Gay Marriage: 'Libery and Justice For All'?

Ever since several drunken Bostonians decided that snowballs were an effective way to insult and harass the British garrison stationed in Boston, the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have been on the cutting edge of American politics. Despite when Dick Army, a Texas Republican, said that "the Democrats would want to have their convention in Boston, than, rather, America," Massachusetts embodies all that is great about America. Perhaps never in the 300 years of its existence as a political entity has Massachusetts caused as much as a stir as it did when the high court deemed that gay marriage was not only legal, but a right.

There was an outpouring of anger at the ruling from conservatives from all over the nation who expressed outrage that the highest court in Massachusetts could rule in favor of gay marriage, while others shrugged it off as simply "liberal Massachusetts" continuing to go off the liberal deep end.

The right wing and President Bush are attempting to push a constitutional amendment through Congress, which would not only overturn the Massachusetts ruling, but outright ban the union between gay couples. A ban is flagrantly discriminatory and goes against everything which the United States was founded on. It is the politics of me, not we. It is not the job of the government to uphold "traditions," or to "protect marriage" or, as Bush suggests, to provide money for marriage counseling. The Constitution explicitly stays out of such quagmires, for the framers did not seek to impede on the rights of their citizens. That's right, gay couples are citizens too, endowed with the same rights as you, I and Dick Cheney who opposes gay marriage even though his daughter is openly lesbian. In 2000 Cheney believed that the gay marriage issue should be left to the states. He flip-flopped his stance, however, to please the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons, who helped deliver him to the White House in 2000.

The separation between church and state not only means that we are free to practice religion and any religion we desire, but that laws are not made on the basis of religion. The Bible can be used as a framework and a moral guide, but it has no standing in constitutional law besides that. In America, no one has the right to impose rules on anyone else simply because of something they perceive to be mandated by the Bible.

If the push for a ban is successful, for the first time in 135 years the United States would expressly say that there is such thing as a second class citizen, not endowed with full protection under the law. Not since the days of slavery has the U.S. declared that some law-abiding citizens are not endowed the same rights as others. Gays will be disenfranchised from the citizenry. What precedent would this set? It would say that because you are different from the mainstream, you cannot have the same protection as those who are in the mainstream. The framers of the Constitution may not have had gay marriage in mind, but what they definitely did not have in mind was an established elite class of American citizens, which is precisely what would be created.

The last line of the Pledge of Allegiance says "and Liberty, and Justice for all," and unless we want to change that, it's time we start acting on it, and let gays have the same rights as everyone else.