Where are you, o Republicans? O lovers of liberty? The liberty due a citizen is theirs by nature of their birth, not a capricious gift from this god or that one. Why do you sit idly by when the liberty of your fellow citizens is ripped away? Why do you not care for the common good, but instead cower before the superstition of ages past? Has logic and learning failed you so well that you not from where your liberty stems?
Let me then remind you of these words so sacred to our republic....
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Can there be domestic tranquility when honest and esteemed citizens have their rights taken away for the pleasure of a God? To force into a state of inequality our fellow citizens because of the ill founded fear of others is to be less than this republic was built to be.
Fear has ruled us before, my fellow citizens. Fear of Black. Fear of the 'Japs'. Fear ... is a cancer that feeds on reason until we are little more than small children hiding from the shadows under our beds.
The word of a God, distantly written and filtered through the mouths of many, yet still strong enough to fuel hatred and despotism? Is this the source of our Republic? Is this why we stand together as citizens and plot our own fate?
I tell you, it is not. When faced with the will of a king and the power of a pope, our forbears reserved to us, their posterity, a land crafted from reason and law.
Have we come to a world where the New World is ruled not by persons of liberty, but by those that would submit their wills to the Divine Right of Kings? As being a citizen of our own country become too onerous a burden? Can we not know the difference between a law meant to protect us from harm and one simply meant to protect the fearful from the shadows?
We are Americans, with laws made only for the common good. We need not legislate the will of God. Each citizen should bent their heart to the God of their understanding. There is no state favored church in the United States of America.
O Republicans! O Citizens!
Do you not understand that you cannot legislate other citizen's rights away in the name of religious sentiment?
Remember well these precious words....
Amendment 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Marriage, if it is a religious sacrament, then it should be kept far from the seat of government. If it is the purview of the Church, and the Church finds some citizens distasteful, then the Church should keep far away from those citizens which it does not wish to countenance.
For we citizens of the United States of America are persons of liberty. We do not hold with despots who bring their power from the invisible hands of a god. We hold to laws made for the well being of all. The right to commit one unto another, to provide support and companionship through the journey of life is not a right only for some of our citizens, but to all.
As I close this rant, I'd like to offer you a bit of reading from 'The Spirit of Laws' by Baron de Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat
He was born on January 19th, 1689. Our founders certainly had the opportunity to read these words and they may well have considered them when they build our constitution for us, the Posterity.
I ask you, do we, with our Blackberries and speeding cars, have less courage and logic than a man of the 1700's?
Liberty also requires that the laws concern only threats to public order and security, since such laws will protect us from harm while leaving us free to do as many other things as possible. Thus, for instance, the laws should not concern offenses against God, since He does not require their protection. They should not prohibit what they do not need to prohibit: "all punishment which is not derived from necessity is tyrannical. The law is not a mere act of power; things in their own nature indifferent are not within its province" (SL 19.14). The laws should be constructed to make it as easy as possible for citizens to protect themselves from punishment by not committing crimes. They should not be vague, since if they were, we might never be sure whether or not some particular action was a crime. Nor should they prohibit things we might do inadvertently, like bumping into a statue of the emperor, or involuntarily, like doubting the wisdom of one of his decrees; if such actions were crimes, no amount of effort to abide by the laws of our country would justify confidence that we would succeed, and therefore we could never feel safe from criminal prosecution. Finally, the laws should make it as easy as possible for an innocent person to prove his or her innocence. They should concern outward conduct, not (for instance) our thoughts and dreams, since while we can try to prove that we did not perform some action, we cannot prove that we never had some thought. The laws should not criminalize conduct that is inherently hard to prove, like witchcraft; and lawmakers should be cautious when dealing with crimes like sodomy, which are typically not carried out in the presence of several witnesses, lest they "open a very wide door to calumny" (SL 12.6).
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