Wearing a trendy “NoH8″ tattoo on his cheek and tape over his mouth, television therapist Dr. Drew Pinsky editorialized against California’s Proposition 8 on CNN’s Larry King Live blog, even comparing the voters of California to the slaveholders who opposed Abe Lincoln:
In other words it was the concerted opinion of the judicial authority [in California] that the logic used against interracial marriage was the same as that, which was being used against same sex marriages. In spite of this very clear understanding of the law and the logic of prejudice, the response rendered by the referendum system with the passage of Proposition 8 was: “too bad”.
Now my point here is not to get into whether or not gay marriage is good, right or should even be included in the definition of what we consider marriage. My concern is that the referendum system in California can rescind the civil rights of a minority group, independent of the operation of other governmental authority.
Abraham Lincoln famously argued in his debates with Stephen Douglas that there are certain things that the majority simply cannot decide. We simply could not allow for a majority to decide that it is acceptable to enslave another population of humans no matter how substantial that majority.