A Reminder To LGBT Leadership Of Importance of the First Amendment In Their History

One of the extreme ironies of American Catholic history happened in Colonial Maryland. Maryland was established in part to give a great degree of religious toleration to Catholics . Many dissident Protestants came to Maryland to take advantage of this state of affairs. Soon however the welcoming that these Catholics gave was turned on its head as these same folks played a part in disenfranchising Catholic Civil Rights in Maryland to a great degree.

 This dire situation can be seen by the distress of the Father of Charles Carroll of Carrollton . Charles Carroll of Carrollton of course was a Catholic Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Charles Carroll of Annapolis was perhaps the richest man in Colonial America at the time and had great influence. However the fact that Colonial Assembly would have to exempt him from various anti Catholic laws each year really started to grate on him. It was of such distress to him that he wrote his son studying abroad that he wanted to give up everything and start up again in what is now Arkansas. His son having faith in what he viewed as the unique emerging American experience that has happening in this British Possession happily for all of us opposed this move.

 Jonathan Rauch , who is Jewish and Gay ,  had an interesting post yesterday called The unknown Supreme Court decision that changed everything for gays .It is an example of how First Amendment rights of speech and association played a role in giving cvil rights to those that have various degrees of same sex attraction.

As they often say history repeats itself and those that benefited from Civil Rights gains then use their influence to deny others. The college campus is ground zero in this as can be seen just last week in the State of Colorado .

I say leadership of LGBT because I am not convinced how many actual LGBT folks are on board with all this. Just like I am not sure that many are fully on board by making those have objections to gay marriage have to service gay wedding ceremonies which also has compelled speech issues.

Anyway I thought a interesting article by Mr Rauch.