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.
In essentials, unity; in differences, liberty; in all things, charity.
During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.
Misery is what happiness rests upon. Happiness is what misery lurks beneath.
For all that has been, Thank you. For all that is to come, Yes!
Never can a reforming sect survive if it is only reforming; the formative elements alone - the real impulse, that is, the principles - live on and on.
I believe that at every level of society the key to a happier world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.
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