Human Beings

Human Beings

I write this not to try to sell you anything, to take your money or scam you to give me personal information. I do not ask for your name, and only ask perhaps for your time in reading this. This is not about a dying little girl who will receive money for each time you send this, or about an African princess who wants to give you millions of dollars. This is something that I, personally believe, does not belong in a spam box. You may throw this away if you wish, but I ask you politely to keep reading, at least until the end, and then do so with whatever you wish. Go back to your daily life. Cook your meals, pay your bills, read your books, watch your television. I pray your curiosity will bring you farther.

We’ve all heard the stories, read the history books on how America was founded. It started with Jamestown, and spread along to the Plymouth colony in 1620. The Pilgrim Fathers had fled from England to the New Land, looking for a new life, and religious freedom. The King of England was protestant, and decided that if he was protestant, everyone else had to be protestant as well. When the would-be colonists refused, they dealt with years of prosecution. They were not allowed to be the religion they wanted to be. Finding a way to have hope, some fled to the New World, to be free from the King’s rule and demand for them to follow his religion, and were able to be the religion they wished to be. In those days, it was Catholicism, but as the centuries and generations passed, The New World, America, became open to all sorts of religions (even ones created during the span of a century).

Fast forward to the 1700s. As the colonies expanded, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was created. Colonists would sail ships from America to Africa, taking the people they found there back to their homes, selling them and trading them off as slaves. Because of the colour of their skin, they were considered practically worthless, used only as property to cook, clean, do backbreaking labour, and anything else a white human would tell them to do. They were not considered human beings, because their skin colour was darker than a white person‘s. It wasn’t until 1892, that the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect, freeing the slaves and starting a long and hard path towards Blacks being seen as people. They would not be seen as true equals until the 1960s.

Before the Emancipation Proclamation, women were dealing with their own struggles to be considered of worth. The average woman obeyed their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, bore children, sewed, taught, performed private marital duties on command, and were not allowed to vote or have a say. In 1848, a woman named Gerrit Smith started the ball rolling for rights. With other activists joining her, they started a long battle to be allowed to vote, and in turn, started a revolution to be allowed to do other things. They wanted the same rights as men, because they were human beings. They wanted to be seen as people. In 1920, they finally won what they fought so long for.

In 1939, World War 2 started, causing upheaval. Adolf Hitler had decided that Germans were the perfect race of people, and started taking over other countries. Anybody he deemed unworthy (Jews, Homosexuals, Mentally Handicapped, Physically Handicapped) were either killed, or taken to a Concentration camp. There they were beaten, humiliated, forced into labour, worked to death, or killed in many various ways. Life in the camp was a living hell. Sometimes the food that were fed to the people there had corpses in it. When the war finally ended in 1945, these people were considered humans again.

Harvey Milk became city supervisor of San Francisco in 1977. During and before then, he fought for the rights of Homosexuals. Though America had come a long way from the prosecutions of the 1600s, of humans fighting for the right to be considered human, still the intolerance rang on. Milk fought for years for homosexuals to be given civil rights, even when other political figures fought against him. “If gay and lesbian people are given civil rights everyone will want them”- a well known quote mocking the real words of someone who believed Homosexuals were not worth enough to have the same privileges as a non-Homosexual. Homosexuals today are still fighting for the rights other people are allowed to have. They are still fighting to be considered Human.

I tell you this bit of history, to remind people of how far we’ve gotten, how hard we’ve struggled to be allowed to have the same rights. To remind you that you’re human. To tell you that I’m a Christian. I’m a woman. I’m of different races. I’m gay. Am I still human to you? If you hate me for these reasons, I want you to know I still love you, even though we’ve probably never met. Spread the love.