SB1 rectifies past injustices
In America, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
Likewise, everyone is entitled to the exact same social advantages and civil rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities afforded by governmental laws regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or any other determinant.
With passage of SB1 legalizing same-sex marriage in Hawaii, our state’s long and regrettably divisive struggle over marriage equality has been settled through landmark legislation. This new law rectifies past injustices that denied a minority of our population full legal recognition without depriving the majority of a single right they have long enjoyed.
We’re all in this together. As a just society, our task now is to find common ground and heal by uniting in basic human decency. We must strive to respect every individual’s dignity and right to hold their personal beliefs, values and opinions, no matter how much they differ from our own. Doing so brings out our better angels and makes our community stronger. As goodness begets goodness, we’ve nothing to fear but our judgments.
Once we drop our judgments, accepting and respecting others despite our differences isn’t hard to do. On the contrary, as the master counselor instructed, we need simply “love one another,” exactly as we are without trying to change anybody. Love is about accepting people and not judging them.
The socially intelligent approach to getting along well with people in this wondrously diverse world is to cultivate a mindset firmly anchored in unconditional positive regard and love. In the end, love is all that really matters anyway.
Michael Ra Bouchard, Ph.D.
clinical sexologist
Hilo
Mahalo for fixing Naalehu PO flag
During this holiday season, I am thankful for many things, but let me publicly acknowledge my gratitude to Oceanic Time Warner for its help in a project at the Naalehu Post Office. Several businesses were approached, but OTW was the one who did show up and restring the flag for the post office. Kudos to Lance, Blaine and Ed for their part in seeing the job got done.
Next time you happen to use their services, thank them for their community minded attitude. But, don’t stop there. There are many folks in the service industry who, day in and day out, go the extra mile to serve us, so give them a smile and say “Mahalo. I appreciate you.”
Sheri McDaniel
Naalehu