"Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents... pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan." A braham Lincoln

Fresh on the heels of hope resurrected, on what so many see as a step in the right direction, we still find the justification to limit others.  While we wave a flag of freedom as the glass wall is shattered and all who were once kept on the other side merely peeping in under the impression that they, too, had access – impression now turned reality - certain limits remain justified.

So often we celebrate what directly affects us and cling to and support barriers to those things that do not.  We justify and find reasonable all that “has nothing to do with us” while crying out against personal injustice and celebrating from the rooftops when those injustices have at last been remedied.  Anything or anyone that keeps us out is, of course, an obviously justified outrage.

Yet, as long as anyone remains in the same struggle, there is still injustice.  Just because one has been released doesn’t release the institution from the err of its ways.  Why demolish the Bastille?  It had already been stormed, the heads of the governor and others paraded on skewers, ownership changed…  Wasn’t it enough that they had put an end to the injustice of the Bastille?  Why completely destroy it, erase it from physical existence?

Being who I am, I share in the promise of change and hope.  I am hopeful.  However, I cannot let optimism overshadow an equally important feeling of disappointment.  As a believer in commitment, in family, in creating homes with one partner to whom you commit yourself in totality to in every and all things, I am saddened that despite a shared moral and ethical standard of "family," in the eyes of many, it simply doesn't matter.  In this case, limitation is justified, and why?  Religious grounds?  These same grounds kept the Southern Baptist Convention from apologizing for its "racist past ... and defense of slavery … [until 1995] …  Although Southern Baptists have condemned racism in the past, this was the first time the predominantly white convention had dealt specifically with the issue of slavery” ( Christian Century, July 20, 1995).

Limitations to access and equality, regardless of whether they apply directly to us or not, remain, in and of themselves, wrong.  To fight for and celebrate a moment of liberation and at the same time impose limitations and overturn freedoms for others in a simultaneous motion is hypocrisy in its ugliest form.

But as long as we have ours, it’s okay for us to keep them from getting theirs.  After all, if we let them have access, then what will be left to for us to exclude anyone from?