Declaration of Independence: We have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
In my poll about freedom, people say the only right we have is to die. Everyone does Die as this world has a 100% death rate. But in this country we have the Right to Life + Survive without any one killing us.

We have the right to liberty , so that we can be ourselves, go anywhere we want to without being discriminated at. One should not have to fight for liberty in a country that seems to quarantee (spelling) it. We are according the the Declaration living in a democracy NOT a dictatorship like people in most other countries are.
And of course we should have right to happiness too.

Otherwise, us as a GLBT group should give up on having jobs,places to live,marriage, or going to the bathroom we feel we belong in.

Freedom should be quaranteed in a society that says it believes in life. NO if's,and's,but's or or's.

Then what good is this country? What kind of morality is it to live in a country that does NOT seem to value life.

In a country that values life no one should have to fight for freedom.

I don't really see the relation between the Declaration of Independence of the US from The British Empire and discrimination. Then again I could basically care less about the Constitution and its terrible implementation of representative democracy too.

I want housing, education, medical care, protection from harm, meaningful employment, and entertainment everything else like how we get there are just details.

Freedom is not free in any way shape or form. Their are people dying right now to give us what we have. The Constitution is only as good as the people who utilize it the correct way. Sadly people are fallible and not perfect. 

I'm gonna have to agree with Hikari. The declaration of independence was simply a way to tell Britain, hey, we're not putting up with your stupid laws and taxes anymore. It only declared a freedom from that empire.

Our "freedoms" in the united states are given by the constitution. (which I also agree is not holding to its original standards. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky we haven't been banned from voting since a lot of people would say we aren't male or female.)

Anyway, I think in the USA, we're pretty much on our own now. The government is doing little to look out for the majority and is mostly interested in finding ways to return to office. Seriously, why do new laws really have to be 100 pages long? What font size are they using in DC?

Jessica:

Maybe we should go back to the past ,kill all on the other side. Seems that is the only way to be free.
No Living in harmony with one's neighbors . I used to be a bully at school , no one thought I'm TG.
therefore I wasn't bullied at school. To me living in harmony with one's neighbors is the ideal way to live.
Their free and we are free, the ideal situation and the moral way to live. You say that people are fighting for our rights, but we are fighting to keep a FOREIGN power out of this country where they may or do not have any freedom in their own country but living in a totalitarian one.

It is a sorry state of affairs if the USA does not utilize The Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution properly.

Just because you walk around in this country without people knowing who you are. Is that being free?

Quote from: janetcgtv on June 30, 2014, 01:39:51 AM
Their free and we are free, the ideal situation and the moral way to live.

This is the real world though. This will never happen. Ideal yes, but practical no. People are just destroyers plain and simple. Even utopia communities formed on this concept have all failed. Power is just too addictive and people want it.

We only have the illusion of rights.

As George Carlin once said "Rights aren't rights if someone can just take them away."

even dying when you want to isn't something you can take for granted. prisoners will be fore fed, dangerous items removed, suicide attempts fail due to intervention.

in the end, there are no human rights, it's just an ideal that most people would agree that they want for themselves, but in the end, most of us don't care if others get the same rights or not.

Quote from: Hikari on June 29, 2014, 11:37:38 PM

I want housing, education, medical care, protection from harm, meaningful employment, and entertainment everything else like how we get there are just details.

...Provided by whom, exactly? Unfortunately, all too often the Devil is in the details.

Wow. What a horrible thread. I think janetcgtv raised some really good questions and I'll have to say I'm disappointed at the level of the responses.

"There are no human rights". Seriously?

When I was a kid, you cold be thrown in jail in most of the US for being married to someone of a different race.

Now that would be unthinkable.

In the 19th century, the color of your skin could allow you to be held as a slave here.

Institutionalized slavery has been gone for more than a century.

At the start of the 1900s, a woman was not allowed to vote.

Seriously? Can anyone seriously say there have been no progress in this country on human rights, let alone no human rights at all?

Do we have further to go? Of course. janetcgtv rightly points out that trans people need more acceptance, rights, and respect. But to say that because we aren't treated well in some areas, that there are no rights at all, or that they are all an illusion, how can I take statements like that seriously?

My answer to janetcgtv is this:

Yes, you're right. The pursuit of happiness still has a lot further to go when it comes to trans people. That will happen not because of a historical document.

If trans people are going to be given more respect/understanding/acceptance, it will be because WE EDUCATE PEOPLE ABOUT WHO WE ARE.

There is a right in my state to marry someone of the same sex. Just a few short years ago, most people thought this was a bad idea. Why? Because they didn't understand. All they knew about gay people were what they'd heard from others who also had little contact. When they began to understand WHY gay people wanted to marriy and WHO they were and WHAT they were really like, public opinion changed sharply.

That could happen for us as well, but ONLY if we make more of an effort to educate the world toward what we are and what we're not.

No one else will do it. If people are to be better educated about transgender people, it will be because WE DO IT.

Of course it's easier to post disparaging thread replies about how naive that notion is, about what a waste of time it is to try to educate people, how no one cares about anyone else, etc.

sorry, i'm just in a cynical state of mind. seems like that happens when i forget to be depressed... despite everything, the world is a much more peaceful place than it used to be. human rights still sound luke hust some pretty words to me, but at least humanity is startung to realize that you can't expect to get what you aren't willing to give to others. i'll never stop fighting against siscrimination, i just don't believe it will end only because of some declaration of independence. after all slavery still exists even in countries where it was abolished long ago, people just gave it other names.

hmm... i don't think that got much better.

