Majority knows best.

Okay, this is it. No more being respectful and amicable about this rubbish. I've had it and I'm really going to blast this guy," I thought. Fortunately, I was (just barely) able to restrain myself from interrupting my fellow panelist's presentation, which would have been decidedly rude (especially if I didn't want him to interrupt mine). So I sat there while Stephen Mosier held forth for the duration of his allotted 30 minutes on the meaning of democracy, the U.S. Constitution, and the First Amendment as decreed by the Citizens Alliance of Washington.

It was an unseasonably cool day in June. But the more Mosier talked, the warmer it got in that Capitol hearing room. There were five other participants on the panel discussion, sponsored by the Government Lawyers Bar Association. Our topic: "The First Amendment: Its Future in Washington State."

Mosier, state political director of CAW, deserves credit for his chutzpah. He sat on this panel with the intellectual freedom chair of the Washington Library Association, a progressive Court of Appeals judge, the president of the Washington State American Civil Liberties Union, the legal counsel of the Washington State Association of Broadcasters, the immediate past president of the American Booksellers Association, and the notorious secular humanist First Amendment absolutist--myself.

Mosier's group is sponsoring Washington state initiative 610, the more extreme of two anti-gay measures now in the signature-collecting state to qualify for this year's state ballot. Initiative 610 would void public and private policies that prohibit discrimination against gays; prevent libraries, school teachers, and counselors from using or making available materials which depict gay men and women or their "life-style" as "healthy, positive, acceptable, or approved," or in anything but a negative light; gut AIDS awareness and prevention programs; and--believe it or not--ban homosexuals from adopting or receiving custody, even joint custody, of any child, including their own. In other words, gay people would be legally declared to be morally corrupt and unfit as parents.

This hateful initiative, imported from last year's failed Oregon Citizen's Alliance campaign, has been a bombshell in Washington's activist community. Hands Off Washington, the coalition formed to coordinate opposition efforts, has garnered widespread support and visibility. Consequently, virtually everyone at the Continuing Legal Education seminar was knowledgeable about what Mosier stood for and not exactly inclined to give him a warm reception.

Mosier was trying to recoup from his opening ploy, which had been a badly received attempt at drama. Feigning enthusiasm, he had "challenged" us all to reach into our pocket, briefcase, or purse and pull out our personal copy of the Constitution. In a surprise development, no one moved, whereupon Mosier dramatically reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his "own personal copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights," which he's carried on his person and studied daily, including over the 20-some years he claims to have been a police officer. (Ironically, the booklet he held up, produced by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, is also distributed upon request by the Washington Coalition Against Censorship.)

Holding it aloft, he announced, in a somber and indisputable tone, that he had never, ever, ever violated any person's civil rights at any time in his life (ever). The real problem here, said he, is that we've forgotten the basic premise upon which this country was so carefully constructed. Government is the servant of the people; when a "democratic majority" of the people tell the government to do something, government must do that thing with all dispatch. Our country is in real trouble today because "we, the people" have become servants to the "master government." We have lost sight of the very essence of democracy itself.

"If a majority of us don't want certain materials in the public library, or if we want children confined to a room with only children's materials, they have to do what we say. Public schools have to do what we say, too. If we don't want children taught that homosexuality is acceptable, public school teachers and librarians have to abide by what the people say. This is what government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people' means!"

Right. And what about the rights of all the rest of us, Mr. Mosier? What about the rights guaranteed to every American citizen? You really just don't care, do you? You really believe that anyone who doesn't agree with you is so absolutely degenerate and irresponsible that it's okay to suppress, negate, imprison, or--if necessary, I'm sure--simply eliminate them.

How can anyone read the Constitution and Bill of Rights (let alone "study" them) and fail to perceive that the essential character of American democracy is the protection of the rights and liberties of minorities? Mosier's "interpretation" of the nature of democracy is the "new/recycled wave" of right-wing politics--the noble rationale for demagogues and zealots attempting to impose their will upon everyone through local and state grass-roots activism. Democracy has become the tyranny of majority rule--doublespeak of gigantic proportions. The sheer audacity of the belief that anything the majority wants in a democracy is okay; the presumption to rights of power and control embodied in the idea that the majority can repeal and infringe upon the rights of minorities; the assumption of absolute moral infallibility--it's more than any civil libertarian or First Amendment advocate should be required to endure.

At last, having received his "three minutes left" signal from the moderator, Mosier soared toward his inspiring close. With what memorable words would he leave us, his enraptured audience? "Really, it's so simple and obvious. This country's laws are based on democratic Christian principles, and the majority of citizens in this country are Christians. The government is the servant of the people, not the other way around." (Dramatic intake of breath here.) "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the past, present, and future meaning of the First Amendment from the Citizens Alliance of Washington State."

What was that? "Democratic Christian principles?" Haven't any of these people taken History 101? Don't they know anything at all about the bloody history of Christianity--especially when it is merged with government? How can the most casual student of history not know that the citizens under any government are free in direct proportion to the rights guaranteed by that government to minorities? How can they fail to see that Oliver Wendell Holmes' declaration is all too true: "The history of most countries has been that of majorities--mounted majorities, clad in iron, and armed with death."

We are combatting this upsurge of majoritarianism on many fronts. Just one other example: our state's "three strikes" law was passed as an initiative last year. Many other states have adopted similar laws, and a federal proposal is receiving wide bipartisan support. The intolerable injustices we anticipated are now materializing before our eyes. But to the CAW, it really doesn't matter if these laws are constitutionally flawed. They were voted into law by "the majority," and judges have no choice but to implement them--even in extreme cases where life in prison is obviously not reasonable punishment for the crimes committed. Well, if this law results in a few minor miscarriages of justice, it's all for the greater good. The majority knows best.

Thomas Jefferson's words at his first inaugural address spring to mind: "Though the will of the majority is to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect--to violate them would be oppression." One of Thoreau's many thoughts on the matter--"a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice"--is also worth repeating.

If these pages find their way to Stephen Mosier, I'd like to thank him for renewing my outrage and reminding me that Goethe was right: there truly is nothing more odious on the face of the earth than the majority. And no way is his kind of democracy going to prevail in Washington state.

How are his colleagues doing in your state?

(Postscript: at a press conference on July 7--just before the qualifying deadline--CAW announced that the I-610 campaign had fallen short of the required signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Mosier expressed disappointment at this failure of the democratic process but voiced his confidence that it would succeed next year or, certainly, by 1996.)