[Arkinsaw]

Don't you Bible-beaters have something better to do than worry about other people's sex lives?

I could care less about other's sex lives. But I care very much about the Supreme Court manufacturing half-baked decisions just to reach a social goal. Having unelected people in black robes legislate is not my idea of progress.

[cherrycapital]

I have no problem with having unelected people in black robes legislate as long as they are protecting individual freedom from the state. Democracy is a means, not an end. When democracy is inconsistent with individual freedom, it is democracy that must yield. The whole point of having a Bill of Rights was to make certain things vote-proof. As Justice Robert Jackson said:

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943))

When you study the founding fathers--everyone up to about Andrew Jackson--it is striking how little they had to say about democracy. Some of them even used it as an epithet. They knew that unlimited majority rule is as bad as any other sort of tyranny--worse, in fact, because it is harder to fight.