California Gay Marriage Ban: Why Santorum's 'Intolerance' Remarks are Intolerant

What rights did these 7 million Californians who voted for Proposition 8 have stripped away on Tuesday? Their right to hold a popular vote on other people's rights? Because the Founding Fathers did not provide for that.

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If you don't believe me, ask John Adams:

"Checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission of some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen. ... That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority is demonstrated by every page of history."

Or James Madison:

"The form of popular government ... enables it [the majority] to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. ... The majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression."

If the "right" to subject other people's civil liberties to popular vote doesn't exist, the 9th Circuit ruling can't possibly have "stripped it away."

Marriage, on the other hand, has been affirmed by the Supreme Court as "one of the basic civil rights of man" and "one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

It is beyond me how people like Santorum can argue that the overturning of Proposition 8 takes their rights away, but deny that the prohibition of same-sex marriage takes same-sex couples' rights away.

2. "Your belief of marriage between a man and a woman is purely irrational, based on hatred and bigotry: that's what [the court] just wrote."
-- McKinney, Texas, Feb. 8

The court did not pass judgment on the personal beliefs or motivations of Proposition 8 supporters or same-sex marriage opponents at large. It passed judgment on the legal merits of their attempt to impose those beliefs on all Californians. There is a big difference.