WHEN MAJORITY DOES NOT RULE

The majority does NOT rule if the majority is unfair to minorities. Majorities can sometimes be bullies. The majority sometimes decide that they are going to stop minorities from exercising their rights, especially the right to free speech and the right to chose their religion.

An excellent example is when the US decided to provide funding vouchers for religious schools. This idea lost much of its impetus when a group of Wiccans decided to open a school and applied for funding vouchers. Most people decided that they did not want tax money going to Wiccans. Of course, they also realized that the Wiccans did have a right to request and receive funding for their school.

Minorities are allowed to talk about ideas even if the majority believes the minority ideas are WRONG. Free speech is a difficult concept. In the US you can say anything you want, except that you can not make threats of violence against a person(s), you can not deliberately start a riot, and you can not advocate the violent overthrow of the government. If you advertise something, you can not lie about what the something does or does not do.

These are simple ideas that can be extremely complex when applied to a set of facts.