2006-03-22 - 5:45 p.m.

Arrrgh.
I am sick of people ignoring stuff.
If you have privilege (and if you are reading this then you are incredibly privileged, economically, at the very least) then you have an obligation to use that.
If you have freedom you have the duty to help fight for others' freedom.
If you're reading this, and you aren't starving, or you are not being beaten, or you are not abused by your government, or you are male, or you are heterosexual, or you have never been in such a situation you've considered an abortion, or you are happy to conform to gender stereotypes,
YOU ARE OBSCENELY PRIVILEGED.
Use it to help those who aren't!
You shouldn't have to be a black, gay, cross-dressing, poor, female Jew to care about human rights issues.
If you are a human being, you should support equal rights for all human beings. Period. (This doesn't mean paedophiles should be allowed to roam the streets and violent serial killers should be given free access to playgrounds. But they shouldn't be beaten and raped and treated less than human [even though I think a small number of them could be considered a little less than human, or at least, considered to be people who didn't use their humanity for good].) You don't have to be black to say "Hey, that joke is not funny, okay?" to your mates who think it was. You don't have to be gay to say "That news story was so biased!" to a news station or newspaper. You don't have to be a woman to say "This wages situation is terrible! I won't stand for it," to your local or national government.
And you do not even have to have a lot of spare time to do these things.
Of course not every person can dedicate their lives to justice; that's impossible. But you CAN dedicate yourSELF to it. If something whack is happening, call people on it. When you listen to the news, THINK about what they are telling you and why they are presenting it the way they are, rather than just sitting and dumbly accepting all they say. When you are discussing political issues, get a second opinion!
You owe this to yourself, your God, your children, and your world. It's human decency.
Be a human being. Because we all are.