Protecting the Majority
It is said that one of the main features that makes the United States Constitution a triumph of political and social philosophy, is not just the fulfillment of democratic principles that guarantee that the will of the people will prevail. It is also that it provides safeguards to PROTECT the minority from the majority. This truth has been proven time and again in cases big and small. Through our history as a nation, we have come to include blacks and women as fully enfranchised citizens. And, it should be noted, the United States was ahead of many nations in implementing these inclusions. For example, in regard to slavery, it is not widely discussed but is none-the-less true, that the last country in the world to legally abolish slavery was the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, and it did so only in 1981! In regard to suffrage, in Saudi Arabia, women were allowed to vote for the very first time THIS YEAR! So, inclusion and protection of the minority from the majority are things of which we should be proud.
Today, however, I am writing about the converse situation: the need to protect the majority FROM the minority.
Gender politics in our country has become so off-kilter that the majority has become dominated by the minority. Rest room politics comes immediately to mind. Forcing heterosexual women to accept, with equanimity, men in their restrooms, is nothing less than the domination of the majority by a vocal minority. I would posit, that if a male (by birth) has gender identification issues and “identifies” as a woman, we should be empathetic to the hardships and psychological difficulties that this individual faces. However, we must remember, it is HIS/HER PROBLEM! He/she should be the one to deal with it. It should not be the obligation of heterosexual women to accommodate and compensate for this person’s problems. It is not unreasonable for a woman to expect privacy and security in a public restroom. And what about our younger citizens? Are these demands for “inclusion” to apply to high school? Junior high school? Grade school? What about voyeurs and peeping toms? Fetishists? The majority in each of these circumstances, apparently, needs protection.
There are other, non sexual examples as well. Here are two:
Should the majority of American students be denied a breakfast of pork sausages because it “offends” a minority of Muslims? Non pork choices should, of course, be made available to Muslims, but should pork be banished from the cafeteria?
Should the majority of religious youngsters be prohibited from saying “One nation under God” because it “offends” a minority of atheists?
To these, and many other instances of what I will term “majority abuse” my answer is a clear NO. We must remember that our Constitution protects the majority too.