Right to be wrong

Trick questions--just so you know:

• "What are my rights?"


• "What determines if these rights apply to me and/or to a larger group I may or may not be part of?"


• "How are these rights guaranteed?"


• "Are there circumstances where my access to these rights may be changed?"

From good ol' Wikipedia (the article on the United States Declaration of Independence, specifically), comes this-here quote which I think all American English-speakers have heard at least once today: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." I have long-believed only because that sentence was written down after some discussion that it has any validity. Look out the window and tell me it's all good, yo, if you disagree--I love comments!

Recently after receiving a comment offering more information on what "we" deserve--as everyone is entitled to no-fault divorces--and I remembered a conversation I had on a beach with a Southern Baptist youth-minister I was so very much in luv with. Needless to say, he's neatly avoided crossing my path for, like, decades. He made the fascinating blanket statement that (brace yourself!)

There are no such things as "fundamental rights"

I thought the boldface and italics would also be helpful in you noticing the point. You're welcome. "I have a right to sit down after coming home from work in peace and quiet--do something to shut those kids up." Notice that this fails to obviate the need (pardon, I meant to say RIGHT) for children to be with their father, with whom The Office is such an abstraction it isn't even nameable as Abstraction. I could go on, but I'm already satisfied I've made my point. Any assertion of individual right inevitably and invariably bulldozes over everything else.

Early on in my career as Lavender Menace-wannabe Attack-Fag, I played the "What If" with my first you-know-what. The premise: "If I were Supreme Benevolent Dictator, my first edict would be"--and of course, I would command total committment towards all children under the age of ten having 5-7 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables every day. I mean, duh, I am such a giver. He didn't even look at me while he countered with "even if they didn't want to eat them, I suppose" and followed that with "I would make it so that everyone would check to see if there were any toilet paper before they sat down. This may have been indicative of some past difficulty, some Personal Obstacle to Growth, which needed to be exorcised--but only after the requisite trout-boning which is the firm bedrock of all good and healthy relationships between two men who are beginning to realize they really-rilly dislike each other. But I digress!

And to top that, I've lost my own point. I'm frightened; in this time of great darkness, will you hold my hand?

MEANWHILE, people blather on about what they have rights to without bothering to understand that "with great power comes great responsibility". If marriage is really about medical and dental insurance, I'm certainly for it. And again, in the great land of no-fault divorce, why would it matter? One more opportunity for no-reason marriage just isn't relevant. Marry your lap-dog. Marry everyone in your Bunco group. And by all means marry the man who will make all of your weakly-boundaried, poorly-constructed dreams come true before he runs off with some skank who is (no-kidding) a real-live street magician. HOWEVER, if marriage is really about "I've got your back in this crazy bar-room brawl that's Planet Earth" or "together, we can make something way-awesomer than if we worked alone", or even "God loves you so much, that anything short of me totally committing to you for the rest of my life and with all that I have would be an insult unworthy of your attention"--could you finish this paragraph by yourself? I'll owe you one.

In a brave effort towards summing-up, I say that there are plenny-nuff rights that are not being realized (lack of clean water, which is stupid and gross; gross inequality in access to education between sexes, classes, whatever; the ability to make a living for oneself without needing to pay allegiance to some complete stranger's bottom line; the ability of Blacks in America to go to First Baptists and vote Republican...), because you're taking up too much time and effort organizing the kiss-in at Waffle House. And no, I won't expect you to come see me in the ER after I kicked that man-skank in the face because he was making a move on you and was trying to blow me off with "oh, it's just sex, after all"--instead of the other kind.