A week that started on the heels of a horrible reminder that there are still many ignorant, backward and racist people among who, some are willing to murder and terrorize, went on to become what history may well declare to be the turning point in recent American history.
The brutal murders of those innocent parishioners started a movement to sweep the last vestiges of Confederate iconography and ensure that the Civil War is finally and truly gone with the wind. Hopefully this will continue to build momentum until every last battle flag is removed from officially sanctioned property, until every statue and monument in our government buildings, squares and parks is either removed or revised with a plaque that tells the FULL truth about every one of those traitors. That every boulevard, avenue, street and alley named after those who fought to defend slavery is renamed (hopefully after a hero of civil rights). Until every single portrait, stained glass and any other item celebrating those who took up arms against our country for no other reason but to preserve the original sin of our nation is finally made right.
Then on Thursday two major decisions came down from the Supreme Court.
One ensures that the Fair Housing Act is not dismantled. This important legislation has been a bulwark in making sure that "In the Sale and Rental of Housing: No one may take any of the following actions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap"
Then The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (I will never stop calling it Obamacare) was upheld for the second and I dare say the last time, by a wide margin. So now millions of people can rest assured that they will have access to health insurance. The long road to making this possible has been one filled with the worst rancor and invective against our President based on nothing but paranoid delusion, but well-funded by the darker interests. One of the (many) great accomplishments and now a permanent part of the legacy of one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, is now secure.
And finally today, marriage equality has become the law of the land.
"It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage," Justice Kennedy said of the couples challenging state bans on same-sex marriage. "Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
On the very day that the victims of the slaughter that brought many of us to the point of despair that our nation would never be able to free itself from its racist, bigoted past, while the families are still busy eulogizing and burying their loved ones (our hearts are with you) the country is proving that the promise made in the Declaration of Independence "that all Men are created equal" is now not only a beautiful sentiment, but that a revised (all PEOPLE) version of that promise, is now the LAW.
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