One-by-one, laws are being struck down by the courts. As they fall, voting power of the population falls as well. It turns out that you cannot vote to do certain things, and sometimes that’s a good thing. The laws banning gay marriage, or just marriage, as I call it, are being struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. The right of the people to vote does not outweigh the equal protection given to all of us via the 14th Amendment.

It’s a huge sense of entitlement that makes a person feel he has the right to dictate how two consenting adults conduct their lives.

As Americans, we often have a much-inflated ego that causes us to be too opinionated when we should really just shut our mouths.

Any two adults, no matter race or gender, should share the same rights as everyone else.

There are 19 states, including California, that have legal same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, it took a court decision for people in our community to be given the same right that heterosexual people enjoy just by being born.

We actually voted to ban these rights in 2008, a vote which the courts have since overturned.

As with California, court after court is striking down bans on same-sex marriage across the country.

The rest of the 31 states in the U.S. currently have a ban in place, but of those, 12 have had a court strike down the law as unconstitutional, although appeals are under way.

So that’s 19 states with legal same-sex marriage, 19 with a ban in place, and 12 with a ban that was struck down and awaiting appeal.

Though the tide is quickly changing in favor of same-sex marriage, it shouldn’t have taken court decisions to do so; we should have figured out this whole equal rights thing a long time ago.

Some things should not be decided by the people. Although Americans think they have the right to weigh in on anything, there are some things that the government needs to step in and tell us we cannot do.

If we were capable of doing all the right things, we wouldn’t need a government, and we’d just be a Utopian society. Easy, right? Sometimes the government has to be the parent that tells us when we’re wrong.

A big debate nationwide, and even worldwide, is the death penalty. Does the government have the right to execute its own people? There are very valid arguments on both sides.

When Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 and murdered 26 people, 20 of whom were children, it was extremely easy for us to say that he deserved to die for what he did.

Life shouldn’t be about personal gain, legacy or vengeance; life should be about bettering ourselves and our society. While it’s easy to say Adam Lanza would have deserved execution, we need to find it in ourselves to see that execution is a form of eye-for-an-eye justice.

French philosopher Albert Camus said, “Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.”

Many states have already abolished capital punishment. Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. Central District of California recently made a ruling that struck down the death penalty in California.

Although the decision is being appealed, Judge Carney wrote in his decision, “As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.”

It’s hard to argue with that.

The 8th Amendment guarantees that every citizen won’t be subject to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

A large number of people support the death penalty, but it’s time for the government to step in and parent us, telling us we’re wrong.

We cannot condone state-sanctioned murder. We need to be better than an angry mob wielding pitchforks that distribute street justice.

Just because there is paperwork involved in capital punishment, don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking it is a morally acceptable practice.

Capital punishment is merely a pretty bow wrapped around taking the life of people against their will; we have to be better than the people who commit the crime.

The challenge of life is to be better than those who have wronged us.