Starr Luna is a new member of SLLU. These are her words!
Disclaimer: The following post is not representative of SLLU, or its core values. It's written from my perspective, a new member. 
Hello SLLU Members! I'm Starr, a proud to be a new member amidst your ranks, very nearly 38 years old, happily married to Joseph Hubbard, another newbie with SLLU, and disabled with a few chronic neuromuscular illnesses. I became introduced to SLLU through Plot Tracer, and the Avatars United website. He had kindly united with me some weeks back, and lately, when I read about the issues related to the false allegations, and premature suspension of his account, it piqued my curiosity. The situation didn't sit well with me, and to make a messy story short and sweet, I ended up involving myself a bit in “Plot's plot”, and upon his being free and clear, he has been generous enough to befriend Joe and me, and bring us into the fold.
I have never considered myself as being very interested in politics, nor have I ever thought I was 'any good at it', per se. What I have had an interest in, from an early age, is society, people, and equality. I herald from an area of the world that is largely very right-wing. Still, in speaking to my friends up North, and elsewhere internationally, and I am somewhat dimly bemused at many of their view of the states, particularly the Southern states, and especially Texas, as this conglomeration of overblown stereotypes and generalizations, a wild caricature straight from a satirist's panel, or a television skit. Texas is a beautiful dichotomy. The boys in my parochial school, our senior year of 1991, showed up en mass to the KKK's annual demonstration on the courthouse lawn. Every year the foul hate group would exercise their right to assemble and free speech to gather, and the town would hole up in their houses, and ignore them. The hooded morons would stalk around, waving bibles, and attempting to recruit, though nobody ever came. When a couple cars full of healthy young Caucasian boys showed up, they were muchly enthused, until those boys used the years of bible classes they had perhaps less than enthusiastically endured, to nail them regarding the numerous ways that they were misquoting and twisting the words of the book they'd never actually read. It resulted in quite a row. That was the last year the KKK bothered to assemble in our town. I had driven back and forth and hollered at them, but somehow, I think being shamed by the boys was more effective. =) Today, each of those fellas are as right-wing as their fathers and grandfathers taught them to be. I love them all regardless, and always will.
My first experience questioning political authority was also in my Senior year, when our Congressman visited our school for an assembly, during which he boasted a policy in which he would oust persons from public housing who were found to be illicit drug abusers. I was a 'good girl' back then, and fairly shocked everyone when I raised my hand, and challenged him, inquiring as to how it would improve the situation to toss a person afflicted with a drug problem out onto the streets, so that they could be homeless, too. I then inquired as to why our county didn't have any drug rehabilitation resources available to the people at all. The gentleman was a bit taken aback, but gave me a typical mealymouthed answer that said nothing at all, and was pleasantly condescending about the whole thing. I then proceeded to write a letter, to which I received a slightly more respectable reply.
I do not believe in the “war on drugs”. I believe that drugs should be decriminalized, and that the funding that has been poured into 'the war on drugs' should be put into education and rehabilitation, including providing clinics with clean needles, Methadone, and rapid detox programs. Marijuana being illegal just insults my intelligence, and is hardly worthy of discussion. It is no more harmful than alcohol, and its being illegal is purely a matter of right-wing politics and taboo. Its medical potential is abundant, and I could be benefiting from it immediately, should it be available to me. I believe that prostitution should be decriminalized, and that the women should have access to healthcare, and education, including and particularly counseling and group therapy, focusing on self-value and personal safety. Safe sex education and birth control should be made readily available to the public via the education system and clinics. Abstinence is a viable option to be taught to young people regarding sex, as a healthy, holistic choice, not as a religious more that is being applied arbitrarily on another person.
It is essential that there be a stark separation of church and state, because each person has a right to their belief, and as soon as someone puts commandments in school, or in the courthouse, then they are no different than the militant theocracy that tortures and commits genocide with those that believe differently than they do, elsewhere in the world. People, regardless of gender, have the right to marry and share benefits. Deciding that homosexual marriage is immoral is a purely religious knee-jerk reaction, and is therefore inapplicable as a matter of government. I believe, strongly, in socialized healthcare. Everyone should have the right to help when they're sick. The fact that the technology exists in the world to assist a human being that's suffering, or in pain, and that person, man, woman, or child, wherever they are, languishes without that assistance, proves how very far from having attained true civility we really are.
It is clear that the big corporation has been allowed to erode away at the environment until it is all but destroyed. Lobbying in the U.S. Should be illegal.. period. Corporations buying votes should have never been allowed to happen, and horrible things have resulted.
'The War on Terror' is the most counter-intuitive phrase I can possibly conceive of. One cannot attack the intangible, and in our terror, and paranoia, post-9/11, we recoiled into a defensive posture, allowing ourselves to find a reason to be the first to strike out in a war against an ideal. In doing so, we have simply fueled endless hatred, and it's the song that never ends. A dirge, playing the loss of lives, both figuratively, and literally, on both sides of the conflict. I support my brothers and sisters who have chosen to defend their country, but I have protested, and will continue to, protest the war, since its inception.
Socialism is my ideal world, but I don't know that pragmatically people will ever allow it to happen. How does one get all of the people in a nation in one accord, working together, in order to support the utopia? What happens if people decide they don't want to be productive? They have the right not to be. What will happen to society? What will happen with the people who are not content with what they have? I fear that capitalism may be a necessary evil. Libertarianism or minarchism comes close to espousing my ideals, in that I am very pro-people's rights, and civil liberties, and personal freedoms. But then I am forced to wonder, if our nation were Libertarian, and I had no husband, no family, no one to watch after me.. being sick as I am, what would become of me? Would I languish and die, homeless and in agony? I heard one Libertarian say that they would not have offered support during Hurricane Katrina, but the people would have had to rely on themselves to take care of things. I can't get behind that.
So where am I, politically? I am -not- Republican, and I am -not- Democrat. I loathe the parties. It has almost come to the point in the States, in my opinion, where as soon as a person espouses a party, they rescind their ability to think for themselves. I have a particular seething dislike for pundits, the talking heads that dominate the airwaves, and say everything and nothing at all. The truth is found in small print, buried in documents on government websites, it is in the sum and total of the actions of the man or woman in office, and the truth will eventually be found through my own self-explorations, and my armchair activism, through petition signing with moveon.org, and elsewhere, and now through SLLU. 
I am fervent about protesting sexploitation sims (rape/incest/snuff) and racist groups in Second Life. In my downtime, I roleplay, and explore. It's my hope that I can exist in a zen space somewhere between my righteous rage, and the better world we all hope to attain through SLLU in Second Life, and indeed in RL, because, of course, while I can love my opportunity to 'live my voice', via SLLU, and activism, I can't force anyone to listen to it. That is just one of many ways for me to begin to grow with you all. Thank you for the opportunity!
5 days ago
1 comment:
I'd like to make a comment critiquing my own post. =) Regarding my mention of decriminalizing prostitution, I said that services should be provided to 'the women'. That should have been 'the men and women'. As a woman, and a human being, it's important to me that I empathize with my fellow man, regardless of race, creed, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or gender. Of course male prostitutes would need the same support that females would.
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