Yes, I AM Proud

My husband, the U.S. citizen

As a high schooler, I really resented having to recite the Pledge of Allegience.  To me, those words we were speaking were a great idea, but they weren’t the reality of the country we actually lived in, in the 1990s.  To be honest, I don’t think my teenaged self really understood what we have as Americans.

We live in a country where we are free to speak, to dress however we like, to marry whatever race (and in five states now, whatever gender) we so choose.  Certainly those freedoms are imperfect – and it was that imperfection on which I used to lay my focus – but we have them.  To think otherwise is to really display one’s ignorance of the world outside our own backyard.

There are places in the world where I could be killed for speaking with any man who is not a relative.  Or for wearing the gym shorts and t-shirt I have on right now.  There are places where even the imperfect tolerance of other religions, races, orientations, etc. we have, simply do not exist.

It’s taken me years to realize what I have.  To understand that yes, I still need to keep fighting for the causes I believe in, but that I at least have the freedom to keep up that fight.  In this country of ours, we have hope.  We can dream, and we can make those dreams a reality.  And that, readers, is why the man up there in that picture is smiling.  He is one of us now.  And look how proud he is!