Gun Rallies. Militias. Tea Party Patriots. Gun Rights. The Oklahoma City Bombing. The Second Amendment. Columbine. Waco. Gay rights.
Which of these doesn’t go with the others?
Actually, none of them. Because all of these are about what Americans perceive as “essential liberties.” The issue is not everyone agrees on all of them. Gay rights, I believe, mean greater equality, freedom, and liberty for all. Maybe you believe gun rights mean greater equality, freedom, and liberty for all.
Regardless of your position, these are the issues all Americans are talking about today, the seventeenth anniversary of the death of 81 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the fifteenth anniversary of the death of 168 in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Tomorrow will be the eleventh anniversary of the Columbine massacre, in which fifteen, including the two high school students, died.
To “celebrate,” there are two gun rallies today, one in Washington, D.C., and one across the Potomac. The first, thankfully, isn’t “open-carry,” given D.C.’s gun laws. The one across the river, is. Guns will be loaded and openly carried in the nation’s first gun rally in a public, national park.
MSNBC this morning offered an “interview” (more like an open platform) with one of the gun rally organizers, who proudly proclaimed that the second amendment is the amendment that gives us the civil right to protect all our other civil rights. That claim went unchallenged. And it was bunk.
Let me be clear. I love our country. I love America and all the things I was taught growing up in the ’60s and 70s that America represented. Freedom. Liberty. Truth and justice for all. And equality. Which includes gay rights.
But let me also be clear. I grew up. And I saw what uncontrolled greed and hate can do. And Waco and Columbine and Oklahoma City happened after I formed my opinions.
While many believe the “right to bear arms” is enshrined in the Constitution, many others believe the right to marry is as well.
There can be, and should be, strong limits placed on acquiring guns, carrying guns, and using guns. I believe, and statistics confirm, that more guns mean more gun violence. (32 Americans die every day from gun violence. Eight of them are children.) And if the purpose of government is to protect its citizens, surely protection from gun violence should rank high on its list of priorities.
Liberty and freedom mean as much the protection to do what you want to do as they do the protection from others doing what they want to do to you.
Americans, all Americans, need government protections. “Small government” means less rules, and less rule-enforcement. “Small government” is not an idea that makes sense in a twenty-first century that has seen a global financial meltdown due entirely to unbridled greed and bad decisions. “Small government” is not an idea that makes sense when insurance companies and banks are bilking every dollar from every American they possibly can. But is “small government” an idea that makes sense when gay couples are separated by the government, despite legal protections already in place, have their belongings auctioned off, and placed in separate nursing homes, and die alone?
And to that I have to go back to the beginning and look at our Constitution. And ask this essential question:
Why is it the very people who claim to believe in small government, in limited government, are the very first to use government to deny gay and lesbian Americans our Constitutional right to marry, to serve openly in our military, to deny same-sex couples the right to adopt children, to legally marry and form legally-recognized families?
Government’s role is not to limit rights and freedoms, but to expand them. And, to protect those who need protection. I don’t see how carrying loaded weapons expands liberty or freedom. Perhaps you don’t see how my right to serve openly in the military, adopt children and raise a family, and marry the man I love expands liberty or freedom.
But the one thing I do see is this. Mine affects no one but me and the man I love. Surely, that is the essence of what should be protected in the name of freedom and liberty.
(Image: Caleb Eigsti)