I believe equal rights means everyone. I have seen many cases where this is not the case in this country. The main group on the leading edge of this effort right now is the LGBT  (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) community. The numbers of cases right now that exist show that equal rights have not yet been achieved in this country. One of the fundamental rights which I believe falls under “The pursuit of happiness” is the ability to get married and have that union recognized as it applies to insurance, support, medical care, dependants, etc. I believe that any two people should be able to get married and their union would carry the same weight as any other two people.
Click here to see my propsed law to handle Marriage and Civil Unions.

Another area where I would like to see change is in the designation of a minor. I have known 12-year-old people who were more mature that some 30+-year-old people I know now. I do not agree with the arbitrary designation of 18 or 21 as the magic time when a minor becomes an adult. There are certain actions that allow a mature minor to be recognized as an adult and I would like to enhance those actions. In general any minor should be able to take an “Emancipation Exam” and if they can pass it they can be classified as an adult. In addition there should be some automatic triggers in place. The main one being “If you are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to have the rights of an adult”, hence military service emancipates a minor.

I also believe many areas where equal rights have been sought for years still have a long way to go. I still see instances of discrimination against ethnic minorities and women. I have intentionally not mentioned religion here. I do believe in freedom of religion, however the sad fact is that organized religion is behind most of the discrimination we still have to deal with in society today. The entire religion issues is much bigger and that is why I speak to it in it’s own section.

Recently I have also been thinking about the concept of a Meta Citizen. Our culture supports the efforts of profit seekers who intentionally will use people from other countries to do jobs in the United States in order to pay them less money. Since our culture supports this (either by insufficient funding for immigration law enforcement or the lack of willingness between American citizens to reach an agreement on doing the work) these foreign citizens have become part of our economy and hence part citizens (based on the Estoppel concept). I believe that the problem should be a significant contributor to the solution, hence, when a member of an industry is found guilty of participating in this type of action, the perpetrator and the industry should be liable for providing meta-citizen support to the people they bring into the country. This would include standard employee benefits like medical care and retroactive fair pay. This seems logically just since unless you are an American Indian your line immigrated to this country too.