Joel Pinzon loves America and can't wait for his buzzcut.

Eric Self longs to slog with infantrymen, but prefers to wait and see who wins the White House.

Alonna Smith bleeds Army green and can't understand why more Americans aren't waving the flag.

The three are graduating high- school seniors, among the thousands in Florida's class of 2004 expected to sacrifice their newly minted freedom to serve and protect the freedoms of U.S. citizens. Ask graduates why they would gamble lives of promise for the uncertainties of war, and they offer a date: Sept. 11.

For many, the attack only added fuel to something already burning inside: an old-fashioned sense of service, honor and duty.

'I wanted to be like them'

Joel Pinzon's room is the typical teenager haunt -- an obstacle course of clutter. However, three posters are taped neatly to his walls.

Two tout the Marines. The other features Marvel Comics' constellation of superheroes, with Spider-Man grabbing star billing.

"I don't think being a hero is all glory and fame," says Joel, 17, of Apopka. "I think it's more doing what you can, helping, facing what you need to face in the wake of odds and obstacles. That's what I love about Spider-Man. He's not a glory hound."

That Joel sees similarities between the webhead and jarheads isn't surprising.

Two years after he and his mother had settled in Homestead, about seven years after Luz Alvarez had immigrated from Mexico longing for a brighter life, Hurricane Andrew blew down their modest dreams. Joel, just 5 years old, watched men in camouflage uniforms tool around in Humvees, delivering food and hope.

"I played with little green [Army] men, bam-bam," he says. "To see them actually there, live and in person, it stuck in my head. I wanted to be like them, wanted to help, to be a hero."

Alvarez encouraged her son: You should be a Marine. They're the best.

Joel took her words to heart. When the family moved to Apopka, he joined the Apopka High ROTC, a Marine unit. He read books on the Vietnam War. Watched Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Prepared for boot camp.

Then came 9-11, and a heightened passion to serve.

"Not for revenge," Joel says. "It made me want to be a Marine more, to protect the country, uphold the motherland, protect the Constitution."

Even through invasion?

"We are a superpower, and we need to take matters into our own hands, sometimes," he says. "The world is like a kid, and the U.S. is the mom or dad. [We] have to lecture the kids and put kids in their places and punish kids." His mother, who once encouraged Joel's march into the military, now trembles at the prospect.

"When I see the news, what happens in Iraq, what happens to the soldiers, I say, 'No,'" Alvarez says. But never aloud.

On June 7, Joel ships out to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp. News of his plans garnered almost universal response from friends:

Are you crazy?

As Joel sees it, serving his country is the only sane move.

"War or not, to me, there's no excuse -- if you live here, you should be willing to fight for it, willing to defend it."

A leader in waiting

When Eric Self isn't battling with virtual Renaissance swordsmen on his PC, he's surfing the TV news for dispatches from Iraq -- and the latest comments from John Kerry.

When Kerry talks, Eric listens. Because the candidate's words possess power over Eric's first major life move.

"I'm not too confident with Kerry's decision-making," says Eric, 18, of Orlando. "I really believe in the way Bush has been handling the war on terrorism."

Should the president hold onto the White House, Eric intends to enlist in either the Army or Marines. Should Kerry win, he'll regroup.

"I'm not sure what Kerry has up his sleeve," he says. "If he decides that he's going to pull everything out, I don't feel like I want to be a part of that, so I'm waiting."

For Eric, strong, decisive leadership is everything. Even as a freshman at Apopka High, Eric brought a take-charge attitude to his duties as a ROTC squad leader.

He expects no less from the country's leaders And he feels Bush has been unfairly skewered.

"People forget that in the '80s, [Saddam Hussein] was killing his own people like crazy. The people who are saying we don't have a reason for being over there, I don't think that they are looking at the true mission, which was taking him out of power. Taking out this evil dictator is not something you think about -- you do it."

Should he enlist, Eric wants to see action with the infantry. "I could be up front, and see the result of what I'm doing," he says, "helping the cause."

The prospect of serving in harm's way "scares me a little bit," he concedes, but not as much as how his family would bear the loss. It all hit home with the April death of fellow Apopkan Jason Dwelley. His sacrifice in Iraq gave Eric pause. But just a pause.

"I don't think there's very much of anything -- except for Kerry -- that stands in my way of going into military." He quickly reloads. "Or my mother."

