equal?

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

-The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln

.....if we are all equal when it comes to the sense of freedoms and liberties, then why does a straight couple have the privilege of marriage and gay/lesbian couples do not???

.....what if the gay/lesbian community created a church (going back to the freedom of religion) and ordained themselves the right of marriage, should the government step in and deem the marriages invalid???......would that overstep the faint line separating church and state???

.....why should we not allow two consenting, non-related gay/lesbian adults the privilege of marriage???.....who are we to exclude the gay/lesbian community???.....most constitutional amendments are there to INCLUDE people, not exclude anyone.....

And what do you do......

with the rights that you were given???

do you practice relgion???

do you vote???

do you assemble peacefully for a cause???

have you joined a movement???

how do you voice your opinion???

what do you do with the rights that were paid for by the lives of soldiers and revolutionaries???