I disagree. What happened in this case is that a vote was used specifically to deny an entire class of citizens a set of rights, not based on things that they had DONE but based on who they ARE.
By your logic, it would be legal for, say, the Christian population of the United States to vote to deny marriage rights to Jews based soley on their being non-Christian -- which would happen IF we lived in a direct democracy and not a republic.
The courts exist, in part, to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen and to prevent the "tyranny of the majority" from holding sway. This isn't new stuff, it goes back at least to the founding of the United States and was discussed in Federalist Paper #10. (I'm not an historian, but I'm sure there are earlier citations of the principle that someone can quote.
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Re: "For today, at least, we win. May it be so every day until the battle is over"
Date: 2010-08-04 10:08 pm (UTC)By your logic, it would be legal for, say, the Christian population of the United States to vote to deny marriage rights to Jews based soley on their being non-Christian -- which would happen IF we lived in a direct democracy and not a republic.
The courts exist, in part, to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen and to prevent the "tyranny of the majority" from holding sway. This isn't new stuff, it goes back at least to the founding of the United States and was discussed in Federalist Paper #10. (I'm not an historian, but I'm sure there are earlier citations of the principle that someone can quote.
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