Radical Ideas.

I'd like to state right now that I could really care less if you disagree with/are angered by the things in this blog. These are my beliefs and I hope that I'm able to express them well.
These thoughts have been going 'round in my head since the 8th grade. They've been growing and developing into very strong and unmoveable(is that repetitive?) beliefs. I feel this so strongly because my head and my heart cannot hold themselves back and cannot ignore these things.
In learning about slavery and the civil rights movement, I came to my own conclusions and I feel like they're radical in their own way.
In my eyes, slavery did not end until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Segregation is just another form of, another word for slavery. Segregation in schools, housing, or hiring is a way to keep a people from the inalienable rights that they were born with, it's enslavement. It's keeping them in the place that you think they should stay at, a low place in this world.
I'm so grateful for the civil rights movement because it opened the eyes of the citizens of this country, of this world to the injustices that were being served to our fellow human beings.
Even today, the civil rights movement continues, only today it's not just racial prejudices that we're fighting. It's the prejudices that we show to our gay, lesbian, and bisexual brothers and sisters.
Your sexuality is not what should define you. Yes, I'm a straight female, but that's not how I want to be defined. I want to be known as a daughter, sister, and friend; on my epitaph it won't say: Natalie was a heterosexual female. It will say: Natalie was a daughter, sister, and friend.
I think that the reason that this country doesn't pay attention to the civil rights movement today is because majority of this country are so close minded to different kinds of love. Love is love is love. I believe that as long as you are a decent, law abiding, and loving person you deserve the same rights as I. Yes, I'm a Christian, but I don't consider the ignorant fools who call homosexuality a disgrace are truly Christians. I don't believe they are Christians when they speak with disgust in their voices and hate in their hearts for a fellow human being.
I don't believe that the fight is being fought loudly enough.
I, also, don't believe that racial injustice has been stopped completely. I believe that Asian Americans and Mexican Americans are still being treated poorly and are suffering the same exact injustices that African Americans did and still do suffer. There's still a lot to be done and said before 'equality' and 'democracy' can be said and used by every person in this country.
I believe that once these things are achieved that it is then our job to help any other country that expresses a want for equality and democracy in their own country. I believe that we should only help those who ask for it, whether it be the government that asks for help or the people of the country themselves. It's none of United State's business to butt into a country's affairs unless the circumstance is dire and the people are not able to voice their need for help.

I'm a humanitarian. Put that on my epitaph too.