“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

    These are our words.  These are the first words used to describe what it means to be an American citizen. 

    We hold these truths to be self-evident; so obvious that there is no need of discussion; there is nothing to be explained. Yet, for a long time in America, the whole country said that these words did not apply to someone with my skin color.

    No right to my own life; so I could be sold and used as a slave.

   It took the Civil War to start to have those words apply to someone who looks like me. But even after that, Americans resisted. Racial segregation became the law of the land, so no right to liberty to choose where to live or go to school; no right to vote until 1965.  And no right to choose who to marry, that is no right to the pursuit of happiness until 1967.

    Racial segregation, Jim Crow, which I grew up in… did something very important.  It made it clear who was ‘we’ and who was a ‘they.’

    With those immoral laws gone, we now live in a time when interacting with someone who does not look like us is unavoidable.  Now we struggle with neo-diversity anxiety. That anxiety is causing some of us to want to keep other American citizens in the category of “they” and “them.” 

    But the problem is we have made a diversity promise to all Americans. Diversity, it turns out, is the core value of the American identity.

    “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

    That statement makes diversity the American value.  And so we are all required to accept and work for that American value. 

        About that principle, General Colin Powell said,

    “This beautiful statement was not the reality of 1776, but it set forth the dream that we would strive to make a reality…Governments belong to the people and exist to secure the rights endowed to every citizen.”

     Whenever we have fought diversity in the past, we have held ourselves back. In fact, that seems always to be the point in fighting against diversity.  Those who fight against diversity seem to want America to stay the same; to stagnate.  When we do that we fight against our own best interests.

    But, when we have come to accepting diversity, we have moved forward… we have grown as a nation.  Why?  Because we have begun to use all the talents available to us… and that makes us stronger.

    I served in the U.S. Navy… 1972-1976.    At one point in our American history, that would have been impossible.  Then when it became possible for a black man to serve, at first all that black man could be was a cook. America fought through that discrimination against it citizens.  My older brother was a submariner.  I served in air anti-submarine squadrons as a personnel clerk.  My younger brother graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and became a Navy pilot.

  I served with men of honor.  Some of those men were gay.  On board ship, aircraft carriers, did we know that… yes, we did.  Yet all that mattered was that everyone did their job.  That’s all…

   About finally removing don’t ask, don’t tell, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, said,

     “I still believe that it was first and foremost a matter of integrity, that it was fundamentally against everything we stand for as an institution to force people to lie about who they are just to wear a uniform. We are better than that.”

   Yet some of us still want to tell American citizens, some of whom are willing to risk their lives to serve and protect our American freedoms… some of us want to tell gays and lesbians they have no right to marry… That these American citizens, that “they” have the right to life and liberty but not to the pursuit of happiness…

   Some of us want to put that restriction on other American citizens because of anxiety; because we want to hold on to something to point to in order to say who is a ‘we’ and who is a ‘they.’

    “We can do this and they can’t.”

    But by our first citizen principle, diversity is at the heart of the American identity; diversity is the first American value.  It has been so from the beginning, when we declared…

    We hold these truths to be self-evident…

[Above are the remarks I made at a forum on the State of North Carolina’s legislatively proposed amendment to the state’s constitution to ban gay-marriage; October 13, 2011.  I along with Maxine Eichner, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor, participated in the forum to inform students of what is at stake, and at risk, if this constitutional amendment is passed by vote of the citizens of NC. For a report on the forum, go to:

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/forum-held-to-educate-students-on-glbt-marriage-ban-1.2651605]

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