“Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” the singer belts out as fireworks go off in the background. Everyone cheers.
The above is a normal sight in America. We never miss a time to sing the national anthem, whether it be at a sporting event or at the birthday of our country itself. We are loud, proud, and patriotic.
As Independence Day rolls around, it is important to celebrate our success. We have made immense progress since the day this country was founded. We have upheld the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States since the very beginning, both at home and abroad.
We have protected the freedoms of many people, but we are nowhere close to being done.
Not everyone in this country is free. It seems as if the word “free” in our national anthem comes along with a set of stipulations. Certain people are freer than others. The Declaration of Independence reads that "all men [and women] are created equal," but we do not always uphold that statement in our own country. Equality seems like a farce.
As we celebrate our freedoms on our country’s birthday, we need to remember that we are not done. There are people in our country who still need our help.
1. The LGBTQIA+ community
Over the last few years, we have made remarkable strides in securing marriage rights for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The Supreme Court of the United States made history on June 26, 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges when they declared that the Fourteenth Amendment and its equal protection clause made it unconstitutional for a state to deny a same-sex couple the right to a marriage license.
We are not done yet.
Same-sex couples may be able to get married, but there are still many obstacles they must face in the land of the (supposedly) free.
In many states, someone can be fired for being homosexual, because there are no laws protecting the work status the LGBTQIA+ community.
Some argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents discrimination of LGBTQIA+ employees, but that only works if the person in question can prove that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. In many cases, other excuses will be fabricated for the person’s unlawful termination of employment and local courts will be forced to believe it.
Are we trying to use to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that the military adopted in 1993?
In case you didn’t know, this is 2016, and LGBTQIA+ persons have been allowed to openly be in the military since 2011.
In addition to discrimination in the workplace, the LGBTQIA+ community faces an obstacle when they try to adopt children. Although the court system has claimed over and over again that adoption agencies that receive federal funding must not discriminate against same-sex couples during adoption processes, states still seem to use their own jurisdiction throughout the adoption process. They create additional obligations for same-sex couples that are not required for heterosexual couples.
For example, a same-sex couple from New York has had troubles with adoption. They told NBC that “there is just a lot of red tape regardless” but they also have experienced “additional hurdles for gay couples.” Although they have been able to foster a child, a lot of their time with the adoption agency has been “feet-dragging.” At one point, one agency was afraid “of what the child might see.”
NBC was also contacted by the national project director of AdoptUSKids who said that “LGBTQ families are at greater risk for dropping out of the approval process” possibly because of “the additional challenges these families face.”
Same-sex couples may have the freedom to adopt, but that doesn’t mean that agencies won’t stop them from doing so.
The LGBTQIA+ community is not free. They are not free to live their lives and love the ones they chose without fears of discrimination, fears of losing their jobs over something they cannot control, fears that the majority of Americans do not face. Until they no longer have to hide their sexual orientation and no longer have to jump through hoops to adopt a child, they are not free. They need our help.
We need anti-discrimination laws that specifically outline the LGBT community. Until then, opponents of the gay community will continue to find loopholes through the current statutes and equal protection laws. They will continue to use their religion as an excuse, even though religion should be separate from the government. They will continue to discriminate against the LGBTQIA+ community until we lose all of the ground we’ve made.
2. Undocumented Immigrants
As graduation season comes to an end, the news has been filled with valedictorians and scholarship recipients sharing their undocumented status. These young adults are proof that undocumented immigrants are hardworking as these students have tackled extraordinary feats during their time in our high schools, but have had to also tackle extraordinary obstacles as they tried to get documented.
Opponents of immigration blame the individual for their status as undocumented, but in reality, the blame should be placed on the system.
Many people are unaware of how lengthy, expensive, and difficult the process is to become a United States citizen because they have never had to go through the process themselves.
ABC News shares just a glimpse into the struggles that undocumented immigrants face during the process for a green card.
They explain that many lawyers will charge “between $5,000 and $7,500” to accompany immigrants with the process, but it could “cost closer to $15,000.” Most immigrants have come to the United States for a chance at a better life. They don’t have thousands of dollars along with them to pay a lawyer. They come with next to nothing.
Even more strenuous than the monetary cost of becoming a citizen is the amount time the process takes and the difficulty of waiting.
