Society is becoming more self-centered and stupid every day. While watching the news and reading blogs on the internet, I see countless stories of discrimination against people based on race, color, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. As someone who has a disability, blindness, any attacks on people in that category really piss me off.

Lately I have noticed a rise in the number of stories where in customers with guide dogs are denied access to stores, restaurants, and travel facilities like airports. Guide dogs (also called seeing-eye dogs) are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles. In several countries, guide dogs, along with most service animals, are exempt from regulations against the presence of animals in places such as restaurants and public transportation. neither the business owner, the staff, nor that random pinhead who feels their opinions are God’s law can bar that animal from the due performance of their duty of guiding the blind or vision impaired person around in a safe manner.

Barring these friendly fur balls from faithful service makes me mad because it is the same as saying that the person has no right to equal access. It tells me that the establishment values the money of all other patrons, except for money from people who can’t see. It finally tells me that taking the step to see what life is like in the shoes of someone who is different from them is so hard, so out of the ordinary, so distasteful that that person must be barred from mixing with society less that blindness disease be communicated to “normal” people.

I know it might sound biased. I don’t give a soft soap bubble. Equality is a basic human right, and should be enforced. Whether you can’t see, have the wrong skin color, or are just full of cacafuego, you still deserve to be treated like a normal person unless your behavior breaks a law or your force your beliefs on someone else.

I swear there are times I want to take discriminatory people and slap them so hard that by the time they come down, they’d need a passport and
plane ticket back!