Propostition 8: The People have spoken - not hardly!

I just read an article about the Gay marriage vote on propostition 8 in California. Now as you may or may not know Proposition 8 was passed with 53% of the vote. This effetively (for now) ends gay marriage in California. This is not the part I was interested in though, what intrigued me, was the fact that the governor, and other proponents of gay marriage have said is that they will have this propostion thrown out by the courts as not valid.

Well isn't that interesting...they may even be right, proposition 8 may in fact be a constitutional revision (not subject to change by vote) rather than an ammendment (which is able to be enacted by popular vote). The problem for me is that 53% of the people who voted decided that they did not want gay marriage.

In North America today, we do not accept votes as being "what the people want", unless they go in our favour. What we like to say is that, the vote isn't right, or that's not the way it should be done. Those arguments were available prior to voting day, but they thought they would win, and so said nothing. Now that they lost, they can't accept that 53% of the people don't want this, it must be flawed somehow.

This is one of the things wrong in Canada and the U.S., we have no respect for differing points of view. If the election goes the wrong way, then people are stupid and misled, and worse the whole vote was flawed, and not legal. It does not matter that the majority decided, they must not have understood, or something. They can't be smart and disagree.

I am not above this, I understand, I just fight it in myself. I get that you and I might not agree on much, but that doesn't mean I am smart and you are not, it just means we disagree. What how can that be? In California 500,000 people was the difference. 5.4 million people voted to ban gay marriage. I assure you these are not 5.4 million dumb people, just as the 4.9 million people that voted for gay marriage are not dumb, but yet these people disagree.

I am concerned that we are quickly becoming a society that values nothing but our own opinion, we have little to no tolerance for dissent. I don't know the solution, but I do know, I need to put more value in listening to others, and less in talking about my own thoughts (except here, of course).