[The Urban Sombrero]

Gay marriage was legalized because a majority of the court held that same sex couples were entitled to equal protection under the law. A Constitutional democracy is not a local congregation of the Baptist Church. In granting rights and freedoms in a Constitutional democracy, liberty of conscience is granted in a whole host of behaviors and enterprises that the majority or the individual might find offensive, even loathesome. There is a price to living in a free society with codified rights and freedoms. It is to be surrounded in the marketplace of ideas and images with opinions contrary, practices offensive, words inflammatory. I might, at the same time, be repulsed by what I see as debauchery when seeing news clips of a gay rights parade where individuals are flaunting every standard of decency I hold to, and yet recognize the delicate splendor of a society which gives right to that which it generally abhors in recognition of the sovereign gift of freedom of conscience within broadly defined rights. It is part and parcel of living in a free society, a Constitutional democracy. The Framers had faith in democracy, but not blind faith.