Following up the last post from my old blog on winning my vote, I'll republish this one on Prop 8 (which legalized gay marriage in California). I wrote a similar post for SwiftEconomics as well. Basically, liberalism has a weird contradiction where it's biggest victories (gay marriage, abortion, etc.) have been won antidemocratically. Whether these things are good or not, it kind of makes one wonder about both democracy and liberals' dedication to it. I should note, I had a bit of an anti-religious sentiment back then that I don't now. But I'll republish it as it was written nonetheless (minus the last part which just quoted another article). In the euphoria liberals having been feeling over the past week after Obama won the election and Democrats picked up several more seats in the House and Senate, there has been one sour note for them. That is the passing of proposition 8 in California. Prop 8 basically bans same-sex marriage and it does so in the biggest and one of the most liberal states in the union. Now I don't live in California and I am neither gay nor have any interest in getting married anytime soon. I do however agree with my liberal friends that Prop 8 is a ridiculous and unfair law. Of equal importance though, I feel I should weigh in on this issue because it elucidates a paradox within the standard liberal orthodoxy: namely that democracy is an infallible good. Democracy is good you say, well I agree, but only to a limited extent. There are certain rights we shouldn't be able to vote away from each other. We should remember that Hitler came to power in a democracy (Weimar Republic), the Jim Crow laws were kept in place for 100 years with out being overturned by vote, George Bush was reelected in 2004 and Saddam Hussein got 100% of the popular vote (OK that one's not really fair). Detractors we'll surely say that democracy isn't perfect but it is still good, as Winston Churchill said "democracy is the absolute worst type of government, aside by every other one." So I guess we just have to live with democracy's imperfections, right? Well not really, because the United States is not a democracy! Yes you read that right and I am not inferring it's a fascist dictatorship (my apologies to any Noam Chomsky fans out there). The United States is a Constitutional Republic. The Constitutional part obviously implies the Constitution, or namely a strict set of rules our government must be held to. Separation of powers is explicit in that to prevent a consolidation of the monopoly (government), which interprets said document. The Republic part insinuates federalism, or state rights. Now obviously this isn't perfect either as Jim Crow was justified with state rights. But we need not go to any extreme; the federal government can (under the 14th Ammendment) and should prevent the states from blatantly taking people's rights away. So we need all four (democracy, federalism, a constitution and separation of powers) to have a just government. Unbridled democracy alone is simply mob rule, the power of the 51% to take away the rights of the 49%. It’s what Thomas Jefferson referred to as "two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner" while liberty was "a well armed lamb protesting the vote." James Madison was more explicit: "The prescriptions in favor of liberty, ought to be levelled against that quarter where the greatest danger lies, namely, that which possesses the highest prerogative of power: But this [is] not found in either the executive or legislative departments of government, but in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority." Neo-socialists like Howard Zinn claim Madison was trying to make sure the rich minority could exploit the poor masses, but that had nothing to do with it. Although slavery was allowed (against the wishes of most founding fathers), the idea was that no party, political orthodoxy, religion or anything else could come to dominate the country and that people who held opposing views would be free from the tyranny of the majority. This is why our 1st amendment isn't up for vote. We can't vote away free speech (although politicians through out our history have tried to do it in an underhanded way).
So in essence what Prop 8 did was allowed the majority of Californians to vote away the rights of the minority. This is what the Federal Constitution and every State Constitution is meant to prevent. What angers me here is not so much that Prop 8 passed, but that we would even be allowed to vote on such a thing. Hell, marriage wasn't even a state regulated institution until about 100 years ago when the government got into it (and makes us pay them to get married). Well, there's the legal, constitutional argument, how about the moral argument. Well first off, it shouldn't matter. Why does someone else getting married, probably a stranger, matter to you at all? Is it to maintain the institutions traditions? Well, just 40 years ago interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states, so that can't be it. OK, so the Bible says "13If a man also lie with man, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination." Well be careful, the Bible also says "18-21 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father... all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die." Are you really going to feel good about enforcing that one? All Christians need to either accept that the Old Testament is a bit anachronistic and there's a lot of allegory in there or you are not even close to living a Christian life and should certainly not be casting the first stone!
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