The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the role of the Constitution in safeguarding the rights of minorities from the will of the majority.
David Boies highlights the fundamental purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution: to ensure that the rights of minority groups are protected, even when faced with decisions made by the majority. This perspective stresses the importance of judicial oversight in upholding individual rights, particularly in matters such as marriage equality, where historical court decisions have reaffirmed that love should not be dictated by societal majorities.
In practice
During a speech advocating for marriage equality, this quote could underline the importance of protecting minority rights.
One of the things that the court held in Brown v. Board of Education is that government can't impose a badge of inferiority on some of its citizens. Yet that is exactly what Proposition 8 does with respect to gay and lesbian couples in California.
It's terribly important that we extend the promise of equality that the Supreme Court and that the district court articulated in the DOMA case and in the Perry case to all Americans in all 50 states.
We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.
Unlike people of my generation, my children and my grandchildren have grown up living with, knowing, people who were outwardly gay and lesbian. And they have learned that they're just like us... And when you see that they're just like us, the rationale for discrimination melts away.
We're now segregating our schools based on economics; we're segregating our schools based on where a child's parents live. And it has the same corrosive effect of destroying people's opportunity as racial segregation did.
A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.
That religion which costs a man nothing is usually worth nothing.
Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.
I know nothing and my heart aches
The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again.
Rediscovering the controversies that occupied early Christianity sharpens our awareness of the major issue in the whole debate, then and now: What is the source of religious authority? For the Christian the question takes more specific form: What is the relation between the authority of ones own experience and that claimed for the scriptures, the ritual and the clergy?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.