I am happy to agree with my friend Ron Park in his column last week “It’s Okay.” As Ron says, we are free people living in a free country.
Yes, if like a very close member of my family, you have chosen someone of the same sex as your partner, it’s okay. It’s a free country.
Yes, if like the daughter of my best college buddy, you have decided in your mid-twenties that you are male and always have been, it’s okay. It’s a free country.
Yes, if you have children in school you have every right to oppose their indoctrination with stuff you disagree with, like a football coach who will only play you if you make a big show of kneeling at the 50 yard line after the game in front of the stands. Maybe you agree with Jesus that only Pharisees do that. It’s okay. It’s a free country.
And yes, you can ignore 300 years of systemic racial oppression in America — the bloody civil war to keep it, the lynchings to perpetuate it, the years of separate and unequal. It’s true that the greatest of our Southern writers, William Faulkner, famously said, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” But go ahead and forget about how the past created our present. It’s okay. It’s a free country.
You may hold all these opinions despite your neighbors holding a different opinion. That’s okay. As Ron says, and it is the glory of America, we are “still free people living in a free country.”
Malcolm Pearson
Huntingdon, TN
