Constitutional Amendments
The
Constitution of the United
States was created to protect the rights of
its citizens, not limit them. Throughout
its history the Constitution has undergone 27 amendments, of which 26 stood to
limit governmental power over the citizen and act as a defensive bulwark any
American could use in court to protect his/her rights. It took almost two centuries for the
government of the United States to recognize and grant equal rights to African
Americans, and as of yet it has not explicitly enshrined those same rights for
all minorities, whether they be of gender, sexual orientation, or any other
aspect of humanity that makes us unique.
This being said, there is an implicit right of all Americans to share
the rights all other Americans enjoy.
Today that implicit right is threatened by our Congress and our
Administration. No one, whether they be
the man/woman on the street, the occupant of a Congressional Seat, or our
elected leader in the Oval Office has the authority to prevent some Americans
from having the same rights as the rest.
This stands for all rights, no matter what their category.
President
Bush has announced that he will seek a Constitutional Amendment to Ban Gay
Marriage within the United
States.
Only once before in U.S.
history has an amendment been passed that prevented an action rather than
protected a citizen’s right to it. This
last time was on January 16,
1919 when the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) was ratified. Out of a measure of its absurdity this Amendment
was repealed on December 5,
1933 with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. It was seen after the 14 years of attempted
enforcement that trying to stop people from doing something is almost
impossible.
Beyond the
scale of Prohibition, which limited every citizen’s rights equally, the
proposed Ban on Gay Marriage would single out individuals who, because of their
attraction to someone of the same gender, would not be able to enjoy the same
rights as all other Americans. No matter
what your political party, whatever your religious leaning, or even your
personal view on homosexuality, as Americans it is our duty to ensure that we
are all treated equally under the law.
If we allow for any one group to be singled out to possess fewer rights
than we hold ourselves we can no longer claim to be true Americans.
Yes, our
country started off with Blacks only counting for 3/5’s of a person during the
Census. It took a massive Civil War
before slavery was eradicated from our lands.
The failure of prohibition was seen almost immediately following its
ratification, but the government was slow to repeal it. Equal rights for Blacks were not enshrined
until over a century after the Civil War, and it required massive riots
throughout the land and some of the ugliest scenes of our intolerant history to
achieve this accomplishment. Today,
women and gays are still not explicitly afforded the same rights in the
Constitution as straight men. What we
can have, though, is confidence in the knowledge that at present there are
implicit rights for all Americans to be treated fairly and equally under the
law. It need not take a Supreme Court
decision to formalize this equality, but it also need not demand a
Constitutional Amendment to eliminate it.
If this Amendment
is ratified how long will it be before we once again all have equal
rights? How many Americans will have to
suffer with second class citizenship because they are not like the majority? How many times will Martin Luther King,
Robert Kennedy, and Medgar Evers have to turn over in their graves because we
once again decided that some Americans are not as equal as others? As a nation we must all be able to respect
one another for the things we have in common and those that make us
different. We must all be treated
equally under the blind eyes of justice and must be afforded the same rights as
our neighbors whether they be in the house next door, the town down the road,
or a state on the other side of our country.
Unless we can treat everyone with respect, dignity, and honor, even if
what they do is not what we would do ourselves, we will not find strength as a
nation. When we can again find a way to
all be equal we will once again deserve the respect that our equal rights and
rule of law have earned us in the rest of the world and in the hearts of every
American.
Please
write to your Representative, Senators, and President to express that you don’t
want to see some Americans treated less equally than you. Unless we are all equal under the law none of
us are safe from it.
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