Independence Day

Without his leadership, our modern America might still be the British Colonies.

On the Fourth of July 50 years ago, when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and a same-sex couple’s public declaration of love put their lives and livelihoods at risk, about 40 people took a stand by staging a peaceful protest in front of Independence Hall. This year, Philadelphia’s Independence Day festivities will mark the city’s important place in the history of America’s gay rights movement with events billed as the 50th anniversary of the LGBT rights movement.

In those thousand years the evolution of government, self-government of the people, by the people and for the people, may well have become something far different than originally envisioned in 1776, or in the intervening period up to our time. Whatever transpires in this millennium, July 4th will always remain a day of historical change for the human race that began with a declaration of Independence from tyranny…

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for an oppressed minority to declare for themselves the full rights and responsibilities that the laws of reason, nature, and natures God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to demand as such…