One of the reminders readers occasionally deliver to me, when I’ve nodded off at the keyboard and used the wrong word, is that our nation is not a democracy but a republic.
It is an important distinction, one that bears consideration in the wake of the Rowan County Board of Commissioners’ endorsement of a resolution stating that the people of North Carolina should have the right to vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage (or practically any other form of legally recognized contractual union in which gay adults might wish to join.)
Given that this is a conservative county, the board’s stance isn’t surprising, although reasonable people can ó and have ó wondered why the commission felt compelled to weigh in on an issue where it has no jurisdictional standing and could expect no beneficial result other than to poke the mangy carcass of the culture wars.
What did surprise me, however, is the blithe rationale some have offered for the commission’s action and the resolution itself. It is justified, they submit, because a majority of people in Rowan County, in North Carolina, or in America, believe that homosexuality is sinful and immoral. Hence, it is a perfectly legitimate function of government to adopt an injunction based largely on religious proscription and aimed at a particular segment of society.
The notion that simply because a majority of citizens believes an action is right and justified, then it must be right and justified, would come as quite a surprise to founders such as John Adams, who had a great antipathy for the tyranny of the majority. His apprehensions were well confirmed by the vilification Adams endured when he took the highly unpopular action of defending British soldiers charged with murder after the Boston Massacre. Adams’ defense included his oft-quoted phrase that “facts are stubborn things.” It also included the less well known but equally instructive observation that, whatever the vicissitudes of government and public passion, the law should not “bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations and wanton tempers of men.”
James Madison, the primary architect of our Constitution, was equally wary of the aroused masses and had this to say in Federalist Paper No. 10:
“Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
Knowing how prone majorities are to making mischief ó particularly when they gather force from a sense of aggrieved self-righteousness or unwavering certitude in the correctness of their cause ó the framers created several bulwarks to protect against overbearing excesses.
To change the Constitution, for instance, a proposed amendment must gain a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or two-thirds of state legislatures. After that, ratification requires three-fourths of state legislatures.
In Congress, it takes only 51 senators to thwart the power of 435 representatives.
Even when Congress acts in concert to pass legislation, its decisions can be nullified with the pen stroke of a single person, the president ó and it takes two-thirds of Congress to override a presidential veto.
Election of the president emerges not from the popular vote but through the Electoral College. The latter mechanism makes it quite possible, as recent history has shown, that the person who receives the most votes has no guarantee of gaining the Oval Office.
No, the nation’s founders didn’t put much stock in majority rule. It’s no accident that collective decisionmaking in our republic is a cumbersome, messy process, with any number of checks, balances and outright barriers as likely to blunt the “will of the people” as lend it legitimacy.
Just as might doesn’t make right, the fact that a majority of citizens may hold a particular viewpoint doesn’t mean they’re right ó and it certainly doesn’t mean that viewpoint should be codified into constitutional law. As we have so often seen down through history, it is the repressions directed against particular minorities that appear so misguided, benighted and self-diminishing in retrospect.
Commissioners may take comfort in the fact that they’re just endorsing the idea of putting gay marriage to a vote, believing, apparently, that this is a matter where the majority should rule ó at least as prelude to a ruling from the courts. One can only wonder how they will vote when a supposed majority wants to amend the state constitution to enshrine the biblical story of creation as the text for public school teaching or revise the nation’s divorce laws to follow scriptural edict. (Now that would be a defense of marriage act.)
Majority rule sounds like a fine idea ó so long as you’re in the majority. But as John Adams and James Madison well knew, it’s often more an invitation to abuse than protection for the rule of justice and the rights of free citizens.
– – –
Chris Verner is editorial page editor of the Salisbury Post.