"EQUALITY!" That declaration, from a tweet by pop singer Adam Lambert, was among the many enthusiastic reactions from musicians Friday in response to the Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry in the United States.
On paper, we Americans make sweeping pronouncements about equality, from the Declaration of Independence's promise that "all men are created equal" to our constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee that all persons are entitled to the "equal protection" of the laws.
Lincoln's appeal to the "self-evident truth" of equality in the Declaration of Independence provided the moral touchstone of the American republic.
"THE conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote," the Supreme Court ruled almost a half-century ago.
In citing Thomas Jefferson's opening words on equality from the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Obama also broke the mold; African-American politicians have not cited those words without sarcasm and qualification for many years, if ever.
In his "I Have a Dream" speech, King also refers to the guarantee of equality in the Declaration of Independence as a "promissory note" that turned out to be a "bad check" for the black population.
The political equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence rests on the empirical fact of natural human equality.
"The greatest statement of equality is in the Declaration of Independence, written by a slaveholder," Ginsburg replied.
President Bush called the A.D.A. "the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities," and, allaying concerns that it would put a litigious yoke on the private sector, he framed it as sound conservative policy.
Late in 1926, at the Imperial Conference in London, King's was probably the determining voice in securing the declaration of equality of status of the self-governing nations of the empire, thereafter styled the Commonwealth.
