Greta Christina’s Blog: The Prop 8 Ruling: Discrimination as a Constitutional Principle.

Greta manages to put her finger on the thing that was bothering me about this decision that I couldn’t manage to articulate:

See, this isn’t just about gay rights and marriage equality. This is about the principle that certain rights are inalienable. This is about the principle that, as important as democracy is, as important as it is for people to be able to vote on the laws and policies that govern them, certain rights transcend that principle, and cannot be taken away by majority rule. This is about the principle that there are limits to mob rule: that the fears and hatreds and prejudices of one class of people towards another cannot be inscribed into law. This is about the principle that people have every right to be bigots, but they do not have the right to write their bigotry into law… even if that bigotry is shared by the majority.