If you do not defend the freedom for all, then who will defend yours?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 7, 2023

I try to stay out of politics as much as possible because, frankly, it is too divisive. Everyone thinks their opinion is the only right one. One of the biggest reasons why topics of religion and politics are banned from family get-togethers. Anyway, I was listening to Mike Pence make his speech about running for president again. It was when I woke up from a nap and thought I was still dreaming when he spoke about protecting religious freedom. I kept listening as the acid started to climb into my throat. He spoke about how parents' rights to decide what is right for their family. He spoke about protecting life. What he didn't speak about was how people like him have been trying to remove those rights from people that decided in ways he didn't like.

That's what's been happening for far too long and it is repulsive in this country established to protect the rights of all her people. Over and over again they claim their rights are being taken away from them, when in fact it is the other way around. They want the right to remove your freedoms, as well as mine. Remove books they don't like from the library and schools. Remove true history because they don't like what it is comprised of. Remove the rights of all people to live their lives as they see fit simply because they don't approve of how they choose to live them.

They claim the "Christian" moral high ground while other Christian denominations are sickened by what they demand as if no other group exists. How does this keep happening?

It happens because too many loud voices are heard while the rest of us, the majority of us, suffer in the shadows as if our cries are silenced. Does the media know we even exist? Where are the interviews with rational humans wanting to live our own lives? Where are they when we seek to protect the rights of all people, no matter if we like their choices or not, because we want our rights protected equally?

If you want to know what we're heading into if we don't speak up and stand up, look back to the Salem Witchcraft Trials and know that was exactly what happened. One group of religious zealots wanted to control everyone else. They gained so much power persecuting the people they didn't like, that it spiraled out of control. If you want to know how to stop them, then think of how those dark days ended. They ended when good people stood up and said they wouldn't tolerate it anymore.

If you were spiritual but not among the "proper" religious group, then you were a target. That would include people like me and probably you too.

What are you willing to tolerate? If you do not defend the freedom for all, then who will defend yours?

Here are some quotes from PBS

“Most Americans treat each other with kindness and respect – even when we disagree,” he will say. “It’s not too much to ask our leaders to do the same.”

That is what we're asking. Is it too much to ask that leaders do that with people they don't agree with? Respect for gay people is not part of it. Respect for the living when they are on the last of the to-do list. Respect for the born when children are massacred in school isn't on the list. The list of who is not among those they value is longer than the minuscule list of those they approve of. 

“After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn,” Pence will say. “The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century—long before Donald Trump was ever a part of it. Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming election losses on overturning Roe v. Wade.”

Again, the living are not worthy of protection no matter what age because he also believes that social security and Medicare should be cut after we paid for it.