We Must Save the 14th Amendment

Section one of the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution reads as follows:
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All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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Not surprisingly, the recent pro-gay court decisions in the federal courts have all relied on the equal protection guaranties found in this language as the basis for striking down Prop. 8 and portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Obviously, this reality makes it important to the LGBT community that the elements of the far right not be allowed to attempt to amend this important provision to the U. S. Constitution.

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But gays are not the only ones at risk if the Tea Party crowd, Christianists and white supremacists are allowed to have their way and either repeal or severely modify this incredibly important constitutional provision. Virtually EVERY minority would be put at risk without the protections afforded by the equal protection and due process provisions 14th Amendment. Of equal importance are the rights of citizenship it grants to all those born in this nation. Since the nation's beginnings being born in the USA - regardless of whether or not codified - being born here (except in the case of slaves and American Indians prior to the 14th Amendment's addition to the Constitution) granted citizenship. This long standing right could be radically altered if anti-immigrant activists, white supremacists and GOP members of Congress were to succeed in pushing a proposal to end this citizenship by birth. The obvious goal? To strip citizenship from mostly Hispanic born in the county to unnaturalized parents. Such proposals ought to to scare the Hell out of rational people. An op-ed in The Advocate looks at this topic and the faulty history of those seeking to sully the 14th Amendment. Here are some details:
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Gay people have a real interest in fighting the effort to strip birthright citizenship from the 14th amendment, says Immigration Equality executive director Rachel B. Tiven.
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Don’t know much about history, do they? That’s a sad statement to make about the U.S. Congress, but evidently a true one, given the recent pile-on of Republican senators calling for repeal — or “investigation” — of birthright citizenship. Senate majority leader Harry Reid noted that his colleagues have “either taken leave of their senses or their principles.” In fact, they may have taken leave of both, as their ridiculous, racist campaign betrays a basic misunderstanding of American history and of the Constitution.
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Before the Civil War, there was no definition of American citizenship. Slaves were not citizens, and women’s citizenship was tenuous at best. A woman who married a foreign national could be stripped of her citizenship, and of course, women, slaves, and most nonwhites could not vote. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the U.S. Constitution, as originally ratified, defined who was an American citizen or how to become one. The Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision — which brought pre-Civil War tensions closer to a boil by holding that Congress could not prohibit slavery in federal territory — reaffirmed that “Negroes” were not and could not be citizens.
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The Fourteenth Amendment was the centerpiece of Reconstruction, and it finally provided the United States with a definition of who exactly was a citizen. Its very first words read: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
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Reread that sentence and ask yourself, Without it, who would be an American? Would I? On what basis? In a nation where 98% of us are here as the result of immigration at some point in time, who among us has been here “long enough”? Who gets to decide?
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LGBT people should find this particularly disgusting. At Immigration Equality, we hear every day from people who face double discrimination: because they are immigrants and simultaneously because they are also lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
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Those dual lines of attack are no coincidence: The very same people who are leading the charge to strip citizenship from the children of immigrants are those who have long led the charge to strip the rights of full citizenship from LGBT people. On the latter front, their crusades are beginning to falter, with historic judicial and legislative victories affirming the rights of LGBT people. Sadly, politicians desperate for a scapegoat in an era of recession and war are attacking not only the newest citizens, they are attacking our precious Constitution.
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Personally, I'd like to see more individuals and politicians go on the attack against the GOP white supremacists like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. They took a oath to uphold and support the U. S. Constitution and now they want to gut one of it's most important provisions. If they want to go on a campaign against the Constitution, fine, but they need to resign from office in order to do so.