On the recordNovember 7, 2013
I thank my colleague who preceded me who has summarized the bipartisan collaboration to bring this bill to this point that we will be voting on in just a few minutes. No one has done more than she to advance this conversation over many years. I thank the Senator from Maine for those incredible efforts on behalf of ending discrimination and advancing liberty and opportunity. Today the Senate will vote to break the chains of discrimination that hold back millions of LGBT Americans from the full promise of liberty-- liberty, that freedom to participate fully in our society, in the public square to the voting booth, to the school, to the workplace; liberty, that quality deeply rooted in our national journey and embedded in our Declaration of Independence `` . . . 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;'' liberty, the declared mission of our Nation in the preamble to the Constitution: We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish a Constitution of the United States of America.…





