Let Freedom Ring

"When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free." -- President Obama on the Supreme Court rulings.

This year, like every year for the past 37 years, I will be celebrating the 4th of July holdiay at my parents' cabin with my family, but this is the first year that my partner of 18 years and I will have the same 1138 federal rights as my parents have had for the 50 years of their marriage.  When Prop 8 and DOMA were overturned on June 26, 2013 in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, our family stopped being "less-than".  So, as I celebrate my country's freedom today by splashing in the creek, eating strawberry shortcake and corn on the cob, lighting sparklers and enjoying my family, I will take an extra moment to truly appreciate the wisdom of our founding fathers.

It's REEEEALLY cold!!!

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.

I was at the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation in April of 1993 with Joy, but not "with" Joy!  One of the demands was a presidential order banning discrimination by the federal government, and another demand called for an end to discrimination against LGBT people concerning adoption, and the redefinition of "family".

On April 30, 2000, Joy and I took our 2 month old daughter to Washington DC to participate in the Millenium March on Washington. We proudly walked as a new family from the Washington Monument to the Nation's Capitol Building in an effort to raise awareness and visibility of LGBT people and rights.  We were so full of hope for the future of our tiny baby, who is now 13 and no longer has to worry about her parents' rightful place in society.

Our growing family attended the National Equality March in Washington DC on October 11, 2009, a national political rally calling for equal protection in all matters goverened by civil law in all 50 states for LGBT people.  We wanted our children to know and understand our fight for equality and how it affected their own lives as well.  

Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority ruling stated that DOMA "humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.  The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives".  Now, I will no longer have to explain to our children why Mommy and Mama can't get married in the United States.

The point is, I have been fighting for and hoping for equal rights for 25 years, long before I even dreamed of marrying my girlfriend or parenting children with her.  Obviously, we did not wait for the laws to change to live our lives, but on this Independence Day, this day where we celebrate freedom, our choices have been validated, our family has been recognized.  We are more free today than we have ever been.

Martin Luther King so eloquently said, "I have a dream, that one day all peoples will be able to marry in every state of the United States and become 1st class citizens, in every state they live.  I have a dream the bigotry will all go away and that love with prevail and be the magnifying glass that all humans are examined and judged by."

Here is to somewhere over the (legal) rainbow ...

God Bless America, Land that I love!

the kids spelling out "J-U-L-Y"

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.  Eleanor Roosevelt