By Al Gore

(Former Vice President Al Gore, who previously supported the Defense of Marriage Act and civil unions, was the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Campaign Gala on March 25, 2006, at the Century Plaza Hotel. This is an excerpt of his speech.)

Abraham Lincoln once said, "I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad, and that is my religion." As a Christian, I was taught at an early age that the single most important departure in Christianity from the Judeo-Christian tradition as a whole was embodied in the simple teaching -- God is Love.

We're told that there are many kinds of love -- but I thought of that when I looked at the amazing controversy and varied reactions to that extraordinary period of time in Northern California when the marriage ceremonies were conducted at [San Francisco] City Hall. One couple after another. And some reacted with hatred and anger. What I saw that was just overwhelming was the love, the joy, the purity of the excitement that that love was being honored.

It is that love, after all, that is at the heart of why everybody is here. That is what must be honored and respected. Your right to fall in love with who you fall in love with. And your right to expect that that will be recognized with the same dignity and honor that love is recognized for other couples. Love is transcendent and fulfilling and powerful and any force on earth that endeavors to make you feel that you should be ashamed for feeling genuine, deep love for another of your choosing is a form of oppression.

Thomas Jefferson said, "I have sworn on the honor of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Any force that tries to make you feel shame for being who you are, and loving who you love, is a form of tyranny over your mind. And it must be rejected, resisted, and defeated.

Much has been made of the second simple truth -- the first being that love ... that transcendent feeling is at the center of all the debates. The second simple fact is that -- it's been mentioned here -- is that when your fellow Americans come to know you for who you are, everything changes. But the so-called Catch 22 that discrimination and oppression put you in, is that the law requires gays and lesbians in the military or in job settings where they have no protection or in other settings where discrimination is rampant -- if the law and the culture of society requires you to be closed and secret and inauthentic and to pretend that you are not who you are, then you are not allowed to use your basic humanity to change the minds and hearts of those around you. You must have the right to be who you are, just as I have the right to be who I am.

As I was on the way here, I reflected on why is there so much controversy about the question of equality for gays and lesbians. Why? This fight has been so long and so hard for something that is so simple and so right.

President Harry Truman once said in the White House, "I spend 95 percent of my time trying to persuade people to do what they ought to be doing in their own best interest anyway. And the Human Rights Campaign has the right to say the same thing. After all, for God's sake, you're asking for monogamy and military service. Is that too much to ask for? You're asking for the simple right to be who you are and to be free from intimidation and persecution and discrimination and injustice designed to make you hide from who you really are. You're asking to make your life alongside the person you fall in love with. You're asking for the right to have full and equal recognition for that relationship and to form a life-long bond. That's not too much to ask for. You're asking for the right to fight for our country and if necessary, to die for our country. That's not too much to ask. You're asking as Americans for individual dignity and that's not too much to ask. This cause, this vision of what is right and what is just seems controversial because it does trigger a vulnerability to those fears that are continually inspiring.

[A] future generation will look back and truly wonder how this could have happened [this controversy], just as we look back and wonder how some of the strange practices that embody such horrific injustice in ages past but never have been tolerated -- they will look back at this period of time and feel puzzled and they will see and understand that the vision that has brought all of us here inspires a passionate devotion to justice and necessary change and the feeling of camaraderie among us all.

Teilhard de Chardin, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, wrote this: "There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of a friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe."

There is that feeling here. You know that what you are engaged in is the furtherance of a vision that is true and just and it does require the evolution of consciousness along a pathway that is a logical extension of what the United States of America has always promised to humankind. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. And the United States of America will, at some point say -- what you are asking is what you shall receive.