Majority rule is not unlimited. It is limited by what the government has the power to do. Consequently the majority cannot, in general, vote to seize the homes and accumulated savings of people. Leaving aside exceptional cases, government cannot mandate how parents how should raise their children. These kinds of power lie outside the scope of government in a free society.

Majority rule is also circumscribed by individual rights. But these are the rights clearly specified in the Constitution. A majority of citizens cannot prevent an individual from voting because voting is a basic right, as is the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and so on. The state is constitutionally prohibited from undermining these enumerated rights.

Now the high court of California has made gay marriage into a right that is immune from restriction by the majority of citizens in the state. A referendum outlawing gay marriage was passed with the support of the state's voters.  How, then, can a court invalidate the referendum and over-rule the will of the people? Basically, through a kind of legal fraud. The court has to pretend that there is a right to gay marriage even though it is nowhere evident in the state constitution. Read the constitution, hold it up to the light, squeeze lemon juice on it--you won't see a right to gay marriage in there. It is simply not an enumerated right, nor is it a right that can be clearly derived from other enumerated rights.

In the past, some politicians have allowed courts to do their dirty work when it comes to issues like abortion, pornography, prostitution and gay rights.  In this way, they can advance their permissive agenda without having to take political responsibility for voting against the values of a majority of voters.

I know that there are gays who desperately want gay marriage, because of the social legitimacy it confers on their relationships.  In a way I sympathize with them.  But at the same time I'm sad for constitutional democracy, which suffered a grievous blow at the hands of the California high court.  In overturning the California voters' ban on gay marriage, the state's high court argued that homosexuals are a special class, somewhat similar to blacks and women, and deserve special judicial scrutiny for the protection of their rights. At the same time the court insisted that gay marriage must be allowed because gays deserve, no less than anyone else, the equal protection of the laws.

This argument is dubious.  Blacks were slaves and suffered historical oppression in a way that neither women nor gays can match. So the idea that these groups are the "new blacks" is an insult to blacks. Besides, whether there is an innate disposition to homosexuality or not, it's hard to deny that homosexuality constitutes a choice and a lifestyle. Whatever the orientation, one still has to choose to act on it. By contrast, blacks and women don't have any choice because race and gender are not a lifestyle.

Now let's turn to the issue of equal protection. Clearly this means that people who are similarly situated should be treated in the same way. So men and women, blacks and whites, straight people and gays, all have the right to vote, the right to speak their mind, and the right to marry. States, acting through their representatives and reflecting the values of the voters, have the constitutional authority to define what marriage is. Traditionally marriage requires: a) two persons b) both of them adults of legal age c) unrelated to each other and d) one male and the other female. Now here are some interesting possibilities. A 10 year old demands the right to marry, charging that the age requirement discriminates against him. Or a fellow wants to marry his sister, contending that the incest prohibition violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Or a Muslim seeks four wives, asking why polygamy among multiple "consenting adults" should not be allowed the same legal status as the traditional two-person arrangement. In more imaginative scenarios, a fellow might want to know why the marriage definition is so species-specific. This guy wants to marry his dog on the grounds that "I love my dog and my dog loves me." Why don't all these people have valid equal protection claims under the constitution?

The point here isn't that gay marriage is indistinguishable from polygamy or child-marriage. Rather, it is that gay activists want to dislodge one of the definitions of marriage but retain all the others. They want to move one of the goal posts but not the rest. But how can one part of the marriage definition be discriminatory under the laws while the other parts are not? If the male-female requirement violates the equal protection clause, so must the other requirements which also exclude classes of people. If gays are a special category, why aren't Muslims and Mormons also a special category? It seems that gay activists want a form of "equal protection" for themselves but not for other groups.

Neither equal protection nor antidiscrimination is a real issue here. Judicial tyranny is the issue, making the pretense of having justice on its side.

Based on interviews with more than 35,000 American adults, this extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life details the religious makeup, religious beliefs and practices as well as social and political attitudes of the American public.

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country’s religious landscape.

This is not to suggest that Americans do not take religion seriously. The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey also shows that more than half of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, attend religious services regularly and pray daily. Furthermore, a plurality of adults who are affiliated with a religion want their religion to preserve its traditional beliefs and practices rather than either adjust to new circumstances or adopt modern beliefs and practices. Moreover, significant minorities across nearly all religious traditions see a conflict between being a devout person and living in a modern society.

The Landscape Survey confirms the close link between Americans' religious affiliation, beliefs and practices, on the one hand, and their social and political attitudes, on the other. Indeed, the survey demonstrates that the social and political fault lines in American society run through, as well as alongside, religious traditions. The relationship between religion and politics is particularly strong with respect to political ideology and views on social issues such as abortion and homosexuality, with the more religiously committed adherents across several religious traditions expressing more conservative political views. On other issues included in the survey, such as environmental protection, foreign affairs, and the proper size and role of government, differences based on religion tend to be smaller.

http://religions.pewforum.org/

This Week: Oral arguments heard to decide fate of California educational choice

Michael Farris, chairman and co-founder of the Homeschooling Legal Defense Association, was one of many attorneys from several organizations urging the court to reconsider, and he presented the day's final argument.

"Anybody that claims they know which way the court will decide would be wrong," Farris told WND.

"The judges asked very hard, pointed questions," he said. "There was no indication that they thought their prior ruling was wrong."

Specifically, Farris said, the judges asked why they should permit homeschooling when California changed the law to withdraw it from the statutes in the early 1900s.

Attorneys advocating homeschooling argued that when California in 1967 added the singular word "person" to the list of those that can operate a legitimate private school, it opened the door for homeschooling. "If a person can provide education, if one person can operate a school," argued the attorneys, "then why not a parent?"

"Their questions were about the 1910s; our answer was from the 1960s," Farris told WND.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67859

A measure to amend the California state constitution to "provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California", has qualified for the November ballot. The amendment would overturn the recent ruling by the California Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage in California, if it is approved by a majority of voters on November 4th.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,362062,00.html

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