The American Constitution was set up, specifically, to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It was written in a time when in large swaths of Europe the church, primarily the Catholic Church or in our founders' case, the Church of England, dictated the daily lives of most people. If you wished to worship differently you were subjected to everything from harassment to death and this is why there is such an emphasis on the separation of church and state (even though some have forgotten why that separation was placed there to begin with).
Over time, as our country has evolved, the "minority" has gone from protecting religious minorities to different socio-economic groups to ethnic minorities to racial minorities to gender and others. There is a reason why major issues like interracial marriage and women in the workplace didn't come down to a vote. If it had been up to the will of the majority, women wouldn't serve in the military, blacks would still be slaves, all gays would stay in the closet and everything would be as it was in 1787 when only wealthy, white male landowners could cast ballots.
Sometimes the mob is wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong and wants nothing more than to bully those different from themselves. Case in point: the war against gays and Lesbians in parts of Africa.
More after the jump.
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Monday, June 27, 2011 at 10:33AM
