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"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue... whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated." John F. Kennedy

If polling has been confirmed as anything in recent years, it is as an ineffective means of gauging popular sentiment, which bodes ill for statistic junkies like me who get off on seeing row upon row of percentages and demographic tallies detailing anything from batting averages to health pandemics and constituent support for brainless political toadies. The results are usually depressing anyway, especially so for someone who is a firm believer that They will never tell the general public how bad it really is.

For instance, let's say Gallup released a poll indicating that 50% of people participating in a telephone survey said that gay marriage should remain illegal. One could conceivably imagine that the figure would approach 75% if the same cross-section of polled citizens were asked to put the pen to paper and actually draft a binding document in favor of legalizing the institution. Furthermore, a realist should probably assume that the same initial 50% opposed to same-sex unions also support ritual torture and execution of homosexuals as well as renewing the myriad anti-sodomy laws dating back to the 1700s that would effectively outlaw homosexual activity altogether. Don't kid yourself. The Supreme Court only just declared such laws unconstitutional with their decision regarding Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, and provided the opportunity, a good number of patriotic Americans would support Gerald Allen's proposed 2004 ban on gay arts.

Remember, folks. This is the same Land of the Free that had "colored" drinking fountains and bathrooms not so long ago. It is the same country that corralled every Japanese-American they could find and threw them into internment camps for the duration of World War II. There seems to be some inherent malfunction in the American brain unable to connect the very palpable definition of liberty with usage of the word itself. Our current civil rights crisis is no different. It too can be attributed to this faulty wiring and the strange, endemic notion in the United States that freedom is achieved only through its constant defense, a strategy that entails occupation, penetrative surveillance, social control, and constant war.

I can remember first coming into any sort of societal/political consciousness believing the bold

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