We (Don't) Hold These Truths to Be Self-evident

Occasionally I stop to read the sidewalk graffiti on campus, and before the election I saw two simple words scrawled on the ground that made me think: Make history. I was confident we could.

There is a proud progressive tradition in Wisconsin, it's no coincidence that a statue of Fighting Bob La Follette is one of the two representing the state in the U.S. Capitol. Wisconsin was the first state to pass a law eliminating all legal discrimination against women in 1921, and the first to prohibit race from being a hiring factor in 1933.

All over the city I saw so many 'VOTE NO' signs and t-shirts and talked to so many of my conservative friends who were actually agreeing with me for once. I had hope that Wisconsin could be the first state to defeat the gay marriage bans sweeping across the country.

I remember watching the ticker at the bottom of the screen on election night and losing that hope as we followed over half the states in our homophobic haste to protect Wisconsin from the scourge of gay marriage. But this vote really wasn't about preventing gay marriage. It wasn't even about religion dictating the moral values of our state. Presented with a chance to make history, Wisconsin made the vote about hatred instead.

With an opportunity to extend an honorable open-minded tradition, Wisconsin voters forgot the five words that established our country as a beacon of hope and equality to the entire world in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal.

Not to say that America hasn't battled the intolerance of bigots and racists in the past who tried to discount those long-standing words. The abolition and women's suffrage movements also battled the ideas of fools who attempted to deny the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that our forefathers deemed were the core values of the nation they founded.

But the gay marriage bans that have passed in 27 states are different. Never before in the history of our nation have we gone so overboard in our discrimination that we've written our petty hatred into the Constitution. As much as proponents of these bans claim their majority has spoken and states should be allowed to govern as they see fit, that majority should never be able to legislate the destruction of those unalienable rights provided to all Americans, even the ones with which they disagree.