Mrrzy said:

"...stealing is against the law... as is lying under oath, and a host of other natural behaviors."

Stealing and lying are not natural behaviors. Natural behavior is behavior that tends to protect, nurture and grow one's well-being. Stealing is necessarily injurious both to perpetrator and victim. Lying is just stealing an advantage or hiding a disadvantage using words. It, too, is hurtful both to its actor and its intended target.

Several comments have been made that, while stated in a way I would not choose for myself, definitely expressed my opinion very well.

NOTHING should be required of the citizens of any free society (in order that its citizens might benefit from that society's wealth of resources) except that they contribute, by which action they will also benefit as the community is supported and shares its resources. Exam scores and college entrance applications and all are rubbish, again, as they take into consideration all sorts of facts and criteria that do not and cannot address the value of a person's life and their willingness to live so as to put that value on display and seek it out in their fellow travelers.

Take something like an automated machine at a fast-food restaurant. All things such as sanitation and employee competence being assumed to be equal for this analogy, it obviously does not make ANY difference whether the person operating that machine is gay, straight, Republican or uses or fits under any label that exists. All that matters is that two people, the employee and the consumer, are sharing space and are exchanging resources for the betterment of them both. One gets money, the other gets his JollyBurger or whatever. One produces what is necessary to contribute toward the food, the other is producing the food. The consumer, then, is himself a beneficiary of the same system of contribution and mutual benefit... he (fr'instance) has a job that he used to earn the money he is now trading for the food. All this, and the only requirement is that the willingness to exchange and the resources TO exchange are there.

If it doesn't matter what your orientation is when you are trained to operate a machine, why does said orientation matter when you need FMLA time for your loved one dying of cancer or AIDS?

One day, we will be free of both the fears of the ignorant fools who ruled this land by fear and corruption and we will rid ourselves of their idioms, too.