Quote from: ErinS on June 30, 2014, 09:05:09 AM
...Provided by whom, exactly? Unfortunately, all too often the Devil is in the details.

My point was the provider is irrelevant. My wages, the government, corporations, whatever those are the things I want. I push socialism because I think that to be the best way to provide that but whatever, if a capitalist system did then who cares about the details? I want to live a comfortable, safe, and meaningful life, I am not intrested in being chained to the dogma of long dead men, hence my distain for the way we treat the consititution, declaration, and founding fathers as somehow sacrosanct.

Quote from: suzifrommd on June 30, 2014, 09:16:01 AM

Institutionalized slavery has been gone for more than a century.

Umm... no. Please reference this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s/. Slavery is still alive and well, even in the United States. Granted, in the U.S, it may not be state sanctioned, but it seems that those in power have more interest in controlling whether or not women have the right to their bodies than solving this problem. When we look at other countries, the problem gets even worse. I fully believe in human rights and the freedom of the individual. However, I don't let that stop me from recognizing that this is just a constructed idea, it doesn't stand on it's own.

I believe the notion of progress in this country is... hegemonic, at best. Sure, we have a few more laws that protect certain people in certain places. Even if we raise this 'protection' to a federal level, it's still hegemonic; it's only instilled to quiet us, to let us believe that things have changed. And on a superficial level, they have. However, the government could (in theory) turn all of this around. If they wanted to, they could imprison the whole country and we wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. The United States spends more on military spending than any other country in the world, BY FAR. What are we supposed to fight with, our tiny little guns?

As long as systems of power exist, there will be no true freedom. We will be give privileges based upon what those in power deem fit to give us. Those privileges are very conditional.

UH, The United States is a Republic which uses Democracy to decide who will represent us. If it were a true democracy, every vote or law would be brought to the people in the majority rules type of situation. But our Representatives do that in a federal way. States like Colorado can pass laws to legalize marijuana but even thought is is legal in the state of Colorado, to the Feds it is still illeagal and federal employees and workers in other industries that fall under federal guidelines or controlled by the Federal government still can't utilize it because of random drug screens and the guidelines of the federal government. But the tenth ammendment ensures the right of the people of Colorado to legalize marijuana if they want.

I believe in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Safety mechanisms to keep tyranny from running rampant in a free country. Three equal branches of government with equal powers so one doesn't have full power over all. Another mechanism set forth was being able to ammend the constitution and change laws with I believe 2/3 of the House of Representatives and 2/3 of the Senate being able to change and add amendments to the constitution, like the slavery issue and women's sufferage. Also prohibition and the repeal of prohibition I just gotta' say thank God they reapealed that one.

This country may not be perfect but this world isn't perfect and people are definately not perfect and why it was set up with the constitution with certain inalienable rights that were never to be infringed upon. Even though in modern times it seems that the interpretations vary and get twisted around by politicians that try to use it for more control on both sides ofthe isle. The freedom of speech without repercussion, the right to defend yourself with a firearm, the whole thing about illegal search and siezure and false imprisonment. Being able to plead the fifth amendment to not incriminate yourself and so on.

The Declaration was just the founding fathers declaring a breakaway from Great Britain and set forth the processes of the Bill of Rights and the establishment of the Constitution. BTW there were some founding fathers that wanted to model the U.S. as a monarchy. Not everyone shared the same Ideals. So really the old saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The parties have changed names but basically it is still the same old song and dance and pretty much the same now as it was then.

Most pro life people don't even believe in life. You are the most important thing in existence until your born. Then you're a mooching pos. You don't have the right to healthcare. You single mother working 40 hours a week doesn't deserve a place of her own with food on the table. Its pathetic. Pro-life is actually anti-abortion. Even though they should they should be the same thing they aren't.

Quote from: awilliams1701 on June 30, 2014, 12:54:31 PM
Most pro life people don't even believe in life. You are the most important thing in existence until your born. Then you're a mooching pos. You don't have the right to healthcare. You single mother working 40 hours a week doesn't deserve a place of her own with food on the table. Its pathetic. Pro-life is actually anti-abortion. Even though they should they should be the same thing they aren't.

No one ever said it was a perfect system. But even the poorest in the US doesn't even come close to the misery of the poor in other other countries like Africa, India, and so on that the poor have to live in makeshift shantytowns. Oh yeah we have homeless people but there are shelters and places that will feed them and so on. Try finding places like that for the poverty stricken in some other countries.

As for prolife or abortion, that is a decision that I think should be made by the people involved with a preparation of what kind of problems may come down the line in the future. If the problems seem too great of a risk then adoption for those that can't have kids should be considered too. I have a female family member that had an abortion and it sounded so easy but now she suffers depression from guilt and she wishes she would have gave birth and then gave the child up for adoption. But those consequences were never even considered or talked about at the time. And I know women that had abortions and it doesn't even phase them. Sure I think it is a choice but one that a person should be prepared and informed of all possible consequences before making that choice.

But just my opinion, I think the prolife/prochoice is way overly politicized and used but those politicians. I mean if one side gets their way, its possible that the mother may have no other choice but to give birth even if it is extrememly dangerous for the mother. If the other side gets their way then possibly anyone can walk in without a second thought and face psychological problems later down the line. I believe it should be a choice but an informed choice with all possible complications and consequences laid out on the table.