It is an honor to be here today to represent the Central Florida Freethought Community and your atheist, agnostic, humanist, and other non-religious constituents. Nevertheless, I hope my comments will resonate with every resident.
As you are well aware, Orange County’s population is very diverse containing a wide variety or ethnicities, beliefs, cultures, gender identities, financial statuses, and other qualities. It is these differences help make us a vibrant, interesting, and growing community.
But it is our similarities, our hopes and dreams, our love for our friends and family, our desire to build a better future for our children, our common humanity that bring us together and allows us to cooperate to improve the lives of all our citizens.
Each one of you, by your commitment of time, energy and resources, helps to make this vision real. We have a bright future ahead of us in Orange County, individually and together as a county united. And we are counting on your abilities and integrity to lead us to that future.
May your decisions and actions today and every day be guided by our common goals, by a sensitivity to our differences, and by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King who said: “The time is always right to do what is right.”
Joseph Richardson