I am gaining more and more hope for the end of bigotry against the LGBT community, first with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and now with President Obama directing the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. This article in the NY Times online expresses reactions from both sides.
Conservatives argue that now is not the time for such a bold move because other issues, such as the economy, are far more important. I say for exactly that reason now is the right time (actually, I think it’s well past due, but that’s beside the point). It takes more energy, more money to fight against something than to allow it to happen. Do conservatives really think it’s worth our country’s resources to stand so strongly against gay marriage? Or would they prefer we focus on getting our economy back in order, lowering the unemployment rate, creating new jobs, etc.?
I have never understood the desire to fight so strongly against gay marriage. I have yet to hear a valid argument. Please tell me who this hurts. Joe and Bob down the street getting married is not going to affect Jim and Sue’s relationship. And if it does, well Jim and Sue have a lot of other problems bigger than gay marriage.
I’m not telling Christian churches that I think they should start performing gay marriage ceremonies. I still believe in everyone’s right to their own beliefs. If your religion says that homosexuality is a sin and that’s what you believe, go for it. I don’t really care. But please remember that one of the foundations of our constitution is freedom of religion and that means that the rest of the country does not have to agree with you. You can’t use a biblical argument to fight a government issue.
I don’t know how much more clear we can get than the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long-established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Read it. Read it again. And then please try to tell me how anyone in the United States of America has the right to tell an adult couple that they cannot get married.
Kudos to Obama for doing what’s right, for making a stand for what is constitutional, for what is American. I have hope that it won’t be long before we truly see equal rights for all.
