5:46 pm - Thursday, Mar. 04, 2004
Song:
Where Tuesday night I was overwhelmingly proud of my city, I have found since than that there are few to be proud of here. Instead, in it�s place, I have found a city that feels civil rights an important issue only if the people are straight, that dismisses the past of our country and become once again the south attempting to uphold slavery.
Each person living in the United States of America, the land of justice and freedom, should be equal. Each of these people should be allotted the same rights and should follow the same laws. So many people say they agree with what this country stands for, but in the nitty gritty of it, you find, rather, that they only agree with it if it fits into their personal moral beliefs.
Yes, you are a bigot if you feel that homosexuals are less of a human than you are. Just the same as if you think that blacks, handicaps or Jews are less than you are. Yes, that is bigot, but you don�t have to be Christian to be it.
Religion is not the core problem here, as so many high school students want to claim it is. Rather the trouble is a country that does not stand behind its own ideals. The problem is a country that has selective ideas about fair democracy, and will allow the false-election of a dictator to be, and turn the other cheek as that �president� attacks any country that might do us well for oil, but has a uproar when gay-rights is considered a civil rights issue. I am saddened and depressed by the idea that our main source of written media here, The Oregonian, has displayed such angry, and prejudice views on the situation, and has brought those views into each of it�s articles for the most editorialized of �news�.
Civil rights movements are rarely popular. They rarely fit the wide public opinion because they mean accepting, and they mean change. But this is more than a movement, it has become an emergency. In all the years we�ve spent making amendments to the constitution in order to free it of discrimination, let us not add a targeted and hateful piece to it. Something that will put us down in the history books with the same sentiments given to those against women voting and against equal rights for African-Americans, as backwards, close-minded and disgusting. If you are truly concerned about the future of the children of this country, it won�t be how they view marriage, but rather how they view the way the country reacted, that will shape their ideas and how they will judge the world you set up for them. Don�t give them the chance to feel you yourself were part of the angry, anti-American group that opposed gay-marriage, civil rights and Liberty and Justice for all.
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