America…The Land of the “Free” The United States of America is well known to be the place for freedom. Living in America all your life you wouldn’t have anything positive to say about our government as a whole. We are living in The Land of the “Free” where we as people are not really free. We are not free as individuals to make mistakes and learn from them. They take away our constitutional right to vote after a felony conviction. We are not free to openly express our freedom of religion. Instead we are ostracized and limitations are still set even in our beliefs and values. We are also limited to decisions that we make within our personal lives through holy matrimony. I didn’t know that with freedom came restrictions. Almost every state in the United States bans prisoner’s right to vote. There are fourteen states that bar criminal offenders from voting even after they have completed their sentencing. There are 3.9 million adults of all races that are disenfranchised and the majorities are not in prison but are on probation or parole and have completed their sentence. Any felony can trigger a disenfranchisement. A first time drug offender can plead guilty to a petty drug charge and lose his right to vote for the rest of his life. Just because people make mistakes doesn’t give the government permission to make them political outcast because past mistakes they have made. There are only four states that permit inmates to vote and those states are Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, and Vermont. Ex-offenders can seek gubernational pardon to restore their voting rights but few have info or the resources needed to do so. America is a place with people of many different cultures, values, and beliefs that are expressed in various ways. Our freedom of religion is a constitutional right of the first amendment. This law prohibits the federal government from respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of that religion. Although there are laws set to treat us equal we still experience inequality. For example, Polygamy is a religion that honors marriage with multiple partners. The Federal Marriage Amendment limits marriage in the United States to unions of one man and one woman preventing polygamy. Freedom of religion is also associated with separation of church and state, which the Court hasn’t always interpreted the constitutional principle as meaning absolute separation of the government from all things religious. We soon realize that our government contradicts itself in many different ways and it becomes confusing. While discussing how our freedom of religion is taken from us we talked about the Federal Marriage Amendment which set limits in our religion and personal life. In the United States, civil marriage is governed by state law and each state is free to set the conditions for a valid marriage but