ClydeStyle

Tag: judgment

  • Let freedom ring, for real

    Our beloved country brags about its freedoms. We often speak arrogantly about our freedom to do this or that. Many have died for the right to have such freedoms, but what we haven’t learned is that great responsibility comes with our freedoms. A responsibility that we have already decided is too much for us.

    We argue that our government is too involved in our affairs. We fight against government regulations, and we want to be left alone. Freedom dictates that we allow those free to March by the beat of their own drum. We don’t have the right to say you can have your beat as long as I like it, too.

    Why regulate abortion? Guns? Transgender surgeries or any surgeries for that matter? We do these things in spite of our freedoms because we believe the said person making the decision is not fit to make a wise choice. We are a free country, but our government wants to regulate a woman’s body and her decisions surrounding her body. Why? Because abortion is a sin. But what if we don’t share the same religion? Don’t we have freedom of religion here, too??

    A student should not be able to obtain an automatic weapon and take it to school and kill dozens of people because he’s angry or bullied. But, if we’ve decided in our free country that people have the right to bear arms, doesn’t that decision already come with the understanding that someone is going to make a decision within this freedom that most will disagree with? If that is the case, then we either grant the freedom and shut up or take it off the table altogether, and no one but active military personnel can have guns.

    We are so hypocritical regarding our freedoms because what we really mean is you have the freedom unless it bothers me or it’s something I like too, or I can benefit from it some way. You can’t have freedom if it affects me in a negative way. Now, all we need to figure out is who gets to be the decision maker of these things? The government? The wealthy? Republicans? Democrats? Should it just be a part of white privilege or incorporate affirmative action into it!

    Anyway, other countries are watching us get it wrong and, at this point, probably wondering how could democracy possibly be a benefit.

  • Tragedy strikes before the holidays exposing our mental health issues

    About a month ago, a mayor of a small town in Alabama who also happened to be a cross dresser was exposed by a local news station, and as a result, he committed suicide.

    The mayor, who was affectionately known as Bubba Copeland, was also the pastor of First Baptist Church in the town. He was quoted as saying that his wife was aware of his transgender status and that he did it to relax. He felt this was normal behavior and that he had a right to privacy. He was correct!

    What weighed far more heavily in this case had to be public opinion. For whatever reason, it must have mattered to him how people would judge him. This behavior doesn’t even make the news if he’s not the mayor and if he’s not a pastor. If he was the mailman, this would not even be a story.

    I’m bothered by the pain this has called His family, church, and others who cared about him. The fact that the judgment doesn’t end at his death and that he seemed to have taken the easy way out and left his loved ones to mourn and deal with his choices.

    It is very difficult when you feel you have to live your life in the expectations of others. Shame on us for putting people through that. Shame on us to have expectations on any other than ourselves. How do you hold someone to a standard you don’t hold yourself to?

    Does as pastor or mayor position come with the cost of expectations and why? What right do we have to expect? Before he was a pastor or mayor, he was a person. The exposure of his personal private activities robbed him of his personhood and was completely irresponsible. As a result, he is gone because he could bear the judgment. If this is OK in America, then there lies the real problem.