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I'm a Minnesota Girl, living in the south. I tell my friends I try not to talk and think like a Yankee, but sometimes I slip up!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Bad Hairdo, Excellent Speech


Since most of the news in the world is ugly these days, I know a lot of people are tuning out. You may have missed the ground breaking speech the United States made on human rights yesterday; linking the rights of gays inexorably to human rights, and letting the world know that acts of atrocity against people who are gay are against our creed. Sec of State Hilary Clinton was at her most eloquent. I give you some exerpts.

She received a standing ovation.

But she needs a new hairdresser. Secretary of State is making Hilary old. Fast.

Exerpts:

"I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity, who have a right to claim that, which is now one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time. I speak about this subject knowing that my own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.

Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs. So I come here before you with respect, understanding, and humility. Even though progress on this front is not easy, we cannot delay acting. So in that spirit, I want to talk about the difficult and important issues we must address together to reach a global consensus that recognizes the human rights of LGBT citizens everywhere.

The first issue goes to the heart of the matter. Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity."

3 comments:

Marion said...

OMG! I thought the hairclip 'do' last year was scary but this made me cry. *I* can do hair better than that. She looks like the wicked witch of the west. Obama needs to give that woman a raise and decrease her workload so she can her her hair 'did'. I'd shoot myself if I saw a photo of myself looking like that in public. Shameful!!! Right here you can tell she's NOT a SOUTHERN girl. No respectable Sweet Potato Queen or Ya-Ya would EVER even go to Wal-Mart looking like that.

Great speech, though, bless her heart...

Kelly said...

I agree with Marion...good speech, but oh, that hair! The job has truly aged her (and that hairstyle doesn't help matters).

Bob said...

I have watched Hillary "evolve" over the years. When she first became First Lady of Arkansas in 1978, in her 30s, her last name was Rodham, she had coke bottle glasses and stringy long hair. If she wore makeup, you couldn't tell it. Her entire demeanor said, "I don't care what you think."

Clinton lost the governor's race in 1980 when an upstart Repub rode in on the coattails of Ronald Reagan. While Clinton licked his wounds, Hillary took his last name and had a makeover. She got her haircut and ditched the glasses. He reclaimed the governor's office in '82 and there he stayed until elected president.

Hillary's looks only improved, in my opinion. Oh there were the ill advised headbands and some pretty bad pantsuits here and there, but for the most part she did pretty well on the fashion side and becamse fairly attractive.

But oh my gosh, I don't know what's happened now. She just has to cut that hair. She does much better with it short, as do most women her age. Pulling it back or putting it up doesn't help. Got to cut it, Hil.