Putting her life on the line

Ordinarily a past of playing with Barbies is something a soldier would file under the heading, "Don't ask, Don't tell."

But Alonna Smith readily admits: "I was a Barbie girl."

Her fascination with the doll gave way to an obsession with the Army after the ROTC brought a recruiting pitch to Sanford Middle School. Later, watching Saving Private Ryan sealed the deal.

"I thought if people could do that," says Alonna, 18, of Sanford. "I should give back to my country."

Soon Barbie was evicted from her dream house. Alonna plastered her walls with Army posters and martial poems. As a freshman, she marched into Seminole High and joined the Air Force Junior ROTC. As a sophomore, she burned as she sat in her second-period class watching the images of the Twin Towers aflame.

"I wanted to do something about it," she says, "but all I could really do was sit and watch the footage."

So she did what she could, ratcheting up her sense of purpose. By her junior year, she was promoted first to personnel officer, and later to squadron commander. When American troops stormed Iraq, her patriotism soared. It hasn't waned with the toll of soldiers or the damning photos of prisoner mistreatment.

"It kind of makes me mad that they [Iraqis] think all Americans are like that," she says, her tone sharpening. "There are soldiers doing their best to help the Iraqi people."

What puzzles her most is a prevailing blasé attitude. Although Alonna doesn't expect everyone to wrap themselves in the flag, those even unwilling to salute that for which it stands torques her.

"A lot of kids don't stand for the Pledge [of Allegiance]," she says. "It aggravates me because I know I'm going to serve this country and serve people that don't care. If they understood their freedoms, and where they come from, they wouldn't take them for granted."

Alonna's yearbook brims with messages of pride and support. At home, however, digesting the Army has been a gradual process for her mom.

"When she first started talking about it about three years ago, I said, 'No, this is not where my daughter needs to go," says Marcinda Smith, 39. "But the more you saw her dedication to the ROTC program I realized this was something deep inside her." The test is about to begin. Alonna graduates Wednesday, and on June 15 she leaves for boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

Until then, she is training to trim her mile-run time, and cherishing family time.

"I am worried about getting killed, if I get sent over there," Alonna says of Iraq. "Everybody who gets sent over there is afraid they're going to get killed, whether they're willing to admit it or not. That's what's expected when you join the military. If I die, I die doing something I want to do."

The Constitution of the United States, as well as state constitutions, is designed basically to do two things: Limit the scope and power of the government, and grant and extend rights to individuals.

Civil unions, implemented successfully in Vermont, addressed one small aspect of the problem, which is that heterosexual couples can and do have benefits, rights, and responsibilities granted to them under a state-recognized contract that gay and lesbian couples, whatever their level of commitment or willingness to enter that contract, do not have.

The importance of marriage lies in how it holds a society together and builds children into healthy and productive citizens. That institution has been in decline and the damage to future generations is already beginning to show.

Even the Fourteenth Amendment, the false front of this argument does not confer rights, but prohibits the government from removing rights individuals already have.

"...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Well, no. The law is pretty clear: you can't marry someone of the same sex. There is no separation here. Everyone is prohibited equally; no one is given preference. Segregation? Hardly. Bigotry? Not part of my consideration.

You know, it's not enough that my opponent barely took this debate seriously enough to answer the topic in more than one-word answers. When he did decide to answer, he cut and pasted most of a post he wrote nearly three months ago to serve as his opening argument. He gussied it up a bit by calling me a segregationist and when I chafed (and wouldn't you?) he responded by saying that I wasn't a segregationist, merely that I was exactly like one.

That's the sort of serious thought and consideration I'm learning to expect from him in this debate. I expected better considering the valuable assistance he's gotten in the comment sections of our posts thus far. He might have done better cutting and pasting from those instead of what he's foisting on us now.

It's unfortunate for us that when he does get around to attempting a rebuttal, he has all sorts of problems with basic facts, reading what I've written, and keeping glaring fallacies out of his arguments.

Let us imagine that our country is as my opponent says it is. Imagine that the legislatures of all 50 states, the Congress, the Democratic challenger for President, his chief opponent, and over three quarters of the people of the country - your friends, family, and neighbors all willingly and intentionally choose to be just like segregationists and want to maintain bigotry.