Both of these issues are getting a lot of play here in Maine. Health Care maybe even more so than in the rest of the country due to the importance of our Republican Senators’ (Snow and Collins) potential support of a Democratic bill. Marriage Equality because after being the first state to pass legislation allowing gay marriage that was NOT court mandated, an election fight is underway as opponents try and pass a people’s veto to repeal the legislation. I’ve written about both issues separately, today I want to talk about what they have in common.
The answer to what they have in common comes from the following two part question: Who do you identify with and who can you identify with? You might think about your family, your church, your group of friends, your school, your town, your country. Another way of asking this is how do you define your pack? Years ago, Hillary Clinton wrote about it taking a village, but again, what is a village? How are we defining our community? Regardless of how we answer today, the two issues represent part of the struggle to get to the point where we extend the definition of our reference group to all individuals.
As we developed, we started to learn to get past thinking only about ourselves. It has been noted by many that the path of our growth as a society has been our ability to identify with larger and larger groups. First it was our family, then our tribe, then our village and so on. Now we no longer fear every stranger that comes down the road; however, there is still more progress to be made.
The civil rights movement can be viewed as extending our view of the group we identify with to people of all races. Seeing a larger group as deserving of the same legal protections and rights that some already had. The battle for gay rights (and gay marriage) is a continuation of that struggle to yet another segment of the population. As we come to recognize that ultimately the key group we belong to is mankind we realize that everyone deserves the same protections and rights.
As with recognizing that all individuals deserve the right to marry, we must recognize that all individuals deserve access to health care. Again, the definition of ourselves as being part of the group of all individuals is key. It leads to recognition of the shared responsibility to take care of each other. Keep this in mind as the debate rages on in Washington. The discussion should only be about the details, the goal of affordable access to care for everyone must be taken as a given.
As always I encourage you to share your comments below.
