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Once the final article is completed and turned, the teacher wants the draft checked, revised and any corrections made. This will require the Worksheet ( a sample is attached) to be filled in then the revisions made on the article and both papers can be turned in for the grade. I copied everything I could from the chapter to help you and that is attached too. Let me know if you have questions. I am making it for 9 days from now so that you will have some time to finish the article you are working on now and then start on this one. Please let me know if you have any questions.
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Explanation & Answer
Hahahahahha!!! It was here where I had to upload the files
Every constitution is the result of the time and needs to be analyzed in its context of
creation. The Independence was the direct outcome of the way the British Crown violated
our rights as Englishmen. But not all the Framers thought the same way. One line of
thinking said that the Constitution was complete without an explicit list of right because all
the rights were implicit in it, but the other line, the winning one, needed the reassurance of
the explicitly written rights, to be sure they won´t be violated again. With the addition of
the Bill of Rights and the ten first Amendments, the Constitution was approved. Those first
Amendments were written with the fresh memories of the Revolutionary war, and portray
the thoughts and the needs of the period.
After the Civil War, there was the necessity of changing the rules to adapt the Constitution
to the new type of society. So three Amendments were passed, called the Reconstruction
Amendment and helped with the reorganization of the Nation. 13th Amendment freed the
slaves and 15th Amendment granted the former slaves with the political rights
corresponding to every citizen. But the 14th Amendment was the instrument to define the
real meaning of the American citizenship. Inside its text, we find the definition of the
American citizen, the inalienable rights of life, freedom, privacy, and property, and the
principle of the equal protection of the laws.
Because of its complexity and the wide range of rights and liberties directly related to the
14th Amendment, it is one of the most mentioned Amendments in court rulings. The
definition of citizenship was used to avoid the outcomes of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The
Civil Rights cases created the first dissention in the history of the Supreme Court. But only
in the middle of the 20th century, the real power of the 14th Amendment could be seen. It
went where no other law dared to go. Thanks to the 14th Amendment, interracial marriage is
no longer forbidden, birth control pill can be provided both for married and unmarried
women, abortion is a matter of private decision of the woman, homosexual intercourse isn´t
illegal, same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, and same-sex couples have the same
benefits as their heterosexual counterparts.
But there was another right to grant to the LBTG community, which was denied based on
biases and prejudices, the right to adopt children and start a family. Regardless the ruling of
the Federal Supreme Court in "Obergefell v. Hodges”, where the majority considered that
“judicial precedent has held that the right to marry is a fundamental liberty because it is
inherent to the concept of individual autonomy, it protects the most intimate association
between two people, it safeguards children and families by according legal recognition to
building a home and raising children, and it has historically been recognized as the
keystone of social order.” (“Obergefell v. Hodges”) there were several States where the
adoption of a child by a same-sex couple or an LGBT parent was banned. The last one was
Mississippi. Although Mississippi´s Supreme Court stated that the policies of the
Department of Human Services regarding the discrimination of prospective parents because
of their sexual orientation, as Judge Jordan III explicitly stated in his ruling, “violates the
Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.” (Bellemare) Like any other
controversial topic, some people went along with the new ruling and some other tried to put
all the excuses, precedents and clauses to stop LGBT people from becoming foster or
adoptive parents. Advocacy organizations know that their work hasn´t ended with the
lifting of the ban on same-sex adoptions because biases and prejudices are hard to die and
they are still looking for ways to prevent LGBT couples from receiving the deserved equal
treatment. Besides, “Adoption is one of the primary ways that parents who are LGBT create
families, whether through the public foster care system, a private agency, or simply a
second-parent adoption of a partner or spouse’s child.“ (Familyequality.org) There are bills
in several states giving the right to refuse to provide public or private service to LGBT
people because of conscience clauses, and judges, like Kentucky Family Court Judge
Nance, recused himself from hearing cases of adoption by same-sex couples because he
recognizes his own bias and prejudice against LGBT people. (Victor) Religious-affiliated
adoption agencies use the conscience clause to refuse to place children with qualified gay
or lesbian couples, even against the opinion of their parishes. (“Fortnight of Facts”)
14th Amendment, as a Reconstruction Amendment, still has much work to do, because
society evolves and changes, and the law must change in accordance. But conservative
sectors will always try to stop the evolution, and conscience clauses and other
discriminative legal tools are being passed in several districts. There is no end to the
reconstruction of our society, and the 14th Amendment will continue to help us to create an
equalitarian soci...
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