Nebraska Gov. calls for vote on 'fairness' measures

No they really shouldn't, because this about banning discrimination not put to a vote to discriminate.

 

When are people going to realize that the majority voting on the rights of a minority is a very, very bad thing?

 

so they are going to discriminate against people by voting to stop discrimination because of their warped, fragile, disgusting egos?

Take a leaf out of Jesus's book and STOP HATING OTHER PEOPLE!

 

Never, because American democracy is a fucking joke. We have a democratic republic for economic issues and a pure democracy for social issues. It's stupid.

 

I've never really agreed with this. In a democracy, or a democratic republic, all rights exist because we've voted on them. Rights are essentially a legal construct. They don't exist unless the government chooses to recognize them. And in a democracy, the people who decide which rights shall be recognized are the voters. Either directly, through constitutional amendments, or indirectly through the legislature. The courts do not, and cannot, create rights. All they can do is reinterpret the Constitution and laws, which were voted on, to include rights that weren't previously understood to have existed.

 

My city sure is stupid, I will be mad if I have to go vote on this issue, it has already been decided and most everyone wants it. Sadly they will probably get the signatures, but it's not like this will change anything besides the fact everyone will vote on it and the outcome will still be the same.

 

Fine let's make American a freaking dictatorship then. Then maybe Obama can make gay marriage legal like it should be instead of letting all the states decide for their moronic selves (merely the republican religious-driven mongers out there, this means it excludes the Republicans who are not driven by religion, personally I think the former should not be allowed to vote at all After all, they're voting not with their heads, but their Bibles )

Obviously a dictatorship wouldn't work, I'm just saying leaving it to a democracy where religion seems to still be a big sway is just idiocy and always will be. (Once again, no offence meant to those of religious homes/origins as clearly you aren't the ones who are voting against gay marriage...if you are though, you have a lot of explaining to do.)

 

I respectfully disagree. Rights exist by nature of being human. All rights stem from our most basic right to our own life. Government does not create rights. If a government refuses to recognize rights, that does not mean people do not have them. It simply means the government is tyrannical and oppressive.

 

But that's the essence of a constitutional democracy, that there are certain inaliable rights and laws that can't just be overturned by a popularity vote.

 

Not really. The rights enshrined in our Constitution got there because we voted on them. That's how the Constitution and Bill of Rights became the law of the land. And we could, at any point, have a vote that would remove those rights. There are no inalienable rights.

 

True, but once implemented they can't just be changed by a 51% majority vote. At least not here in the Netherlands.

Then it is different in the U.S., here in the Netherlands, to change or remove things from the constitution, first the change would have to get a majority of the votes in the house of representatives and the senate, then the house of representatives would be dissolved followed by elections, after which the amendment would have to be voted on again, this time requiring two-thirds of both houses of parliament to vote in favor.
So in summary, do it still has elements of voting majority, it isn't as simple as gaining 51% of the votes when one wants to change the consitution.

 

It isn't that simple in the US either. It require a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, and then approval from two-thirds of the states. The fact remains that all rights are subject to a vote.

 

Using the majority to decide the fate of the minority. Shocking.

 

True, otherwise we'd still have discrimination on many fronts.
It's not however up to vote in the common sense, as being a 51% majority vote.
Or to put it otherwise, laws that directly violate certain constitutional rights, won't stand no matter how many votes they got, until the constitution is amended.
Or that's how it should work.

 

I have some issues with your reasoning, which I will try to make clear. Let me start by saying that you're right that rights are nothing more than a legal construct, and do not exist in actual reality. Someone can claim freedom of speech, but a government can execute them and we'll see just how far that freedom takes them. The very notion of freedom and liberty are philosophical constructs just as are rights. They are social agreements.

The issue I have with your argument is the one I outlined above. Without rights, you have no freedom. You do not need a single individual to have a despot if you view the flaw of a despotic government as tyrannical rule.

As John Adams explained in A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America: "...the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, [and this] is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In [purely democratic] governments, minorities constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies..."

To ignore the above statement by John Adams is to ignore one of the bedrock principles upon which the United States was founded. It is to quite literally undermine the purpose of the Constitution itself.

A "right" such as the "right to freedom of speech" does not exist in the First Amendment to protect those who express popular views. By definition, in a democracy, a popular view is safe because it is held by the majority of people. The First Amendment exists expressly to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The entire concept of the "right to freedom of speech" exists to protect those who express unpopular ideas and thoughts that the majority would seek to oppress through the democratic institutions of the government.

John Adams has been proven right again and again throughout history since he wrote the above words. Bring up the "rights" of any minority group and you will find, again and again, that the majority always - always! - stands against them.

You could not go into the states that succeeded from the Union before the Civil War and encourage them to overturn slavery. To do so would not only require them to ignore the culture of bigotry in which they were raised, but it would have also required them to go against their own economic interest. To make the argument that the majority should decide the rights of the minority is to empower the confederacy to continue slavery.

Even in the case of women's rights, in which case we're speaking about 50% of the population (and therefore things are different because they are not numerically out numbered); they still must overcome cultural bigotry. This is a culture that says a woman is not equal to a man, and therefore does not deserve the same rights as a man.

In the case of LGBT people we make up a statistical minority - somewhere between 2% and 5% of the population - and are subjected to cultural bigotry that says we are not equal to heterosexuals. This is a culture that not only says our relationships are not equal to heterosexuals, but we as individuals are inherently by our nature not only inferior to heterosexuals but also a danger to them and their way of life.

As a result of that bigotry, in every single instance in which our rights have come up for a popular vote we've lost. We lost again, and again, and again - and we will continue to lose, because the majority will always side against the minority.

Our opponents know this, and this is why they feign such a love for democracy and freedom. The reality is that they want to use the tyranny of the majority to suppress the minority - in this case: the LGBT community.

So, while I do not disagree with your premise that rights are nothing more than a legal construct, my assertion is that it was never the intention of the Founders to allow a tyranny of the majority.

Also, as a minor quibble (and I think you'll probably agree with me), it is not the power of the majority that grant people rights. It is the power of the powerful that grant people rights. I define the powerful as those who are capable of either manipulating or controlling the elected officials of the government, or a group of people capable of overthrowing the government and instituting their own rules through force. In such a case, the rights created, protected, or defended may be rights that the majority oppose. A great example of this is Apartheid in South Africa, in which a minority (whites) was able to rule over the majority (blacks).

It is easy to assume that in a democracy that the power rests in the hands of the people, but the truth of the matter is that the majority of the power is in the hands of those that shape popular opinion. Such individuals can even convince the majority of people to vote and support ideas that go counter to their own personal interests.

 

Just because rights can't be overturned by a simple majority vote doesn't mean they aren't subject to the will of the people. It would probably take at least a decade to overturn the first amendment, but it could be done. Rights are never set in stone, they exist as long as the government allows them to, and in a democracy that ultimately means they exist as long as the people will them to.

 

All Mogget is trying to say is that rights are purely social constructs, not innate things that we have. He's not saying that there is no such thing as a minimum barrier of "what we can't do to each other." It's just that the bare standard is itself socially contingent, which makes sense, because any moral code worth anything has to be compelling to people who have feelings...

(Not to be taken as an endorsement of moral relativism or ethical noncognitivism.)

 

We never voted on any of the rights in the Constitution. And the people of the past didn't either, it was representatives chosen by the colonies.

 

We didn't sign the social contract either, but that doesn't make it a useless way to think about societal obligations.