RIGHTS: Why the minority decides

In a letter to the editor on Wednesday, June 12, Ray Anderson wrote: “Thank you City Council of Coeur d’Alene for opening the floodgates to hell by adopting a city ordinance that promotes a lifestyle to sin. With the exception of Steve Adams once again you have voted against the majority, the citizens of our beautiful city, who were against the need for the discrimination ordinance.”

I’d like to point out to Mr. Anderson, and others who would have liked to have seen this decision put to a vote, that on issues of minority and human rights, voters should never have a direct say. To do so would, in many instances, deny or at least delay the rights in question by virtue of the fact that they are indeed sought by a minority population. Two instances come to mind that illustrate the injudiciousness of letting the majority decide for the minority in the area of human rights.

Women in this country worked for 50 years to be able to vote. Since the only voters were men, it took an amendment to the Constitution in 1920 to bring about what was seen at the time as unnecessary and radical. In contrast, it wasn’t until 1971 that the women of Switzerland were able to exert this right simply because it was left to the voters — all men — who didn’t feel that women were capable of voting.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court declared laws prohibiting interracial marriages were unconstitutional, even though, at that time, 72 percent of Americans opposed interracial marriage.

In both these cases, and myriads of others, we see that leaving the human rights of any minority up to the whims of the majority only serves to perpetuate the denial of those rights. Thomas Jefferson, certainly a strong advocate of letting the majority decide issues, took exception in the area of equal rights when he said in his 1st Inaugural in 1801, “Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

BEV MOSS

Coeur d’Alene