The Atenella Community - Feel good inside
Our brains contain roughly 100 billion neurons, the same number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Love unifies us by affecting everyone in similar ways.
Diversity is embedded in our DNA.
It enriches us and keeps our minds open to change.
We’re building a community with high standards of efficacy and compassion.
"Sexual Rights are Human Rights"
with kind permission of Michael Ra Bouchard, Ph.D. Sexologist
Hawaii has a long and honorable history of respecting and embracing cultural and religious diversity. This celebrated tolerance was gravely threatened in 1998 by the constitutional amendment passed that year against gay marriage. Supported and financed extensively by powerful religious extremists’ foundations mostly from the mainland, this referendum was a deliberate and atrocious assault upon democracy.
It was spearheaded by small yet vocal and well-organized religious coalitions publicly committed to legislating morality nationwide. Hawaii was then but the latest pawn in their national campaign, and the repeated willingness of this faction to sacrifice truth and decency in order to achieve their self-serving agendas at any cost is well documented and on record.
Admirably, once again today the Hawaii Legislature is focusing on correcting this injustice through a renewed push to grant committed same-sex couples similar rights and benefits to married couples through civil unions. The issue here is not about marriage, despite the millions of dollars that were previously funneled into the inflammatory media smoke screen intentionally manipulating and confusing us. Their massive advertising and commercial blitz in 1998, and again in 2007, was designed to deliberately mislead, emotionally incite and manipulate good, well-meaning people into supporting legislation of bigotry and intolerance, hoping to distract the public from the real issue, and unfortunately it worked both times.
However, attempts to legislate morality always attack our fundamental liberties. Further, they violate America’s constitutional law requiring separation of church and state. The real issue then and now is simply one of equal rights and justice for all—for everyone—regardless of race, religious creed or sexual orientation.
Imagine how different Hawaii’s rich and diverse heritage would be today if all the kupuna of the past two hundred years had been legally denied the right to marry someone of a different race. Personally, my wife of Hawaiian-Chinese ancestry and I would have been denied the right to marry, as also would have been her parents and countless other Islanders.
We must ensure that the aloha spirit of our beautiful state continues to extend evenly to everyone by treating people equally. The majority of Hawaii residents have spoken out in favor of tolerance, and hearing us, our lawmakers now appear to have found the fortitude and conviction to rectify this mistake. Get behind our state representatives in taking a courageous stand against discrimination and prejudice, and encourage them to vote YES on equal rights for all by calling and writing them now with your support of civil unions.
