In Pursuit of Happiness

by Julia P. Stanley

"We hold these truths to be selfevident: that all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

This is a sentence, taken from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, written on July 4, 1776, 186 years ago. Noble words written by noble men, who felt that every man was entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We celebrate July 4th every year, but we have forgotten what these words mean. We have allowed these words to become hollow echoes representing nostalgic sentiment; we, to whom these words should have the most importance.

It is for this reason that today we find ourselves fighting for these unalienable rights, which are being denied us by those very individuals who are supposed to be the protectors of justice, the men elected by us to uphold the tenets of our Constitution.

Yet, who has failed? Our legislators have failed, to be sure, but we have failed ourselves by allowing them to take our rights from us in the first place, without a word of pro-

testation.

We, the homosexuals of America, have allowed our rights to be taken from us. We have sacrificed ourselves on society's altar, declaring before all men that we are criminal and morally incompetent, devoid of integrity.

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But now, we are crawling to our state legislatures, begging them to return to us those rights which we ourselves forfeited!

We go to psychiatrists, asking them to "cure" us, because we are "social misfits," when no one has the authority to determine who is a "misfit" and who is not.

We go to our religious leaders, admitting to them that we are sinful, evil and damned. We ask them to pray to their God for forgiveness of our sins, the sins of which they say we are guilty, and we passively agree with them, and say "Yes! We are damned!"

We have condemned ourselves. We have outlawed ourselves. We have made ourselves twisted and "sick." We have degraded and damned ourselves!

We have allowed ourselves to become society's sacrifice to the omnipotent gods of humanity; society's scapegoat. We went as the consenting victims, with our heads lowered in shame and contrition, delivered ourselves to the sacrificial knives of society.

We have allowed ourselves to become hunted like animals, by every political machine that aspires to power in our government; by every theology that claims to hold the key to the salvation of men's souls; and by every mediocre quack doctor who wants to write a book that will make him money. We have become "case histories" to all of these purveyors of

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