In modern America, we have:
- Anti-transgender laws
- Anti-LGBTQ laws
- Book bans
- Laws forbidding proper medical care for a woman if the most appropriate care for her is abortion (I have experience with this with miscarriages)
- Voter suppression laws
- States that require The Ten Commandments to be posted in schools
Bills have been proposed to address such undemocratic actions: Many such bills have been signed into law.
- Equal Rights Act (women are people too)
- Equality Act (there are homosexual people and they’re people)
- John Lewis Voting Rights Act (all American citizens have the right to vote)
- Presidential Immunity (the President is a person; he is not a king)
- Jury Trials (everyone is entitled to a trial by unbiased other citizens)
WTF do we need specific laws passed in order to have society be reminded of the fact that it’s comprised of humans?
Shouldn’t the inherent humanity of our citizens, along with our Constitution, already require equal rights, voting rights, the right to be something other than male or cis-gendered or able-bodied, or something else ?
While virtually all people will contend that America is a nation of laws, once again, some people contend that they are above the law and that many laws only apply to people of lesser value than them. It must be noted that the attributes that make people higher value or lower value are never stated.
Many people contend that the only thing that keeps civilized society from descending into total chaos is the police. Bullshit! What keeps a civilized society from decaying into chaos and violence is what your mother (or similar figure(s)) taught you when you were a little kid - “Behave yourself”, “That’s wrong”, “That’s cruel”, “That’s not nice”. Without a basic understanding of right and wrong in each of us, there aren’t enough police in the world to maintain order in a huge, chaotic mob.
The Constitution is always cited as the overriding law of the land, at least when its text is consistent with a speaker’s point of view. It must be kept in mind that The Constitution was written by land-owning white men for land-owning white men, but it still assumed that ALL such men lived to a basic set of principles and basic humanity. Inherent throughout the Constitution is the underlying hypothesis that humans would treat humans with a level of respect, with honesty, etc. in a peaceful manner. The Founding Fathers also wisely built processes into the Constitution to change it as times changed in order to adjust to changes in culture, improvements in technology, transportation, etc. The Constitution has been amended 27 times, and includes a Bill of Rights, amendments that freed enslaved persons and that specified that those freed people shall be given equal rights (even though we’re still working on actually implementing those amendments in some places), that women have the right to vote, and that our government is authorized to act in the best interests of our citizens, all of them, when the behavior of high level leaders are compromised by health issues or behavior that is criminal or inconsistent with Constitutional principles. Debates abound regarding whether America was, is, or should be a Christian nation. Anyone who insists that America is a Christian nation or a nation based in Judeo-Christian values should be leading the charge that all people deserve respect and that there is no “Other”.
Sadly, we still have groups that hide behind the precise text of the Constitution, insisting that that text from 1789 – pre-telephone, pre-multiple shot weaponry, pre-paved roads, pre-high rise buildings, pre-railroads, pre-air travel, pre-computers, ad nauseum is to be interpreted literally in 2024, when the originalism fits the groups’ specific interests. Those originalists or claim that if the Constitution doesn’t include rights or freedoms on a particular topic, that specific laws must be passed to permit that topic. They refuse to acknowledge that the underlying premise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – that people are decent and honest and will act accordingly – should direct present and future actions.
There is a simple solution. I will expand upon a simple word often used by Mike Krukow, the former baseball pitcher and the great announcer for the San Francisco Giants. When an opposing hitter strikes out, especially when the hitter takes a called strike three or is overpowered or totally fooled and takes a poor or wild swing on strike three, Kruk will often simply but emphatically state, “Grab some pine, Meat!” - instructing the hitter to have a seat, because his at bat is done. But in Kruk-Speak, “Meat” isn’t always stated in a derogatory fashion. Kruk will also use “Meat” instead of “guy” or “dude” or “hey you” to describe the target of a comment. Krukow’s implication that anyone and everyone is basically meat is totally consistent with both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, which state that “all men (all human beings) are created equal” and that all are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When we’re all meat, and simply meat, there is no differentiation of any significance by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else. There is no imported meat or white meat/dark meat, or USDA-approved vs. home-butchered vs. Kosher or Halal meat. We’re all meat. And I mean all of us.
Using Krukow’s elegant simplification would mean that differentiations like transgender, LGBTQ, religion, race, gender, books describing or even mentioning any of those differences, pregnant women, implications of Christian superiority, etc. go away. We’re all just meat, so whatever rights and privileges one person has for simply being a person, all persons have. The need for the seemingly never-ending debates involved in making specific laws to include or exclude picayune things go away. Immediately.
So, we don’t need laws for all of the things large and small that specific groups get their panties in a bunch about. We simply need to refer back to the Constitution and to the concept that we’re all high protein, carbon-based life forms. We’re all meat.
Grab some pine and think about it.