The Art of Self-Service

In the U.S. Senate, a hate crimes bill is attached to a tourism bill. The military's useless anti-gay policy that helps no one, and hurts many, is enforced in full because our president doesn't want his popularity to decline. President Obama also defends an incredibly unconstitutional law that denies citizens rights, and even infringes on state sovereignty, again only for the sake of approval ratings. In New York, a gay marriage bill is being used as a tool in a play for political power. Across the nation, where majority is supposed to rule, thousands upon thousands of citizens in each state are denied rights that the majority believes they should have.

The graph below, composed by Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips of Columbia University, demonstrates the incongruence of public opinion with public policy.

Each unfilled circle past the halfway line represents a set of rights or protections that the majority supports.

Why is this? Isn't this a country of majority rule? Well yeah, it's the country of the majority political party rules. The lower on this list you are, the more likely it is that you're looking at a red state. Red state, meaning Republican rule. The base of the Republican party, the people who the Republican politicians truly obey, are anti-gay. These politicians obey the organizations and people who have given them the most money and the people who voted for them. Therefore, the politicians in these states are anti-gay too, even if it means they're ignoring the 51%-80% majorities of public opinion that are pro-gay.

In truth, I myself don't make the argument that these laws should be dependent upon public opinion. It's fundamentally wrong on every level to put the well-being of minority citizens up to a vote for the majority to decide on. But I don't make the argument for majority rule; the other side does.

Somehow, whether or not the majority of the public agrees with them, justice is served as long as they get their way. If 2nd parent adoption is illegal in Alabama, "Well, that's majority rule." And yet, when there's no protections for gay Pennsylvanians from discrimination in housing, "That's the system at work." And if a court does its job by checking the tyranny of the majority in Iowa, "They are activist judges legislating from the bench."