Ahnold Of The People

Governor Schwarzenegger plans to veto California's gay marriage bill because it would oppose the "will of the people":

Aaron C. Davis, San Jose Mercury News: "Gay union veto plan opposed"
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He's factually correct about that. A majority of California voters did approve Proposition 22, a simple one-sentence initiative which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman:

wikipedia: California Proposition 22 (2000)

At first I misunderstood the governor's position, thinking that he was objecting to the bill being unconstitutional. But I went back and verified that Proposition 22 is a change to the California Family Code, not a constitutional amendment. So, it isn't a matter of the legislature having violated the California constitution. But, as the governor says, they are opposing the will of the people. At least, the people who showed up to vote that day.

I'm one of the minority of people who voted against Proposition 22, and I've got a big disagreement with what the majority of people willed in this matter. What they willed that day was to interfere with the private lives of homosexual people because of their fears that allowing same-sex marriages will lead to all of us catching gay kooties.

OK, I'll state it more formally: they barred, without even a matter of public interest involved, a particular minority the fundamental right to form marital contracts. It wasn't that long ago that "the people" willed to do the same thing to another minority: mixed-race couples.

We all get so used to calling our society a democracy, that we forget that pure democracy, unconstrained by safeguards for rights, is just another flavor of tyranny. In fact, our form of government is supposed to be a constitutional republic in which rights always trump the will of the majority.