Frances Knaggs

Knaggs 4
Self-Directed

Write a self-directed
prompt about a global
issue.

Life, Liberty, Love

Imagine, for a moment, that you lived every moment of your life
in fear. Imagine that one day your government declared something
about who you are to be an illegal act. Imagine that you could be put in
prison or killed not for any criminal or violent acts you may have
committed, but for the type of person you love. In Africa, it seems the
clock has been turned back; all the centuries fighting out from
oppression, fighting for freedom, liberty, justice, peace and equality all
over the world seems to have been erased. It is like walking backwards
in time, to a cruel and ignorant world. A world where someone can
legally be murdered for being gay.
In school, we are taught about apartheid, we are taught about
the civil rights movement, we are taught about the horrible treatment
of the aborigines in Australia. It was emphasized to us repeatedly this
year the injustice that was the law in Australia that made it legal to
shoot an aboriginal person on ones land. Well, what about the gay
rights movement? What about the fight for equality that is happening
today, right now, all around us? We are taught to think global, so what
about all the refugees fleeing African countries, for fear of being killed
for being who they are? What about the activist begging asylum in the
US? What about the President of Gambia, who threatened in a speech
to sentence gay people to death? In the United States, we like to think
we have moved past the dark years of botched robberies where
people could be beaten to death on the street, but that does not mean
the rest of the world has.
In this unbearable new world, homosexuality is considered an act
of crime, and committing such an act can result in imprisonment for
life or death. And these laws are occurring in the same world as our
own, where seventeen states recognize same-sex marriage and where
the first openly gay man is drafted into the NFL. This world, this
society, is capable of equality and justice and fairness and peace and
love. These governments are committing crimes against their people;
they have stripped them of their rights, they have violated moral and
ethic codes, they have reverted back to colonial-era laws. We are
taught about imperial and colonial struggles, of the oppression they
suffered and the awful crimes committed. Well, what about these
crimes? What about these people? What about the people forced to
leave their country, abandon their families and friends, because they
dont want to die?

The United States has identified these laws, statements, and acts
as human rights violations. We all know governments should support
their citizens, not oppress them. In a world we know is capable of so
much more, we see a society that is arrogant, inhumane and violent
instead. But that does not mean it lacks bravery. In Kenya, protesters
don rainbow masks in defense of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender populations of Uganda, and activists still continue to rally
in the African country, where its gay rights leaders have been forced
to flee. In April, a rock climber from California climbed the highest
peak in Uganda, where he planted a rainbow flag. In an open letter to
the president of Uganda, he wrote he did it in protest of unalienable
human rights that had been violated- the freedom to live and love as
one is born. His entire letter can be read online, and is deeply moving.
As citizens of this world, we are told, and taught by the Academy
for Global Studies, to be advocates and to set out to solve the worlds
problems. I see these acts as the greatest injustices facing us today.
And I see this generation, my generation, as the ones who should go
about insuring that such laws and such crimes are not to be tolerated.
As a citizen of this world, and of the United States, I feel passionate
about insuring the basic rights I
was so grateful t o grow up withlife, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness- are also imposed for
every person across the world, no
matter sexual orientation.

(Nat. Geographic)
(Boston Globe)

Ugandas New Anti-Gay Law.

National Geographic: Daily
News. February 28, 2014.
Gay Ugandan Hopes to Find
Refuge in US. Metro. The
Boston Globe. May 7, 2014.