Democracy And Same-Sex Marriage

by Jeff Jacoby - November 16th, 2006 - Townhall.com

Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was celebrating Arizona’s defeat of a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

"It is always wrong to put basic rights up for a popular vote," he said, "and it is nearly impossible for any minority to protect itself when that happens. But today in Arizona the impossible happened."

[snip]

"Civil rights should never be determined by a majority of voters," it declared. "Ballot questions are blunt instruments, lacking the delicacy of legislation."

It is hard to say which is sadder: the contempt for ordinary Americans that such comments reflect, or the ignorance of American history underlying them.

It is however refelctive of the underlying attitude that has replaced the "rule of law" with the "rule of judges". The Democratic Party has become the most undemocratic institution and force in America today. It is one reason that politics has become so confrontational.

It is also one reason that our courts have become so corrupt. When defense of society gets replaced with defense of the trial lawyers right to make millions from suing anyone who is "unpopular" and making them pay for being "unpopular", corruption is the end result.

Today our courts reflect the "rule of judges". This must end.

However it is difficult to believe that it will end until we can get more people to accept the reality that our courts are corrupt.

Here are some additional quotes from the article that more people need to be aware of:

The 14th Amendment -- approved by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1868 -- had guaranteed equality and due process to blacks and whites alike. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had barred discrimination in public accommodations. But the Supreme Court had gutted those protections -- for example in 1896, when it authorized streetcar segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. It wasn't democracy that failed black Americans during the long decades of Jim Crow. It was a judiciary unwilling to protect the equality that the democratic process had guaranteed.

This is not the popular view of our court system. Blacks in America will not accept that a larger percentage of Repubicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights bill than Democrats. Blacks in America will not accept that they have won more of their rights from well intentioned and moral whites voting democratically than they have won from the courts.

This is a serious problem. It is difficult to fix problems when people do not understand truth. My frustration is that Republicans are as likely as Democrats to insist we have a good court system. Nothing in its history defends this. We have one of the most corrupt court systems in the world, and we need to make sure more people understand this.