The United States of America used to represent freedom and equality. We were founded on the ideals that we are all given certain unalienable rights. These rights included life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For generations, those who were excluded from this creed fought valiantly and selflessly so that they and their children could experience the bliss that comes hand in hand with that notion. They wished to be held in the same reverence as any other under the eyes of their government and their peers. Through tears and pain, these brave people achieved their goal. Through great adversity and prejudice, they succeeded. Our history books tell us this. They create only a small image of what the African American and the woman of America had faced.
    
     History. The thought of inequality and discrimination should be just that, a shameful regret of our nation's past. On November 4, 2008, the American people elected a new President. He is a great man with great knowledge and dark skin. It would seem to the untrained eye that our country progresses as valiantly as those oppressed victims of our shameful past had done themselves. Though, for those who can see past the smoke screen that is this historical milestone, they will see that in truth, we have only digressed.

     With common sense, it would be clear to anyone that making the same mistake more than once is simply foolish. With great writers and great contributors to our country such as Thomas Paine, common sense should be more than plentiful in this nation. We would see that disgusting acts have been committed. They would see the oppression that marches at our doorsteps once more. Anyone with common sense would fully understand that in our documents, written by an intellectual elite who wished only for a better world, freedom and equality are supposed to be our most venerated ideals.

     On the same night that it seemed we as a whole had made progress, the states of Florida, Arizona, and California added an amendment to their constitutions that will only breed hate and discrimination. These amendments, though differing in words and punctuation, all entailed the same oppressive definition: No gay man or lesbian may marry another of the same sex, regardless of the enormous power of love that may bring them together, a man and a man or a woman and a woman are unacceptable.

     In our past, a black man courting a white woman was found unacceptable. It was a crime payed for only in blood. A woman could not reach out for the ballot, for her small mind could not handle such a responsibility. I am proud to say that this recent election proved both of those once unacceptable prospects to be nothing but false and inane. Barack Obama was brought into this world by a white woman who fell in love with a black man. Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin, both women, came so close to holding high positions in our government. History shows us that our views that give rise to discrimination were absurd and completely wrong!

     Preventing love is surely one of our most outrageous and absolutely pathetic decisions we have and can ever make in our lifetime. Love is a driving force that no person can understand so as to prevent any other from experiencing it freely with no recourse or hatred projected towards them. A man can love a man and a woman can love a woman. This much has been clearly made evident before our eyes. And though you may argue that marriage is not the only means of presenting your love to that one special person who you would enjoy nothing more than to spend the rest of your life with, you can never present the idea that the GLBT community will ever be looked at equally in society so long as laws stand in the way to prevent them from experiencing the same bliss that the African Americans and women of America fought so valiantly for.

     A taint has been made on our reputation as a country once more as the citizens within it's walls procure the hate and discrimination that only the most egotistical demon spawn could ever produce. History has repeated itself, and so it will again in retaliation. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. marched for equality and peace, so too will the GLBT community rise up for their civil rights in protest and in great numbers for their equal place at the table. Their voices will be heard, and I hope to the high heavens that our leaders and most importantly our people will see the errors of their ways. I hope we learn that nobody is greater than anyone else.

The only thing bigger than any human being, is the love of two.