At the time the article was published, one woman had been waiting “four years for her green card, and still doesn’t have it.” The waiting period isn’t just sending in papers and checking up on your application periodically. In fact, one man had said that “you can’t call in and check up on where you are in the process.” You are completely in the dark.
These people have to live years and years without knowing whether or not their application is even close to being finished. They live in fear of deportation. They live in waiting.
Even worse, they might live without access to basic necessities because of their application status. For example, California has recently signed a bill to “formally request a waiver from the Affordable Care Act provision that bars undocumented immigrants from any of the law’s benefits.” This means that undocumented immigrants would not have access to any subsidies for health care. They would only be able to purchase health insurance with their own money.
In some cases, undocumented immigrants would be faced with a tough choice. Do they use the money to apply for a green card or do they use it to provide health insurance for their family?
We are forcing these people to stay undocumented. We make the process costly and lengthy all while making sure that they are unable to have assistance during their time. What other choice do they have? We aren’t giving them any other option. They are certainly not free.
Much to opponents dismay, undocumented immigrants are not lazy. They are not freeloaders or people here to take your wives or your children. They are trying to do the right thing. They are hardworking people, just like any American citizen, and they are trying to become documented even though the process is nearly impossible.
And we are letting them down.
3. Women
With Hillary Clinton the prospective Democratic nominee for president, it may look like females have finally overcome all obstacles that made them unequal to their male counterparts. We seem to have come a long way since the implementation of women’s suffrage in 1919, but women are still not completely equal. Women are still denied some basic rights.
One of those rights is to their own bodies.
Abortion has been a controversial subject because of the religious and moral standpoints on it. Pro-life supporters claim that abortions are illegal, relating aborting a fetus to murdering a newborn. Pro-choice supporters refuse that idea, stating that a woman should have the right to decide whether or not to get an abortion because it is her body being used to give birth.
As a woman, I can decide what I want to do with my body for the most part. I can get tattoos or dye my hair. I could get piercings or shave my head. It’s my body.
Except when it comes to getting pregnant, I suddenly am left with no right to my own body. I suddenly have to have the pregnancy, regardless of whether I am ready or not, regardless of whether I was raped or not.
Roe v. Wade has allowed for abortions in the United States for decades, but until recently, each state was able to create their own harsh stipulations. A very recent case, Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, has outlawed states putting substantial, undue burdens on females seeking abortions. Who’s to say that will stop them? What is classified as substantial?
Since the case is very recent, there is speculation on how beneficial the ruling will be, but we need to continue to enforce these Supreme Court precedents. We need to stop states like South Carolina from trying to continuously restrict the amount a time a woman has before she can no longer have an abortion as they see this as a way to “eventually get rid of abortion altogether.” We need to ensure that states like Oklahoma can’t pass their prospective bill that would criminalize a doctor who performed an abortion unless it was to “save the woman’s life.” In fact, this would “not be the first time that a state...challenged the fundamental tenets of Roe v. Wade.”
The courts have spoken in terms of pro-choice, yet there is still dissension and attempts to go against the words of the courts. Until this settles down and all women, regardless of their state, have access to safe abortions if they choose to have one, we are not free.
Females are also denied the freedom to be equal in the workforce.
We are now able to hold almost any job that we’d like as long as we have the qualifications. There are no longer “female jobs” and “male jobs,” but positions that anyone can have.
There’s one catch in these new positions, though. We’re paid less. According to CNN, women make only about 79 percent of what men make in a year.
However, on April 12 every year, women’s wages finally catch up to the wages of men ‒ from the previous year. Yes, it takes an average of four more months for a woman to make the same amount of money that men do. If this trend continues, CNN predicts that women’s wages will finally catch up to men’s wages in 2059, 43 years from now.
This is an insult to woman. We’ve finally worked our way up from housewives to engineers and other STEM careers, only to be paid less than a man who does the same job. How is that progress to begin with?
The Equal Pay Act seems like it could be of use to women, but there's just one issue: it hasn't been updated since 1963.
So until women are paid the same amount as men, we are not equal.
These are just a few of the many groups that still need our help. The disabled, the elderly, veterans, the homeless ‒ they all do not share the same freedoms and equality that many of us do every day. Independence Day is a time to celebrate all of the strides we have made to ensure more and more people have the freedoms needed to live a happy, healthy life, but we should not celebrate without thinking of all of the people who are still waiting for their chance to do so too.
