Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Blondeness
August 5, 2005
There’s a hot issue that’s been all over the
news in the last year or so that I’m pretty upset about. I just felt a need
to say something publicly about it because I can’t believe there are still
people out there opposed to such a thing.
Blonde marriage.
Our
country has come a long way over its short history in tackling civil
rights. As much as we hate to admit it, there was a time when we
slaughtered the Native Americans so we could forge the west. As a country
we have put Japanese people in concentration camps and paid Chinese workers
a mere dollar a day to risk their lives building our railroads. There was a
time when we enslaved African Americans and a time when women – of all races
– weren’t allowed to vote. These are realities we are not proud of, yet
they are all sins our country is guilty of committing.
The good news is that we’ve made tremendous
progress as a country in the ongoing battle for civil rights. We have
learned – and are continuing to learn – that we are all people. The sum of
who we are as individuals is not defined by the labels put on us. We are
not blacks, whites, women, men, Hindus, Jews or Christians. We are human. We
are all different, and yet in a very fundamental way, we are all the same.
How wonderful it is that as a country we have finally started to learn this;
how awful that we ever thought differently. I am so thankful I didn’t have
to live during some of those more discriminatory times, and I feel fortunate
to live in an era where the world and our country are much more tolerant.
But there is still one group of people that,
in general, our society has not fully embraced. One group that we still
discriminate against, one group that still does not have all of the same
fundamental rights that the rest of us do. I’m talking about blonde people.
As far as we have come, blonde individuals
are still not fully accepted in our society. Oh sure, there are still
plenty of bigots out there that don’t accept black people or women or
whoever. But overall our society has embraced blacks and women because we
finally allowed them all the same constitutional rights as everyone else.
At that point our country officially accepted them as human beings and
dropped the labels. Blonde people, however, have not been afforded that
same constitutional acceptance.
As you all know, the issue on the table
lately is whether blondes should be allowed to marry. There is still a huge
constituent of people out there who think that just because a person is
blonde they should be denied a right that the rest of us enjoy and take for
granted. I really don’t get this. I suppose much of it is just a matter of
ignorance. After all, a lot of people believe no one is born blonde. They
think that being blonde is a lifestyle some people choose by dying their
hair. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I really don’t know because I’m not
blonde. (Although I must admit I dabbled in blondeness years ago by getting
highlights, but that was in my younger, wilder days. I was a bit
blonde-curious, if you will.) But why should anyone who’s not blonde
question it? Who really cares? If being blonde is who you are – whether
you chose it or not – it’s just who you are. The rest of us should respect
that.
And some people do, but they only do so
conditionally. Some people say, “I’m fine if they want to be blonde, but
they don’t have to flaunt it in my face. What they do with a bottle of
bleach behind closed doors is their own business but I don’t like to see
blonde freaks walking hand in hand down my street.” What a ridiculous
argument! Why should brunettes and redheads be able to walk freely and
openly down the street together, but blondes are supposed to hide it under
their hats? If two blonde people are walking down the street hand in hand,
I don’t call that flaunting; I call it being in love. I also call it
normal. If it makes someone who is narrow-minded uncomfortable, then that
is their problem. Blonde people shouldn’t have to hide who they are for
those bigoted few that can’t handle it.
As far as blonde people getting married
goes, in my opinion, the arguments against it are pretty weak. The major
argument is that the Bible is against blonde marriage. Okay fine, the
majority of our nation is Christian so it’s hard to argue with the Bible.
The problem is, our country was largely founded on the principles of freedom
of religion and separation of church and state, which means religious
reasons for outlawing something isn’t a good enough reason. Some like to
say our country was founded on Christianity but those people haven’t read
their history books in a while. Yes it’s true, the Puritans who landed on
Plymouth Rock were indeed Christian, but they did not found this
country on Christianity. They left England because they didn’t like
religion being forced on them and were being persecuted for their religious
beliefs. They wanted the right to choose how and who and when they could
worship. Yes, they happened to be Christians, but this country was founded
on
freedom,
not Christianity. That’s why, even though these Puritans were far more
devout than most Christians are today, the word Christianity never made it
into the Constitution. In fact, the only mention of religion at all is in
the First Amendment where the government is prohibited from making laws
based on religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The Puritans – and
later the colonists – knew the danger of allowing religion and politics to
mix, and they wanted to assure it would never happen again.
