I think some people rely on their religious beliefs a lot when it comes to political issues. I’m a firm believer in separation between church and state and I don’t think my religious views should be forced upon anyone. We’re lucky enough to live in a country where you’re able to practice religion or not practice religion, or to make your own religion, or whatever. Once people start making laws that align with their own ideologies is when we start crumbling as a nation. If those ideologies just benefit the Jewish or Muslim communities or much more common, the Christian ideals of the nation, I think it ruins things. I really like to separate my religious beliefs with my political beliefs. I think that’s sometimes why I have conflicting views. My religious ideals don’t always line up with my political ideas and that can be frustrating for me. I also know at the end of the day I’m lucky enough to live in this country where people can exercise that freedom and it shouldn’t be infringed upon.
ABORTION
I’ve always thought abortion should be legal. I don’t ever remember a time in my life when I was anti-abortion. I think it stems from my not seeing it as a religious issue. I see it as a public health issue. The rich will always be able to access what they need, and it’s going to be the poor, marginalized people who are the ones who are going to get seriously hurt. Coat hanger abortions and botched abortions were real, and people died when they shouldn’t have died. Some of those were medically necessary and some were not. I don’t have a problem with taxpayer money going towards that service. I don’t think it’s fair that companies, because of their religious beliefs, deny contraception to people. Again, you don’t get to force your ideas on others.
LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
I think they need to be treated as people, plain and simple. I really don’t see why adoption agencies are so hesitant to let LGBTQ+ couples adopt. I think a child in a loving home with two gay parents is so much better than bouncing through the foster system their entire life until they’re 18 and then having nothing. If those people are able to be loving and caring and to give that child what they need, like clothes, shelter, food, and love, and if they’re not abusive, and they’re being good people, then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to adopt a child. I would like to think that more people would think this, even though I know people probably would disagree with me. I think it’s so important.
Again, I don’t think that your religious beliefs give you license to discriminate. That’s something that’s really hard that’s going on in court cases right now. The cake shop court case was one: “I don’t want to serve you because you’re gay and that’s against my religion.” There were the Bar-B-Q joints in America during segregation and once segregation was over, they were like, “Oh, I’m not going to serve people of color because that’s against my religion.” If we abuse our First Amendment right, then everyone is going to have a law within themselves and say, like, “Oh, My freedom of expression says that I should be able to go 75 miles an hour on this 65 miles-per-hour road and I should not be punished for that.” We can’t use that as a license to get away with things.
I heard this other thing that made me open my mind a lot more. We can’t treat religion and LBGTQ+ as separate but equal. We can’t be like, “Oh, we are a Christian hospital and we’re not going to give you a hysterectomy because you’re trans, but we will bring you to another hospital that will do that for you.” You can’t be separate but equal. When you’re doing good in the community, I don’t believe you have any sort of right to deny service to anyone.
RACIAL MOVEMENTS
My dad did grow up in Louisiana, so I have racist family on his side that he doesn’t really interact with at all. My grandma isn’t racist. I don’t think I’ve ever met the racist side of that family. It’s at the point where you’re like, if you tell people that you have roots from the South they automatically think that you’re going to be racist these days and it’s very conflicting. I love my Southern roots. I love the states and I love being down there.
With the Black Lives Matter movement, I don’t think destroying statues is appropriate. That’s destruction of public property and a crime. I definitely do understand that we need to look at these statues. If they are glorifying confederate soldiers, KKK members, or other racist people, then we need to figure out what we can replace them with. Instead of destroying them, I think there should be some sort of confederate museum of some kind in the South where people can go and look at the history of where we’ve been. This is what we’ve gone through. Include some of the Black Lives Matter movement, and how because of this movement we are getting rid of these statues in public places. I think that it’s important that we don’t get rid of the idea of the existence of the statues because people are going to forget that slavery and the confederacy was real.
We already have Holocaust deniers. Germany hasn’t burned down Auschwitz, Poland hasn’t burned down Auschwitz. They are places for people to go to realize, wow, this happened. I think sometimes with history that if we don’t keep something to remind us of exactly what happened, it’s not going to be the same history. Then, we are just rewriting history in a way that’s inappropriate.
If we’re not able to forgive the past and move past it, we’re just always going to be in a state of anger and wanting some sort of justice or something. We are never going to get that. We can’t give anybody who has been oppressed some sort of reparations because that’s impossible. Everyone in their life has been oppressed in some way, shape, or form. Some definitely more than others. If we just start giving a monetary value to oppression then we’re denying other people’s oppression - which isn’t fair.
CLIMATE CHANGE
I think climate change can sometimes be blown out of proportion by the media. I think the media has a lot of manipulation on society and what we feel. I think there’s so much that people can control.
The sun is the ultimate factor. I just learned that. The sun is going to get hotter and it’s going to affect the earth. There’s only so much that we can do to stop natural changes in the climate. I think to believe that people have a much bigger part in climate change than they do is a little foolish because we’re setting ourselves up for failure. We are never going to be able to solve it.
With that being said, I do think it’s important that we look for other alternatives when we can. To set up the whole world as, “This is your responsibility,100-fold”, is just setting us up for failure. We will never be able to stop it. Things around us change without our control.
IMMIGRATION
I really do think that we need to edit our citizenship statuses in America. I think we really need to look at other big leadership countries in the world and look at how they do their citizenship. I do think that we need to amend the Constitution and get rid of birthright citizenship and start doing citizenship based on lineage and heritage. That would prevent mixed status families.
I think that we need to be able to create a better immigration system and really focus on the Dreamers who were brought over when they were younger. I don’t feel like those children who are now adults need to be punished for their parents’ actions. The only difference between them and me is a piece of paper. I definitely think that the U.S. needs to analyze how we do citizenship in this country and start doing it based on lineage and heritage versus birthright.
