What Kind of State is Your State?

They say that beginning with a question generates more interest, so we’ll see how many read this, but…

As attempts to drag us all down the “states’ rights” path that the SCOTUS majority and too many Republican legislatures and governors seem to be bent on creating for our nation, I think it might be useful to start using specific terminology when referring to individual states.  During the Civil War era, there were “free states” and “slave states” and those terms accurately and succinctly made the distinction between each quite clear.  I propose that it’s time for similar language again. 

I like the term “free state” for those who do respect the rights of all (or at least do so on paper and aren’t actively writing laws that suppress specific subsets of the populace).  I’m not sure what the terminology should be for the states that deny and suppress the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, or anyone else the Republican fascists set their sights on next (those states might not actually allow humans to own and enslave other humans so I’m not sure about “slave” state), but I’m open to suggestions.  Oppression states?  Unfree states?  Republican states?  Draconian Hellscape states? 

Whatever the best language is, we should be using it.  And when I say using it, I don’t mean only when we’re speaking or writing as individuals.  We need to inject this language into every media that we can, and Democrats in elected office and those campaigning should do so as well.  Whenever there’s push-back (and there will be), the answer is simple — If people can’t choose whether or not to remain pregnant there… If some people can’t marry the person that they love there… If some people cannot get their children the health care that they need there... If any of those things are true where you live, then you don’t live in a free state because not everyone has equal rights there.

If we are one nation indivisible, then everyone must have equal rights regardless of which state they live in.  Otherwise, we just have a bunch of states parked on the same continent.  If federal law will no longer uphold rights for all in every state, and will allow individual states to suppress or deny whichever rights their lawmakers choose, maybe that makes the free states a confederacy this time?