Say What? All Means Everybody?

I'm reminded today of the trek with Dorothy down the yellow brick road, looking for one body organ or another.  Today's trek should require all men (which today includes blacks, women, legal Hispanics, legal Asians, gays, etc., etc., etc.) to be in search of real hearts and real brains.


Say what?  All men are created equal?  Not those people  --  those women, those blacks, those gays and lesbians.  Can you hear this in your Conservative Christian response to the Supreme Court decision this past week?  Well, that's what you are doing.  You are acting as though the Declaration of Independence should apply only to white men.  I thought we'd come a long way baby.  I guess not.  It should not apply to women?  They were just property of the white male when the Declaration was written.  It shouldn't apply to blacks?  Most of them were slaves when it was written.  It shouldn't apply to gays and lesbians because they are different from us?  I think they make us afraid of ourselves.


". . .We hold these truths to the 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. . ."


Yes, folks, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United
states, as implemented in this day and age, do protect the rights of all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, creed, or sexual orientation.  And boy do we all have to fight the pompous and self-righteous for every right.


The Supreme Court of the United States did the job it was created to do by our founding fathers.  It interpreted our laws in reference to the Constitution to see if it were, indeed, "constitutional".  And the members of the panel demonstrated that they can think (have working brains) and they have hearts.  They were capable of exercising a compassion which would have made Jesus proud.  You remember Him?  "Judge not lest ye be not judged."  Or, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  Or even, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God, the things that are God's."


Yes, folks, all means everybody now.  Everybody has a right to the pursuit of happiness not just the people who do it your way.  In the end, we will all have to let God be the judge, the rightful judge of us all.  Until then, not a one of us knows exactly where He stands on any topic.  I'm reminded of George Burns acting as God and saying that the pastor had run out of God's words a long time ago.  We can only hope to understand a small portion of God's methods, much less his beliefs and thoughts. 


You see, I'm not a really learned Bible scholar, but I can't see exactly where God spoke the word marriage . . . or defined the word marriage . . . or gave us his example of a "true" marriage ceremony.  Marriage rules and regulations evolved from mores which man created.  They varied from country to country, people to people and clan to clan.  It was not written in stone.  The rules He wanted us to follow were written in stone with the finger of God and carried down the mountain.


I think there are an awful lot of us that need to get over ourselves.