Imitating Kincaid: A Rant About Rights

"That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain.  For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere.  Every native lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.  Every native would  like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour.  But some natives - most natives in the world - cannot go anywhere.  They are too poor.  They are too poor to go anywhere.  They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go - so you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself."  --A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid (18, 19)

Long ago we were promised that in America each person has the same rights and freedoms. It is apparent that even now and despite numerous struggles from minorities, there are still groups without certain rights. Despite the infamous words of the Declaration which promise the right to the pursuit of happiness, there are still those who, despite the promise our forefathers made, try to take this right from others.  Every person should have the right to be happy, the right to live their lives, the right to love the person of their choice.  But this fundamental right – that of happiness and life – is forbidden to homosexuals.  They are outcasts. They are shunned by friends and family alike.  Even strangers on the street may taunt or jeer at them; there are many cases where an individual from any one of these groups has harmed a young homosexual, many cases where the outcast has been teased, has been beaten, some to death – these pariahs, thrown from home and from social group to walk alone, are treated nearly subhumanly by those with the misguided belief that to love whom you love is wrong and should be punished.