1st Hour Democrats

From Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letters from Birmingham: “One may ask, ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ Any law that uplifts human personality is unjust. In 2004 there were 902 incidents of hate crime against homosexuals in the United States. When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letters from Birmingham hate crime against African Americans were widespread in the South. Denying homosexuals from the rights the rest of us have is as unjust as the Jim Crowe laws during the fifties and sixties. By passing these laws and preventing them their rights the government is degrading human personality. Rodriquez does not personally agree with homosexuality. However, he does support equal rights for all people, no matter what their lifestyle choices may be. He believes it is their right to choose how they live, not the government’s place to regulate. How would you like the government telling you that you could not marry the person you love? After all, that is all these people want, and it is the purpose of marriage. It is the legal unity of two people who want to be together. In disabling them from expressing their love for each other, we are degrading their personality. This is the way they were born, and the way they choose to live. As citizens of the United States, they should be guaranteed their unalienable right to pursue happiness. Some may say that marriage is solely for procreation. If this were true, we would have to outlaw sterile men and infertile women from marriage as well. A few steps have been made to change these injustices. In Vermont a court legalized a ‘civil union’ between a gay couple, but they refused to call it a marriage. Just like the separate but equal laws of the fifties, this allowance is contradictory of itself. The recurring question comes to mind, “If it is equal, then why must it be separate?” Another argument is that a gay couple is unable to raise a child successfully. People automatically assume that because a child’s parents are homosexual, they will be homosexual as well. This is like saying if a couple is heterosexual they will always raise a heterosexual. We all know this is simply not true. Sure a family with homosexual parents may not be the ‘traditional’ American family. But then again, what is ‘traditional’? With fifty percent of marriages in America ending in divorce, more and more households are being supported by one parent families. Who determines tradition for American families? We should not allow Mr. Bullard to determine whether we are ‘normal’ enough for America.