The US Department of State publishes a booklet called "Principles of Democracy" to explain to the world what our shining city on a hill, our vaunted constitutional democracy, really stands for.
I find it interesting, as the Pro-PropH8 side prepares its argument worshiping the popular vote, to see what our government says in this booklet about minority rights. What are we telling the world about our foundational beliefs?
The booklet begins,
On the surface, the principles of majority rule and the protection of individual and minority rights would seem contradictory. In fact, however, these principles are twin pillars holding up the very foundation of what we mean by democratic government.
Our constitutional democracy protects the rights of the minority. The government says so. And the ruling principles are over the jump.
·Majority rule is a means for organizing government and deciding public issues; it is not another road to oppression. Just as no self-appointed group has the right to oppress others, so no majority, even in a democracy, should take away the basic rights and freedoms of a minority group or individual.
Got that? That's the foundational argument. That's the argument that Atty General Jerry Brown has made in his diary today.
·Minorities – whether as a result of ethnic background, religious belief, geographic location, income level, or simply as the losers in elections or political debate – enjoy guaranteed basic human rights that no government, and no majority, elected or not, should remove.
·Minorities need to trust that the government will protect their rights and self-identity. Once this is accomplished, such groups can participate in, and contribute to their country's democratic institutions.
That's it. Can we, as GLBT Californians, as GLBT Americans, TRUST our government to protect our rights? That's what the judiciary is for.
·Among the basic human rights that any democratic government must protect are freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion and belief; due process and equal protection under the law; and freedom to organize, speak out, dissent, and participate fully in the public life of their society.
So, I think this is the crux. Is marriage a "basic human right"? The California Supreme Court thinks so; it said as much in the decision in May in in re Marriages that allowed me to get married: ""[T]he right to marry is not properly viewed simply as a benefit or privilege that a government may establish or abolish as it sees fit, but rather that the right constitutes a basic civil or human right of all people."
And SCOTUS, deciding the Loving v. Virginia case that allowed inter-racial marriage in 1967, wrote "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.'"
What about the religious freedom argument? Civil marriage of one class of people in no way imposes on the religious freedom of any other class, as long as the religious groups aren't being forced to marry them in their churches. Which they aren't. This is civil, not religious marriage. What the religious argue is that the very existence of gay marriage impinges on their rights; our existence is the problem. And that is simply not supportable. Their religious freedom ends when they deprive me of fundamental rights.
· Democracies understand that protecting the rights of minorities to uphold cultural identity, social practices, individual consciences, and religious activities is one of their primary tasks.
·Acceptance of ethnic and cultural groups that seem strange if not alien to the majority can represent one of the greatest challenges that any democratic government can face. But democracies recognize that diversity can be an enormous asset. They treat these differences in identity, culture, and values as a challenge that can strengthen and enrich them, not as a threat.
·There can be no single answer to how minority-group differences in views and values are resolved – only the sure knowledge that only through the democratic process of tolerance, debate, and willingness to compromise can free societies reach agreements that embrace the twin pillars of majority rule and minority rights.
So, the ProH8 folks may say that we aren't willing to compromise. Not on fundamental rights, we're not. If I get a civil union from the government, then a straight Mormon couple should get a civil union from the government. I have no problem if you put the M-word strictly in the churches. But as far as my government goes, I am a taxpaying citizen who deserves equal protection under the law.
After all, the State Department says that's what America stands for.
Does it?