Legal system keeps majority at bay

When California’s Proposition 8 was instituted, denying the right to gay marriage by amending the state constitution, it had the support of 52 percent of voters.

Rule by the majority — that’s what America is based on, right?

When I learned this, I was horrified.

It wasn’t just that I thought this was a step backward for gay marriage, or that this was a surprisingly conservative trend for such a famously liberal state. But the idea that the rights of a minority population could be taken away by a majority vote shook me.

I’m not going to try to argue for gay marriage here — you’re either for it or against it, and I won’t change your mind.

But even people who think gay marriage is a sin should see that using the ballot box to ban it sets a dangerous precedent.

America is the land of the free, and we have constitutional protection to maintain that personal freedom. Protection for minority groups from the majority is written into the highest laws in the land.

If we can vote away one group’s right to marriage, where does it stop? Next we’ll be voting to outlaw interfaith marriages or inter-race marriages. We’ll be allowed to repeal laws protecting people who refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

We could take away freedom of speech or freedom of expression if we don’t like what someone says. If we don’t like the way someone prays — or the fact that someone chooses to not pray — we can get rid of their right to make that choice.

And then, when we vote away the basic constitutional rights of every minority in the country, we won’t have a true democracy where the people’s will trumps all. We’ll have something bordering on a totalitarian society where everyone must cede to the dominant will, and all personal freedom can be taken away.

That might seem extreme, but it could happen — slowly at first, so people don’t really realize it. But by the time enough has been taken away for people to feel the need to fight back, it will be too late.

When I learned that Prop 8 had been overturned by a U.S. District Court this past week, I was relieved.

I was a little saddened that the people of California couldn’t realize for themselves that it is inherently un-American to vote away the rights of a minority, but I was also glad to know someone was doing something to protect individual freedom.

It won’t stop here. I almost hope the case will make its way to the Supreme Court, because if it does, and if the Court decides it’s unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, what faster way is there to equality across the country?

There have been many, many Court decisions I’ve disagreed with, though some of them are now obsolete. But I was raised to trust the legal system to sort out inequality and fight injustice, and I have to keep trusting that it won’t allow the general populace to vote away a minority’s rights.

I have less trust in the general public than in the legal system.

And yet I can’t help but hope other people across the country will see what happened — and continues to happen — in California and will refuse to let this kind of injustice occur.


E-mail: hanns@indiana.edu