Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29421682-20161205212110/@comment-1359657-20170418003235

Oh boy, a minefield question!

Here's the thing: In the real world, I believe forced registration of minorities is always wrong. LGBT+ people like me, different races, belief systems -- no one should be forced to put their name on a list if they don't want to.

HOWEVER...and this is a big however...most of us cannot blow things up with our minds, go through walls, manifest giant birds of fire, control minds, control the weather, or accidentally call Shuma-Gorath from the Dark Dimension of the Outer Gods to eat everyone's soul.

To me, there's a bit of a similarity between the idea of a Superhuan Registration Act and the idea of gun registration. There are people in the Marvel Universe who, without a single weapon or device on their person, possess abilities equivalent to being a walking WMD.

Note that I said "the IDEA", rather than the reality. In reality, it's usually just an excuse for supers to punch the crap out of each other and do morally shady stuff in the name of "security" while the writers turn their comics into soapboxes for their diametrically-opposed political beliefs.

To approach the idea of an SHRA properly, one must do three things.

1) Take note of the Civil Rights movements of the past and present, and remember that superhumans are, more often than not, sentient beings (with the exception of synthetic beings like Vision, Jocasta, et al) who, at the most fundamental level, deserve the same rights and privileges as the rest of the world.

2) Acknowledge that being superhuman, by definition, sets someone apart from the rest of humanity, by virtue of their powers and skills alone if nothing else. This is not to say that they are NOT human, but instead that their human foibles -- pride, anger, persecution, sorrow, stress -- can manifest in immensely more dangerous ways than the average human being's.

3) Look at all superhumans equally from a writing perspective, whether they're mutants, sorcerers, government experiments, cyborgs, or whatever else the universe has. If there's discrimination in-universe, explain why that is -- WHY are the Avengers celebrated, even their mutant members like Beast and Scarlet Witch, and the X-Men shunned? It's easy to postulate theories -- mine is that the Avengers are a very public organization where the X-Men operate in secrecy 9/10 of the time -- but the writers must approach it with a specific reason for that distinction. I believe that bigotry is always wrong, but there's always a reason for it, even if that reason is irrational, illogical, archaic, or cruel.

This is all just my personal take on it, and I understand if people disagree with me.