Today I hold my head a bit higher as an American

With the historic rulings handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States I've had a bit of faith restored in this great experiment that is the United States of America.Today, as I'm sure you're quite well aware, the Supreme Court gutted DOMA and ruled California's Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional. In many parts of the country you now are (or will soon be) able to marry whoever you want -- expressing the ultimate in what it means to be human: to love someone.America, at it's very core, is about individual liberties. It's about personal freedoms. It is the embodiment that the government works for all of us, not the other way around. Finally, the federal government has gotten out of the business of taking away rights from a class of people and get back to granting rights and protecting the rights they should have had from the beginning.Today I can hold my head high.Today I can celebrate -- at least a bit -- with the LGBTQ community. Yet there is a long way to go until we can rest. There are many states, including Ohio -- where I came from, that have amended their constitutions or have laws on the books that similarly limit the freedoms of their residents.While we are not done, we as a people have taken a large step forward. A step towards acceptance. A step towards ending discrimination based solely on who someone is attracted to, on who someone is.Today I stand a bit prouder to be an American.