by James Lynne

Created on: August 13, 2008   Last Updated: January 19, 2009

Just as the Supreme Court of the US had to remove anti-miscegenation, abortion, and civil rights laws from state authority, it will also determine gay marriage. Majority rule, although democratic, is not what the founding fathers intended in framing the government of the United States. According to James Madison, the Father of the United States Constitution, in a democracy "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual."

It is a misconception in the United States that the majority has the right to decide the rights of all citizens. Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the dangers of majority rule and warned against those dangers, by establishing the US not as a Democracy, but as a Representative National Republic. Allowing the individual states to decide the rights and privileges of interracial or gay marriage is an obvious example of Madison's statement that in a democracy there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the "weak or the obnoxious," meaning those who were not of majority opinion.

The right to create laws regarding gay marriage within the US will inevitably reside within the power of Federal Government; not state government, because the citizens of individual states have no inducement to protect the rights of the gay minority. Fisher Ames, Massachusetts congressman during Washington's presidency wrote, "Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes." Democratic majority rule has historically proved the majority has little inducement to protect the rights of minorities.

Loving versus Virginia (1967) was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924," unconstitutional; thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Prior to this landmark decision each state in the US separately decided whether or not interracial marriage was legal in that state. A mixed race couple could be married in California, but when traveling to Virginia face arrest for violating Virginia law. There are some issues our founding fathers knew could not be trusted to majority rule. Their warnings against the dangers of democratic rule are evidenced in their writings as well as in the framing of our government.

The Constitution for the United

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