Love is Love is Love

Today my heart goes out to all those families out there that cannot obtain legal marriages. These families are treated as second class citizens. They are not allowed rights guarenteed by our Constitution. These are the same rights, that we make sure are applied to our heterosexual citizens, even in prison.

The Supreme Court ruled that the right to be married to the partner of one's own choosing is a fundamental human right. Yes, I said HUMAN right. It's not just something set aside for the wealthy, or the white. We as a people in this country recognize that there are citizens in our nation of all different backgrounds. For many years, it was codified that Blacks and Whites couldn't marry. In fact in Loving v. Virginia, a interracial couple were exiled from their home in Virginia and forced to move to Washington DC, away from their jobs, families and support systems simply because the state of Virginia felt that they (Mr & Mrs Loving) had no "right" to be married. This case was taken to the supreme court and in the decision the following statement was given:

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

Sadly, the state of Alabama in 2000 was the last state to remove racial bias laws from their books as it applies to marriage. That means we've got a long way to go before we can see that marriage is not a Christian right. It's not a white right, or a black right. It's a human right.

Today take a moment to visit the Freedom To Marry page. Read the stories of the families there. The little girl who can't make two mother's day cards. The little boy who isn't allowed to let his dad's come to practice together. The wife who isn't allowed to be at her partner's bedside when she's about to go through Chemo. Shocked? Appalled? You should be. Not only are we codifying discrimination but we are also depriving these families of their basic human rights. In America... you know, land of the free?

Take the pledge and support Marriage Equality today.

There are several Facebook pages related to this topic, but today I found this one. Check out these stories by families who have been hurt by DOMA jon the DOMA Stories: Federal Marriage Discrimination Hurts Families.



Today, I'll leave you with this thought:

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.~John E. E. Dalberg, Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, [1877].