Tradition. Values. Marriage.
Monday, November 10th, 2008On November 4 California voters passed Proposition 8 by a margin of 52.3%-47.7%. Arizona voters passed Proposition 102 56.4%-43.6% . Florida’s Amendment 2 passed 62.1%-37.9%. Proponents of all three measures insisted they were merely standing up for what they believed in, defending tradition and upholding moral values.
I find that hard to believe. You see, when I was growing up I was taught about American history. I learned about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers and so on. I was told about the values this nation was founded upon.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It says there all men. I don’t see any exceptions or exclusions. But maybe somebody put them there in ultra-fine print or invisible ink and failed to inform me.
And the Constitution. I don’t recall anything in there that excludes certain people from enjoying the rights it bestows upon citizens, particularly in the Bill of Rights. In fact the Constitution has amendments that specifically mention that certain groups, who have historically been denied rights, are assured full equality.
Oh,yes, I learned a great deal about how various groups were hideously mistreated over the short course of American history. Slavery and segregation, Chinese people being used as virtual slave labor to mine and build the railroads, Japanese internment camps, the subjugation of women, various immigrants being relegated to the worst class status, etc. But we eventually realized the error of our ways and did what we could to correct things (save for certain bigots who will never learn and need to be relegated to the lunatic fringe of society).
It was in large part because of what I learned that I majored in Psychology and worked 20 years in Human Services. I had decided that I wanted to help people–to make their lives better. I wanted to undo the wrongs and set things right.
Tradition and values. To me tradition and values mean life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They mean individual personal freedoms and responsibilities. The things this nation was built on, or so I was told for decades.
Now I’m being told–at least by the RRRW–that traditional values means regulating the lives of others to the Nth degree. It means making them live by your chosen religious beliefs even if you have to use force of law to do it. It means proclaiming one group the arbiter of what marriage, family, spouse, values and even morality are, then allowing them to dictate those definitions for the entire nation. It means letting millions of men, women and children be left out in the cold because the whims of the intolerant reign.
Sorry. That’s not my America. My America had values and morality. The only question is if it’s lost forever, or if it will finally reclaim itself from the quagmire.













