Women And Humanity, Part 1

Truth be told, I’d rather not be writing this, but seeing the outpouring of people marching on behalf of the rights and welfare of women, and especially the rights and welfare of all humans, in cities across the country has left me feeling that I must add my voice to the conversation. It’s my obligation to voice my support for women and humanity everywhere.

I believe that all humans have basic rights, and that our culture should be consistent in protecting these rights. These most basic and fundamental rights, to name just a few, include the right to exist, the right to live free from violence or the threat of violence, the right to be treated with dignity, and the right to equal protection under the law.

As a culture in the United States, we’ve done a pretty poor job of this. We’ve more or less come to accept, and in fact expect, than many men will shirk their responsibilities to the women in their lives. They will lie to them and use them for their own personal pleasure and subsequently abandon them. If they father a child, they will leave it up to the mother to take care of them, while they go off to do the same to another woman. In other cases, they will insist that the women commit violence against her child because he does not want the responsibility, further damaging her emotional and physical well-being. In other cases, women are forced into prostitution where a man will profit from her slavery. How many women in this country have had been abused by men in one of these ways? Obviously, far too many. Tragically, we as a society, and more importantly as individuals, don’t do enough to help women in these extremely difficult and heart-wrenching situations or to give them better options for short-term and long-term support.

Women in this country also have their rights violated routinely by domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. Within marriages, many men cheat on their wives and abandon their families when his marriage and family no longer “makes him happy,” causing the woman and children financial harm, humiliation, and emotional injury. We’ve made it pretty easy to do these days – legally and culturally.

Violation of women’s basic rights happens at all levels of our society, in both impoverished segments of the population and in the highest positions of authority. In the past, CEOs, US Presidents, politicians and other powerful and influential men have been allowed to take advantage of women in one way or another. They have been able to remain untouched by our justice system due to their position, able to smear and silence their female accusers with their influential friends, and in the saddest cases their wives, as accomplices. This will without a doubt continue to happen.

So far I’ve been focusing on women, but of course all humans have these basic rights. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Muslim, Jew, Christian or atheist. It doesn’t matter whether you are attracted to the same sex or to the opposite sex. And it doesn’t matter what stage of your life you are in – young or old, child or adult, born or unborn. It simply does not matter. You have basic rights.

To the extent that your march (or support thereof) in any part of the country affirms these most basic human rights for all members of our human family, whether it’s this past week at the Women’s March or this coming week at the March for Life, I applaud and thank you. I encourage you to keep fighting for those who have had and continue to have their rights violated, especially those who cannot speak for themselves, who cannot march, and who cannot exercise their most basic human rights: the right to exist, the right to live free from violence or the threat of violence, the right to be treated with dignity, and the right to equal protection under the law. I hope we can all do that.