(no subject)

Bloody sore throat won't go away. Off to the doctor in a mo. Watched more of the 1995 Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice over a late breakfast. Look at him listening to Elizabeth play and sing with a giant sappy smile on his face. Awwwww. You know, the romance in these stories is very concentrated, because the characters - ladies and gentlemen - have Pretty Much Nothing Else To Do.

The Pursuit of Happiness

I have a secondary bacterial infection, several enormous antibiotic pills, and a bottle of Lactobacillus tablets to replace my body's friendly flora when the antibiotic rips through them. As always, what a relief to learn I am actually ill and not malingering - that my instincts were right, something was wrong - and that there's something to do about it. A little excitement on my way home as I helped some Good Samaritans rescue an injured dog.

I found myself musing over a couple of phrases as I wandered the world today. One is reproductive freedom. I remember reading an excellent essay somewhere or other extolling this expression, which is much more accurate and less mechanical than "birth control" or "abortion rights". Reproductive freedom means genuinely being able to have as much say as possible in whether you give birth to a child or children. It means sex education, ready access to contraception and medical information and services, and proper support for parents, as well as being able to choose to terminate a pregnancy. It means as few unwanted pregnancies as possible (and therefore as few abortions as possible).

It's the very opposite of the attitude of Australia's Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, who on the one hand seeks to limit women's access to abortions, and at the other end seeks to reduce their access to the morning after pill. It's the opposite of the attitude of conservatives who would keep abortion available only to women who have been raped or suffered incest, giving away that their concern is not for the fetus but for punishing women for having sex. It's also the opposite of forced abortions and forced adoptions. There are individuals of good conscience with genuine religious or moral objections to abortion and/or contraception; but these are not the real motives of organisations and politicians who seek to reduce women's freedom. As a song says, they just want a male finger on the button. Do not be fooled by their masquerades. Insist on the freedom to make your own decisions according to your own conscience.

This brings me to the other phrase I was turning around in my mind. Americans reading this (ie probably most people reading this) will be extremely familiar with the famous paragraph from the Declaration of Independence, but let me reproduce it here for the benefit of those who can't call it to mind:

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.

The gents doing the Declaring understood, IMHO, that these three things were inextricably linked. You don't have Liberty if you can't pursue Happiness. You don't have Liberty if you don't have Life, either (contrary to what one otherwise excellent gentleman of Jon and my acquaintance had to say about the hapless citizens of Fallujah). If they were going to create a genuinely free society then people would have to be able to decide for themselves what they wanted to do with their lives, what would make them happy.

Now, the Declaration doesn't have the force of law, but you can see its thinking behind the Constitution - compare the complaints against King George with the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Because of those three crucial words, I realised, in the end, the prohibitions on gay marriage will be struck down. That's what Jon and I were doing when we held tight over three years and two continents; we were pursuing one of the most basic human Happinesses, marrying the one you want to share your household and your life with.

This is one of the last civil rights hurdles. It won't mean a US free of homophobia, any more than the civil rights movement of the 60s ended sexism or racism. But those laws will not be able to withstand the powerful ideas with which the US was begun (ideas more powerful than their formulators realised, I think, given their surprisingly narrow definition of "men"). In some ways the same tyranny is still there, it's still being fought against, and the shockwaves of the Revolution are still being felt in US history. Where the US goes, of course, Australia follows. We have no Declaration of Independence, no Bill of Rights, but we share the attitude that people ought to be given a chance to get on with their lives without being dictated to by wowsers. I'm confident our pointless pursed-mouthed little law will also eventually be torn down.

In the meantime, though, no matter how much suffering the powers that be are determined to inflict, people will go right on pursuing their Happiness. You can't stop it. People die for it. Love will out.

(no subject)

... on a much lighter note, is Lies by the Thompson Twins the worst song ever?