Ignore That Bigot Behind the Curtain!
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Ace Pryhill has a must-read post regarding this story on anti-gay ballot initiatives:
Ace's insightful reply:
Do give the whole post a read -- outstanding stuff.
By contrast, my response to the whole "majority opinion" cop-out is best summed up in what I call the "Greatest Footnote Ever Told"...
In other words, a government should be judged not by how well it recognizes majority rule, but rather by how well it recognizes majority rule's potential threat to the minority.
Every law school graduate has read that quote at some point during their education. Too bad so many are so willing to so easily forget it.
Noting that just a few weeks ago, Missouri voters approved, with a landslide 71 percent of the vote, a state constitutional amendment to limit marriage to one man and one woman, Santorum said, “when the public has a chance to get behind the curtain of the ballot box, it’s a very different thing than what a lot of the media elites would have you believe as to where America is on this issue.”
Ace's insightful reply:
That statement may be true, but a deeper truth is that when the public has a chance to get behind the curtain of the ballot box, it's much easier to express prejudice.
Why is it Klan members, who celebrate their racial pride, don hoods that conceal their identity? Why is it when a troll leaves an inflammatory comment on a blog, they do so anonymously or leave a fake email address? Why do bank robbers wear masks during their heists? The answer to all of these is because these people don't want to be accountable for their actions. They don't want their name or image associated with the bigoted, shameful, controversial, and/or illegal act they committed. It's cowardice.
Do give the whole post a read -- outstanding stuff.
By contrast, my response to the whole "majority opinion" cop-out is best summed up in what I call the "Greatest Footnote Ever Told"...
Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statues directed at particular religious...or national...or racial minorities; [or] whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry...
--Justice Harlan Stone, U.S. v Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144 (1938).
In other words, a government should be judged not by how well it recognizes majority rule, but rather by how well it recognizes majority rule's potential threat to the minority.
Every law school graduate has read that quote at some point during their education. Too bad so many are so willing to so easily forget it.
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Posted by KipEsquire on
5 September 2004
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