Leo Sadovy: No second-class citizens anymore

I don’t care who anyone hates in the privacy of their own church – that’s what the First Amendment is there to protect – but in the public sphere there is no room for separate but equal. Separate is never equal, a principle the Supreme Court affirmed over 60 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education – a universal definition of what it means to have a “right” to something.

However, separate and unequal is what Republican states like Texas and North Carolina are attempting to impose when it comes to their so-called “religious liberty” laws that exempt government employees from doing their jobs, allowing them to treat residents unequally.

Refusing to perform appointed duties to marry anyone and everyone who has a right to be married is to deny them the very thing the court just affirmed as a fundamental right.

We are in the second decade of the 21st century, and it is past time for conservatives to grow up and stop acting as if the 20th century never happened.

The First Amendment was never meant to permit the creation of second-class citizens. Not for race, not for gender and now not for sexual orientation, either.

This story was originally published July 11, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Leo Sadovy: No second-class citizens anymore."