Democratic Party platform revealed: guns, marriage and women

The Democratic platform "Moving America Forward" was officially unveiled yesterday at the party's convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Some interesting tidbits:

Marriage equality: "We support the right of all families to have equal respect, responsibilities, and protections under the law. We support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples. We also support the freedom of churches and religious entities to decide how to administer marriage as a religious sacrament without government interference."

Gun rights: "We can focus on effective enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check system, and we can work together to enact commonsense improvements."

(Expectedly, a very lengthy segment on) women's rights: "Democrats support access to affordable family planning services, and President Obama and Democrats will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers."

More after the jump...

Full congressional representation for D.C:"Every citizen of the United States is entitled to equal citizenship rights, including the 638,000 residents of the nation’s capital who pay federal taxes without representation."

Statehood for Puerto Rico: "It is time for Puerto Rico to take the next step in the history of its status and its relationship to the rest of the United States."

Wall Street reform: "The failed policies of the past decade and hands-off approach toward the excesses of the financial industry helped create the deepest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. ... Mitt Romney and his allies in Congress believe that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down – the same approach that benefited a few, but crashed the economy, hurt the middle class, and contributed to soaring income inequality. They would roll back financial reform and let Wall Street write its own rules again."

Minimum wage: "Democrats believe that we must raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation. ... We reject the Republican budget plan that would force us to destroy the safety net in order to help the wealthiest avoid doing their fair share.

(Way down on the list) Environment: "President Obama has been a leader on this issue. We have developed historic fuel efficiency standards that will limit greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles for the first time in history, made unprecedented investments in clean energy, and proposed the first-ever carbon pollution limits for new fossil-fuel-fired power plants."

Read the full platform here.