So the Bible argument shouldn’t hold water
in a legal sense. If Christian people want to protest blonde marriages, go
for it. That’s what freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are all
about. I personally don’t agree with that approach, but that is their right
to exercise if they choose to. But when it comes to government involvement
and making laws, what the Bible says shouldn’t matter. What if those blonde
people are Buddhist, Hindu, or even atheist? Why should what the Bible says
matter to them? It doesn’t. Not only that, within the Christian religion
there is plenty of disagreement on how to interpret the Bible. (That
subject could be a musing in and of itself…)
Go to any number of churches and you’ll find blonde people right there in
the pews. So why should a fundamentalist few be allowed to decide for an
entire nation who can get married and who can’t? They shouldn’t, because
using religious arguments to enact laws is a blatant violation of the First
Amendment.
What disturbs me most is that our President
has publicly stated that he wants to pursue a Constitutional Amendment that
would outlaw blonde marriages. After all of our struggles to drop labels
and accept people as people, it makes me sick to think that the leader of
our country wants to take us backward in time and discriminate against an
entire class of people. He seems to have forgotten – or maybe he’s one of
the few that never learned – that people should be viewed as individuals and
not lumped into categories based on the color of their skin, their gender,
their religion, or even the color of their hair. Everyone else is allowed
to marry, why are blondes singled out? Because of ignorance and
intolerance, that’s why.
In fact, last year our President was quoted
in the media as saying, “I believe marriage has served society well, and I
believe it is important to affirm that – that marriage among brunettes and
redheads is the ideal. And the job of the president is to drive policy
toward the ideal.” I couldn’t disagree more! First of all, what is “ideal”
is a matter of opinion. What is ideal for me clearly may not be ideal for
you. Not only is it presumptuous for the President to assume he knows what
is “ideal” for everyone, it sounds frighteningly Hitler-esque to me.
Secondly, the President’s job is not to “drive policy toward the
ideal” anyway. I’m not sure where he came up with that. The
President’s job is to protect our unalienable
rights. That is, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As long as
one person’s rights don’t infringe on another’s – and blonde marriage
affects no one other than the two people wanting to get married – then it is
his duty to uphold that. Perhaps our President needs a refresher course on
our Constitution.
“Ah, but wait!” you say. “You claim blonde
marriage affects no one other than the two people wanting to get married,
but what about the kids of blonde couples?” This argument stems from the
belief that a child’s emotional and social development would be adversely
impacted (or even irreversibly damaged) by growing up in a blonde home. The
flaw with this argument, though, is that having kids and getting married do
not necessarily go hand in hand. Blonde couples who want to have children
are already doing so. Granting them the right to marry doesn’t affect their
ability to have kids one way or the other. And as a brunette person with no
children who celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary this past
year, I can tell you that even though marriage and children
usually
go together, they don’t have to. They are two separate choices. So denying
a blonde person the right to marry “for the good of the children” is just
plain dumb, because the two things are independent. Not to mention that
being brunette or redhead doesn’t automatically make you a superior parent
anyway. Just as marriage and having children do not necessarily go hand in
hand, neither do hair color and parenting skills. There are plenty of
dysfunctional non-blonde families out there to prove that point for me.
The only other argument I’ve heard against
blonde marriages is that if we allow blondes to marry, before we know it
people will want to marry animals. I.e., cats, dogs, goats, you name it.
This misguided argument makes the assumption that being blonde is a
perversion, and that allowing one perversion to be accepted opens a
Pandora’s Box to a whole host of other perversions. While I understand the
logic – albeit extremely skewed logic, in my opinion – the argument is so
ridiculous and irrational that it’s not even worth rebutting. If you
honestly believe that being blonde and bestiality are even remotely
comparable, you my friend are a scary individual.
You may be wondering why I even care about
this issue. After all, I’m brunette, not blonde, so this doesn’t directly
affect me. True, but I believe discrimination of any kind is never okay, it
is never productive, and it only proves itself to do more harm than good.
Maybe there is no law against me personally for being brunette, a woman, or
even for being short, but if we allow discrimination against blondes, who is
next? Discrimination is a cancer that can too easily spread. To write it
into our Constitution in any form – regardless of the issue – in my opinion
is a huge mistake, and a frightening one at that. If this is the direction
our country is headed, I fear for our future. I can only hope that
tolerance, acceptance, and intelligence will prevail.
“We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– excerpt from the Declaration
of Independence