Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Marriage Equality - Another Right Recognized

I think it's important that everyone take a moment to reflect upon what the Supreme Court did a few days ago - it recognized a right. It did not create a right or grant a right. The right already existed; it has always existed.  Thomas Paine said it best in 1795:

            “It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view that we never forget them. An inquiry into the origin of rights will demonstrate to us that rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver? Or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving?
            “A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal guarantee of those rights from man to man. As, therefore, it is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man, it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence only and must, therefore, be equal to every man.”

Good civil government recognizes individual liberty apart from the dictates of tradition or religion. We are awakening to this, though at a snail's pace. Slowly, but surely.

Our government is nowhere near perfect, but, like the bullying videos that came out a couple years ago, "it gets better." That is, if we make it better.