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The trouble with democracy is that it is - in its purest form - mob rule. For this reason certain laws are created in a civilisation to try and protect minorities from the mob; because the mob is not always mobilised for the right reasons. One of the barriers defending minorities in the UK is the notion of 'Political Correctness' stemming from the adherence to the notion that Human Rights are universally applied to every human being residing in or visiting the UK.
A lot of this ideology was formulated during World War II when millions died fighting a mob that had decided to dehumanise great swathes of humanity and attempted to exterminate them. In order so that this never happened again Human Rights became a big topic, and as an ideal surely no one could possibly argue that inalienable human rights are a bad thing. But of course they do.
You see, huge amounts of people are backwards and think that somehow if they disagree with something then they have the right to ban it, no matter if what it is they are banning has no detrimental effect on them or anybody else. This brings me to the topic of the post, California - supposedly a progressive American state - has outlawed gay marriage. A 52 to 48% vote in favour of blocking gay marriage has meant that 52% of the voters in California have outlawed someone else's basic human rights.
Democracy, in this case, is a steaming pile of shit.
What right has anyone got to determine how other people live, providing that those people are not harming them or their society in any way. Gay people were not trying to get permission to forcibly convert all the straight people of California, nor were they trying to impinge on anyone else's human rights in any way. They were simply trying to have the opportunity to get married the same as any straight couple.
The mob spoke, gay marriage is banned and I wish that Americans (supposedly living in the land of the free) had the chance to appeal to an higher authority; an authority that considered their human rights above the fear and bigotry of the mob - rather like the European Court of Human Rights. I wish that America actually was the land of the free instead of being a bigoted country containing vast amounts of ignorant, shit-kicking fuckwits who believe that the earth is 6000 years old and that they only right worth defending is the right to bear arms and shoot each other.
I'm glad that Europe has learned some of the lessons of mass persecution and has focused on the rights of the individual, not the baying of the mob. Democracy may well be a fine thing, but it relies on an intelligent and informed electorate to be be truly useful. An informed, rational electorate are also hampered when national newspapers like the Daily Mail have particularly nasty attitudes towards gay people. Because of this Human Rights and Political Correctness are here to stay; and for this we should all be grateful. |
Similarly, when animals form monogamous relationships, as only a few species seem to (offhand I can think only of wolves and magpies), this is considered so strange as to be worthy of comment. The general assumption seems to be that the natural condition of animal sexuality is a kind of free-for-all.
As homosexual activity is known to occur in the animal world, the only way for bigots to say that it's 'unnatural' is to concentrate on the infrequency of its occurrence; unfortunately, monogamy is similarly infrequent in nature, so...