The Real Issue

As I turn on news, I am met with sickening stories of violence, murder, corruption and war. And as I take these images in, I can barely stay focused on them, as my mind is eternally set on a conflict whose scope and breadth far out measure anything you will hear from your news outlet. The conflict goes back to the beginning time. It overshadows Shi’a vs. Sunni, surpasses catholic vs. protestant, and can’t hold a candle to Harry Potter vs. Voldemort. I’m talking about innie vs. outtie. The innie-outie debate has pitted brothers against brothers, and has torn entire families in two. The distinction between the two has been defined since the dawn of man, and has caused every major conflict in our history. And yet, somehow, the issue has gone long overlooked history, and has been put on the backburner, in favor of more popular issues such as class warfare and AIDS. When I look into my own past, I can’t imagine life without the distinction, and how those with outties have faced persecution at the hands of the innies. On the schoolyard in my elementary school, the innies would laugh and play games, while the outties sat quietly and kept to themselves, not wanting to provoke the outtie children. Being an innie myself, I always wanted to invite them to play with us, but was afraid that I would be seen as a traitor and be excised by my fellow classmates. Even at my school today, I’ve seen vicious beatings being arranged by the innies upon the outties, simply because their belly buttons were oriented in a dissimilar fashion. I am proud to be friends with a girl named Haley, who straddles the line between in and out, and possess a belly button that goes both ways. My friend Haley is a half-button. She’s kept it a secret her entire life, and I can’t stand her to see her suffer the pain of having to keep her belly button hidden from the world. I can’t stand seeing stories in the news about soldiers in the war who have been dishonorably discharged because of their violation of the longstanding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Show” policy. And I can only think of the future, and how this will affect my children. What if I were to give birth to an “outtie”? How would they live their life under the circumstances that exist in our world today? I have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all belly buttons are created equal”. A dream that someday my children will one day live in a nation where they are not judged by the orientation of their belly button, but by the content of their character. Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—innies, outties, and half-buttons—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old outtie spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”