Germany, and some other countries who have women as leaders. They have Angela Merkel for president. We really need to get a woman in office, somebody that has common decency, like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris. I would not like to have somebody just because they are a woman, that is what Trump did, and what I mean by this is that I DO NOT want to have somebody like Amy Coney Barrett as president. She does not even have the common decency to let women control their own bodies, everybody has the RIGHT to control their body, and that can NOT be violated. If Trump were re-elected, I would have protested, but thankfully we can start changing our country in a good manner, not by division and tearing our country apart. As Joe Biden said multiple times “save the soul of our nation” and we must do that or it will damage America’s reputation. We must help to fix our country’s reputation, and that work should be done NOW rather than later.