2/9 12:21pm Same Sex Issue in Norfolk, MA
To the Norfolk Website in Response
2/8/07Does Senator Brown own a copy of the United States Constitution? How about the Declaration of Independence? Have any of us read it lately... ? I did some research today, after seeing some of the emails sent in to this site. My heart and soul demanded that I sit down and really think about what I had just read and then, respond.
As a relatively new resident of Norfolk who has had the opportunity to live in several different cultures and countries as well various areas of these United States, I am very disturbed that the Senator that is supposed to represent me does not uphold the premises of OUR Constitution. Being a descendant of Thomas Jefferson (and two other presidents as well!) I must speak out!
Anti-gay-ness is putting one's self on a very slippery slope. Yes, there are many people who feel that being gay is a disease, a tumor, a contagious and ugly condition... something you don't discuss, let alone be open about, but what if you were one of those folks who IS gay... who found that for you, loving someone, being attracted to someone wasn't really a gender based thing, let alone a dis-ease, or ohmagosh, that the object of your affection was of your same sex. What would you need from your friends, neighbors and family... acceptance, understanding and compassion, maybe? How about the that fact that you and I are guaranteed "unalienable rights..." (see Note #2 below)
Our society and what it looks like is changing very rapidly. That is the nature of our species... In Thomas Jefferson's day, people of different color never married... but thankfully, that has changed as we have evolved as a society. Women couldn't even vote, or won property. That too has changed. In a few years, the ``white'' race will be in the minority, so get used to it! Everyone is DIFFERENT! Thank goodness. Yes, even you... we are all just trying to survive, eat, stay warm, grab some joy, some peace of mind, some love... for our loved ones as well as for ourselves. Let it be a graceful evolution.
Stop the mean spirited thoughts and actions NOW! Is this really what we want to teach our children? ...that diversity and difference is ugly, wrong, evil, sick? Haven't we learned anything by now? Think about it, you can't separate ``differences'' to a young child... watch out or the ``anti-gay'' thing could turn into an ``anti-elder'' thing... or, whatever... and then, where will we all be...? Get what I am trying to say?
I am not gay, black, yellow, red or elderly (yet!) ... but standing by and saying nothing is not possible. And you? Where do you stand at night, when you look in the mirror and see yourselves with all your precious human frailties? Be kinder to yourselves and that kindness will flow over onto those around you... like ripples on a lovely pool of water. Why are there always people who have to pass judgments on others in order to feel more powerful, more self-righteous? We really are all the same. It has nothing to do with whom we love, have sex with or seek a small bit of joy and peace with. It has everything to do with doing "onto others as we would have them do onto us..." You have heard that before, yes?
Maybe the more conservative voters and the elected politicians who are pandering to them should stay out of our bedrooms and leave our personal life choices alone. All of them! In my simple way, I just want to live in a town that cares for its people and makes that extra effort to embrace the differences between us all, a town filled with individuals that live by the Golden Rule and who respect the documents that have given our nation a magnificent blueprint to live by.
Never forget, it is up to EACH one of us to uphold their precepts. If OUR (keyword!) democracy fails, we will only have ourselves to blame... no excuses on this one. Being silent, turning one's eyes away, that won't work here. Read YOUR Constitution of the United States of America and the Declaration of Independence! Read and weep... emblazoned upon them are the hearts and minds of millions of Americans that have fought, loved, lived and died so that we could be here today. They are beautiful documents for a beautiful idea, the United States of America. And charity does start at home!
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
- PRR Here are some interesting factoids, thanks to Wikipedia!
NOTE #1
EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Equal Protection Clause - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that "all men are created equal" by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states.
More concretely, the Equal Protection Clause, along with the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, marked a great shift in American constitutionalism. Before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights protected individual rights only from invasion by the federal government. After the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted, the Constitution also protected rights from abridgement by state governments, even including some rights that arguably were not protected from abridgement by the federal government. In the wake of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states could not, among other things, deprive people of the equal protection of the laws. What exactly such a requirement means, of course, has been the subject of great debate; and the story of the Equal Protection Clause is the gradual explication of its meaning.
One of the main limitations in the Equal Protection Clause is that it limits only the powers of government bodies, and not the private parties on whom it confers equal protection. This limitation has existed since the Civil Rights Cases striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and has not been overturned. However, since the 1960's, Congress has circumvented this limitation by passing civil rights legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act by use of an expansive reading of the interstate commerce clause.
The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in 1868, shortly after the Union victory in the American Civil War. Though the Thirteenth Amendment, which was proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1865, had abolished slavery, many ex-Confederate states adopted Black Codes following the war.
These laws severely restricted the power of blacks to hold property and form legally enforceable contracts. They also created harsher criminal penalties for blacks than for whites.(1)
In response to the Black Codes, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided that all those born in the United States were citizens of the United States (this provision was meant to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford), and required that "citizens of every race and color ... (have) full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens."(2)
Doubts about whether Congress could legitimately enact such a law under the then-existing Constitution led Congress to begin to draft and debate what would become the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The effort was led by the Radical Republicans of both houses of Congress, including John Bingham, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens. The most important among these, however, was Bingham, a Congressman from Ohio, who drafted the language of the Equal Protection Clause.
The Southern states, of course, were opposed to the Civil Rights Act, but in 1865 Congress, exercising its power under Article I, section 5, clause 1 of the Constitution, to "be the Judge of the ... Qualifications of its own Members," had excluded Southerners from Congress, declaring that their states, having seceded from the Union, could therefore not elect members to Congress. It was this fact--the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a "rump" Congress--that allowed the Equal Protection Clause, which white Southerners almost uniformly hated, to be passed by Congress and proposed to the states. Its ratification by the former Confederate states was made a condition of their reacceptance into the Union.(3)
By its terms, the Clause restrains only state governments. However, the Fifth Amendment's due process guarantee, beginning with Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), has been interpreted as imposing the same restrictions on the federal government.
NOTE #2
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to desolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the seperate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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.