You know, when you read the Declaration of Independence put forth by the Founding Fathers, you have to notice one fact. There are no footnotes or asterisks that direct the reader to some subsection saying that “well, we didn’t mean it applies to this group or that”. The most famous line is, of course, this:
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.
Yes boys and girls, that is exactly how it’s written. It’s not:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (see note 1), that they are endowed by their Creator (see note 2) with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Note 1: This may not apply to those Catholics; we just don’t get their religion. Oh, and not the homos. No offense, but ewww… And not those Italians that come over here. You know, looking all swarthy and all. And don’t get us started on those crazy Indians! We’ve got some smallpox blankets to take care of them!
Note 2: When we say “Creator”, we mean the good, PROTESTANT God. We don’t mean a Catholic God, or some heathen race God like Ganesha or Mohammed or Zeus or Odin. Nope, the only Creator we mean is our good, Protestant God.
So what does this mean? It means that A) we are ALL meant to be able to pursue Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness and B) every person has the right to their own beliefs about their Creator. It means that black people have the right to marry white people. It means that people should be allowed to be hermits in a cave, or be the life of a party in downtown Manhattan. It means that people are allowed to pursue Mormonism. It means that people are allowed to howl at the moon, if that is their want for worship. And it means that men should have the right to marry other men, and women should have the right to marry other women. You see, it all comes down to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. I have been with my partner for over seventeen years. But someone took away our rights of the pursuit of Happiness in a popularity contest back in 2004.
We should be granting rights, not taking them away. Because honestly, no one person is better than another. No one person’s rights should be granted when another person’s rights are taken away. We are all equal. We should all BE equal. That is the way that our Founding Fathers wanted.